Psychological aspects of pre-election coalition formation as political behavior

Abstract

When studying the "psychological aspects of pre-election coalition formation as political behavior", I rely on the theoretical foundations of psychological factors of political behavior, the deep scientific knowledge of the pre-election coalitions themselves and the fundamental features of the coalition. The issue is particularly relevant due to the approach of the 2024 parliamentary elections in Georgia and the coalitions created many times in the past (sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully). Considering all this, the paper aims to investigate the internal and external motives for the possible unification of political parties in the current reality of Georgia, what determines the behavior of politicians in relation to the parliamentary elections and what common interests exist when forming a coalition. For the research, I used the in-depth interview method, I conducted in-depth interviews with representatives of six parties. I selected the respondents using the purposeful sampling method. During the content analysis of politicians' interviews, it was revealed that external motives have the greatest influence on the formation of the pre-election coalition. I believe that the paper presented by me is valuable both theoretically (in terms of political psychology, there is no Georgian research in this direction) and practically, since the majority of parties are faced with the need to form a coalition in order to successfully participate in the 2024 parliamentary elections.