Government Survival In Parliamentary Democracies

Why do some parliamentary democracies, such as Britain, manage to produce highly durable governments, whereas others, such as Italy, are marked by rapid government turnover? While the government stability associated with Britain's "Westminster model" elicits public confidence in and respect for the model, the contrasting record of what is essentially the same regime model in Italy more often elicits criticism and ridicule. Through a wide-ranging quantitative investigation, this book seeks to unravel the puzzling, Janus-faced nature of parliamentary democracy and answer a central question of contemporary political science: what determines how long governments survive in parliamentary democracies? Government survival is important because it constitutes an essential component of the overall functioning of parliamentary democracies. It is also closely associated with the introduction to the discipline of event history analysis, a highly promising statistical methodology. The investigation utilizes this methodology on the most comprehensive data set yet assembled on governments, comprising hundreds of variables measured for sixteen West European parliamentary democracies over the entire postwar period to 1989. The results fundamentally challenge the central thread of current theorizing on government survival and point to an alternative conceptualization of the relationship among governments, parties, and voters. Within this rich statistical portrait, the author attempts, ultimately, to account for the two faces of parliamentary government. GOVERNMENT SURVIVAL IN PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACIES GOVERNMENT SURVIVAL IN PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACIES PAUL V. WARWICK Simon Fraser University CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. Cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521470285 © Cambridge University Press 1994 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1994 This digitally printed version 2007 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Warwick, Paul V. Government survival in parliamentary democracies / Paul V. Warwick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-47028-5 1. Cabinet system — Europe. 2. No confidence motions — Europe. I. Title JN94.A63W37 1995 321.8'043'094 - dc20 94-10920 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-47028-5 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-03831-7 paperback ToBJC Contents List of tables and Preface figures page ix xi 1 Introduction: the government survival debates 2 The quantitative study of government survival 1 17 3 Basic attributes and government survival 4 The role of ideology 5 Economic conditions and government survival 6 The underlying trend in government surviv