No abstract

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition

No abstract

Most of the previous work on political stability uses cabinet duration or leadership duration to measure stability. This study, however, focuses on another area of stability, namely the party control of the executive branch. This approach not only allows us to compare political durability in presidential and parliamentary systems directly, but it also, we believe, better reflects policy changes that stem from government party composition. Our analysis of longitudinal data from 65 democracies reveals that presidential and parliamentary governments create different patterns of government survival. Ruling parties in parliamentary systems encounter a declining hazard rate over time, whereas those in presidentialism face an increasing hazard rate in their survival. We explain this difference by focusing on how parliamentary and presidential systems create different incentive structures for political parties.

Political scientists have not paid sufficient attention to the driving forces of ruling party stability, although other areas of political stability, such as democratic stability, leadership stability and cabinet stability have been studied extensively. This research fills a significant gap. It focuses on electoral rules and political party systems to explain ruling party durability. It demonstrates the following: (1) ruling parties’ hazard rates under the first-past-the-post systems are initially lower than those under proportional representation rules, but this tendency reverses over time, and (2) ruling parties’ hazard rates under two-party systems are initially lower than those under multiparty systems, but this too reverses.