Government-initiated Votes of Confidence in Parliamentary Democracies

Abstract

When do incumbents call a vote of confidence? Despite it being one of the most consequential tools afforded to parliamentary administrations, the scholarly literature lacks empirical evidence vis-à-vis the conditions that incentivize cabinets to tie their survival to the endorsement of a particular statement or passage of a bill. In this article, I draw upon an original dataset covering more than 400 government-initiated votes of confidence across 14 countries (1945-2021) to map out applications of these votes and investigate the circumstances that prompt executives in parliamentary systems to choose the vote of confidence procedure over other mechanisms at their disposal. I argue that the variation in the political environment and constitutional arrangements systematically affects the frequency of confidence motions. Using mixed-effect logistic regression, I show that leaders' decision as to if or when to rely on this instrument is shaped by various contingent, structural, and institutional determinants. This study contributes to the research on executive power under parliamentarism by providing the first cross-national, quantitative analysis of votes of confidence called by the government. In doing so, it refines our theoretical understanding of restrictive parliamentary procedures such as the vote of confidence: they can facilitate the achievement of the best possible electoral and policy outcomes given the preference of a majority. Finally, this study demonstrates that, while restrictive in its effect, the use of these procedures is constrained by factors transcending the preferences of the majority.