Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies

This book reports the results of quantitative investigation analysing governmental instability in sixteen West European countries.

Paul Warwick (Author)

9780521038317, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 June 2007

200 pages, 6 b/w illus. 43 tables
22.7 x 15.1 x 1 cm, 0.309 kg

"Warwick's book will challenge students of governmental survival to rethink and sharpen their own models. His focus on ideological diversity within governments and economic trends adds useful perspectives." Journal of Politics

This book describes the results of a quantitative investigation into one of the central questions of 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 what is undoubtedly the most comprehensive data set yet assembled on governments, comprising hundreds of variables measured for governments in sixteen West European parliamentary democracies over the entire post-war period to 1989. The results fundamentally challenge the central thread of theorizing on government survival and point to an alternative conceptualization of the relationship among governments, parties and voters.

List of tables and figures
Preface
1. Introduction: the government survival debates
2. The quantitative study of government survival
3. Basic attributes and government survival
4. The role of ideology
5. Economic conditions and government survival
6. The underlying trend in government survival
7. Model adequacy
8. Conclusion: an alternative perspective on government survival
Appendix: a codebook of variables used in this study
Notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political structures: democracy [JPHV]