Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- GOVERNMENT SURVIVAL IN PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACIES
- 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
8 - Conclusion: an alternative perspective on government survival
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- GOVERNMENT SURVIVAL IN PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACIES
- 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
Summary
The importance of the issue of government survival in parliamentary regimes relates primarily to the central place it occupies in any assessment of the viability of parliamentarism as a system of government: a parliamentary system that does not produce durable governments is unlikely to provide effective policy making, to attract widespread popular allegiance, or perhaps even to survive over the longer run. Major issues tend to provoke plethoras of different explanations, and government survival is no exception. Nevertheless, much of the debate hinges on the answers to the following two questions: (1) do government terminations originate in differences in political belief or ideology, and (2) if so, why should differences of this sort have that effect?
A negative answer to the first question points to an interpretation of coalition government instability in terms of the opportunistic or careerist motivations of politicians whose alleged ideological differences, often trumpeted for public consumption, mask strong bonds of collegiality. The cynicism of this interpretation is captured nicely in Jouvenel's (1914:17) well-known pronouncement on politics in the French Third Republic: “There is less difference between two deputies of whom one is a revolutionary and the other isn't, than between two revolutionaries of whom one is a deputy and the other isn't.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies , pp. 134 - 148Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995