Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T12:19:20.504Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constitutional Rules and Patterns of Government Termination: The Case of the UK Fixed-term Parliaments Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2015

Petra Schleiter  and
Sukriti Issar
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of constitutional rules on parliamentary dissolution, government termination and duration with a particular focus on the likely effects of UK’s Fixed-term Parliament’s Act (2011). In the UK debate, expectations about the Act diverge. This article evaluates the plausibility of these contrasting views by combining evidence from a comparative analysis of European cabinets with a counterfactual analysis of the Act’s effect on the strategies of UK politicians. The evidence from both analyses indicates that fixing the term of parliament is likely to render parliaments more stable, but may also have the unanticipated effect of making governments more vulnerable to failure and replacement.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 605 - 631
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published by Government and Opposition Limited and Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Petra Schleiter is Associate Professor in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Contact email: petra.schleiter@politics.ox.ac.uk.

Sukriti Issar is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Contact email: sukriti.issar@politics.ox.ac.uk.

References

REFERENCES

Alderman, R.K. (1992), ‘Harold Macmillan’s “Night of the Long Knives”’, Contemporary Record, 6(2): 243–265.Google Scholar
Alderman, R.K. and Carter, N. (1991), ‘A Very Tory Coup: The Ousting of Mrs Thatcher’, Parliamentary Affairs, 44(2): 125–139.Google Scholar
Alderman, R.K. and Smith, M.J. (1990), ‘Can British Prime Ministers be Given the Push by their Parties?’, Parliamentary Affairs, 43(3): 260–276.Google Scholar
Baker, D., Gamble, A. and Ludlam, S. (1994), ‘The Parliamentary Siege of Maastricht 1993: Conservative Divisions and British Ratification’, Parliamentary Affairs, 41(1): 37–60.Google Scholar
Birch, A.H. (2013), The British System of Government, 10th edn (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Cook, C. and Stevenson, J. (2014), A History of British Elections since 1689 (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Callaghan, J. (2006), Time and Chance (London: Politico’s).Google Scholar
Diermeier, D. and Stevenson, R.T. (1999), ‘Cabinet Survival and Competing Risks’, American Journal of Political Science, 43(4): 1051–1068.Google Scholar
Dunleavy, P. (2012), ‘Fixed Term Parliaments Are a Mirage – It’s All Downhill from Now to a June 2014 General Election’, LSE Blog: British Politics and Policy, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/20795.Google Scholar
Evans, B. (1996), From Salisbury to Major: Continuity and Change in Conservative Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press).Google Scholar
Evans, E.J. (2013), Thatcher and Thatcherism, 3rd edn (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Fearon, J.D. (1991), ‘Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science’, World Politics, 43(2): 169–195.Google Scholar
Fisher, S.D. (2006), ‘United Kingdom’, European Journal of Political Research, 45(7–8): 1282–1291.Google Scholar
Hazell, R. (2010), Fixed Term Parliaments (London: The Constitution Unit).Google Scholar
Heasman, D.J. (1960), ‘The Monarch, the Prime Minister, and the Dissolution of Parliament’, Parliamentary Affairs, 14(3): 94–107.Google Scholar
Heath, E. (1998), The Course of my Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton).Google Scholar
Hennessy, P. (2001), The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders since 1945 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).Google Scholar
HM Government (2011), ‘The Government Response to the Report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill (London, February 2011, Cm 8011)’, www.gov.uk/government/publications/fixed-term-parliaments-bill-government-response-to-lords-constitution-committee-report.Google Scholar
House of Commons PCRC (Political and Constitutional Reform Committee) (2013), ‘The Role and Powers of the Prime Minister: The Impact of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 on Government’, Fourth Report of Session 2013–14, HC 440.Google Scholar
Jennings, I. (1959), Cabinet Government (London: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayser, M.A. (2005), ‘Who Surfs, who Manipulates? The Determinants of Opportunistic Election Timing and Electorally Motivated Economic Intervention’, American Political Science Review, 99(1): 17–27.Google Scholar
Laski, H.J. (1951), Reflections on the Constitution (Manchester: Manchester University Press).Google Scholar
Lupia, A. and Strøm, K. (1995), ‘Coalition Termination and the Strategic Timing of Parliamentary Elections’, American Political Science Review, 89(3): 648–665.Google Scholar
Müller, W.C. and Strøm, K. (2000), ‘Coalition Governance in Western Europe: An Introduction’, in W.C. Mülller and K. Strøm (eds), Coalition Governments in Western Europe (New York: Oxford): 1–31.Google Scholar
Norris, P. (2001), ‘Apathetic Landslide: The 2001 British General Election’, Parliamentary Affairs, 54(4): 565–589.Google Scholar
Norton, P. (1980), Dissension in the House of Commons 1974–1979 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Paun, A. and Hazell, R. (2010), ‘Hung Parliaments and the Challenges for Westminster and Whitehall: How to Make Minority and Multiparty Governance Work’, Political Quarterly, 81(2): 213–227.Google Scholar
Roy, J. and Alcantara, C. (2012), ‘The Election Timing Advantage: Empirical Fact or Fiction?’ Electoral Studies, 31(4): 774–781.Google Scholar
Schleiter, P. and Issar, S. (2014a), Fixed-term Parliaments and the Challenges for Governments and the Civil Service: A Comparative Perspective’, Political Quarterly, 85(2): 178–186.Google Scholar
Schleiter, P. and Issar, S. (2014b), ‘A Typology of Early Government Terminations’, unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Schleiter, P. and Morgan-Jones, E. (2009), ‘Constitutional Power and Competing Risks: Monarchs, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and the Termination of East and West European Cabinets’, American Political Science Review, 103(3): 496–512.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (2003), ‘Election Timing in Majoritarian Parliaments’, British Journal of Political Science, 33(3): 397–418.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (2004), Election Timing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Smith, M.J. (1994), ‘The Core Executive and the Resignation of Mrs Thatcher’, Public Administration, 72(3): 341–363.Google Scholar
Strøm, K. and Swindle, S.M. (2002), ‘Strategic Parliamentary Dissolution’, American Political Science Review, 96(3): 575–591.Google Scholar
Thatcher, M. (1995), The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins).Google Scholar
Thomas-Symonds, N. (2010), Attlee: A Life in Politics (London: I.B. Tauris).Google Scholar
Warwick, P. (1994), Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Youngs, R. and Thomas-Symonds, N. (2013), ‘The Problem of the “Lame Duck” Government: A Critique of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act’, Parliamentary Affairs, 66(3): 540–556.Google Scholar