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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
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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.

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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 

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Footnotes

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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.

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