Toward a theoretical explanation of premature cabinet termination

Grofman, Bernard; Roozendaal, Peter Van

doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.1994.tb00438.x

Cited by 30 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Smith (2003, 399) cites examples from the UK and France of opportunistically called elections, which resulted in significant downturns for the incumbent at the polls. Similarly, Grofman and Roozendaal (1994) show with data from the Netherlands that parties which precipitate government termination and new elections may not yield any electoral benefit.…”

Section: Opportunistic Elections Provide No Advantagementioning

confidence: 79%

The Electoral Benefits of Opportunistic Election Timing

Schleiter

Tavits

2016

The Journal of Politics

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In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of the effect of opportunistic elections on the incumbent's electoral performance. The existing literature on parliamentary dissolution and election timing generates contradictory expectations about the ability of incumbent governments to benefit from strategically timed elections. We evaluate these competing hypotheses, drawing on an original dataset of 321 parliamentary elections in 27 East and West European countries, observed from 1945 or democratization to the present. In order to causally identify the effect of opportunistic election calling on incumbent's electoral performance, we rely on instrumental variable regression. Our results reveal that opportunistic election calling generates a significant vote share bonus for the incumbent of as much as 5.5 percentage points. This finding suggests that by timing elections strategically, governments can significantly affect how voters vote. It therefore has powerful implications for our understanding the effectiveness of elections as instruments of democracy and accountability.

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Section: Opportunistic Elections Provide No Advantagementioning

confidence: 79%

The Electoral Benefits of Opportunistic Election Timing

Schleiter

Tavits

2016

The Journal of Politics

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“…By making coalition bargaining explicit, they make dissolution and elections--whether opportunistic or involuntary--a consequence of the strategic interaction of coalition members rather than the vaguely epidemiological process that dominated earlier government duration literature. 8 After all, as Grofman and Roozendaal (1994) once commented, it is the choices of actors within circumstances created by exogenous shocks that bring cabinets down. Election timing by single-party governments is considerably simpler than dynamic coalition bargaining but much can still be gained from an explicit consideration of the actors' choices within circumstances created by exogenous shocks.…”

Section: Who Surfs Who Manipulates? the Determinants Of Opportunistimentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Surfs, Who Manipulates? The Determinants of Opportunistic Election Timing and Electorally Motivated Economic Intervention

Kayser

2005

Am Polit Sci Rev

155

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I n this paper, I develop a career concerns model of government policy choice within a dynamic optimal stopping framework to predict the degree of surfing (opportunistic timing) and manipulation (politically motivated economic intervention) under alternate institutional structures. Among other results, I find that the likelihood of opportunistic elections rises with exogenous economic performance, with longer maximum term lengths, with future electoral uncertainty, and with economic volatility but diminishes in the value of office-holding; manipulation increases with the maximum term length and with the value of office-holding but decreases with exogenous economic performance and with economic volatility. The model suggests that single-party governments should be highly opportunistic in calling elections and that countries that allow opportunistic election timing should experience less economically distortionary political intervention than their fixed-timing counterparts.A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.--Lord Acton

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“…One difficulty with the large volume of research on cabinet duration is that a variety of system‐level variables profitably employed in the literature (specific institutional features such as the need for an explicit vote of investiture or the type of party system – see Saalfeld 2008; Grofman 1989) are especially good in explaining between‐country variations, but are less helpful in accounting for variations in cabinet length within a given country, given their viscosity at least in the medium term. In the latter situation, particular attention must be devoted to variables that are more closely linked to the context under study (on this point, see also Grofman & Van Roozendaal 1994).…”

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confidence: 99%

Government survival the Italian way: The core and the advantages of policy immobilism during the First Republic

Curini

2010

European Journal of Political Research

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During its nearly fifty years of history, the First Italian Republic has been characterised by the highest rate of cabinet turnover in Western Europe. There are several convincing explanations for this exceptional feature; nevertheless, merely looking at the average figure risks overlooking the variety in the Italian government experience. Focusing on the spatial determinants of Italian cabinet duration shows that the presence of a core party has a positive, albeit conditional, impact on government duration, largely depending on the degree of intra‐cabinet conflict. Moreover, whenever the core is absent, the inability of cabinets to change the status quo appears to lengthen, rather than shorten, their duration. This outcome appears in line with works stressing the substantial policy immobilism of Italian governments throughout most of the postwar period. The analysis relies on a new dataset based on a coding of the investiture debates of all the Italian cabinets. This allows one to track the evolution of parties’ preferences in a policy space that can change between (rather than only across) elections. The results show the importance of in‐depth case studies to better analyse some puzzles within the cabinet duration literature that might otherwise be averaged out in large‐N comparative analysis.

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Toward a theoretical explanation of premature cabinet termination

Cited by 30 publications

References 28 publications

The Electoral Benefits of Opportunistic Election Timing

The Electoral Benefits of Opportunistic Election Timing

Who Surfs, Who Manipulates? The Determinants of Opportunistic Election Timing and Electorally Motivated Economic Intervention

Government survival the Italian way: The core and the advantages of policy immobilism during the First Republic

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