Constitutional rules and cabinet durability in advanced democracies

Some constitutions allow governments to choose the time of their demise. In contrast, others impose various constraints and insert either the government collectively, the parliamentary majority, or the head of state into government termination decisions. In this presentation, I map the variation of constitutional rules that govern government terminations and how these governments break down (i.e., either through parliamentary dissolution and early election calling or as non-electoral cabinet replacement). In doing so, I use the data set on governments in 46 advanced democracies from 1945 until 2020. I use a semi-parametric Cox regression and conduct a competing risk analysis of cabinet durability. The results demonstrate that the constitutional rules regarding the powers to dissolve the parliament and terminate the government granted to PMs, parliamentary majorities, and the heads of state have powerful and distinct effects on each type of cabinet termination. These results modify the understanding of government durability and have implications for comparative work about the performance of democracies, opportunistic election calling, electoral accountability, and semi-presidentialism.