The Study of Cabinet Dissolutions in Parliamentary Democracies

While earlier research stressed the importance of attributes of the government, parliament, and political system in determining the point of governmental dissolution, the most recent studies emphasize the random character of this phenomenon. This article describes the points of convergence and divergence between these distinct research phases. Ultimately these differing approaches are seen to be complementary, both conceptually and in their ability to predict postwar governmental dissolutions in 12 western parliamentary democracies. The next theoretical step should be the formulation of a model combining both static and random elements, a model which identifies the ways in which political events change the ability of governments to continue in office.