Events, Equilibria, and Government Survival

Theory: A game-theoretic model of government formation yields an equilibrium government, the robustness of which may be explored by subjecting it to exogenous shocks. This permits an examination of government durability and survival in a cruel political world. Hypotheses: The vulnerability of a government to exogenous shocks depends upon the nature of the shock. A government may be quite resistant to some classes of shock, while it is highly vulnerable to others. Methods: Game-theoretic analysis yields equilibrium results. A simulation technology is crafted which allows us to subject this equilibrium to perturbations of its underlying parameters (much in the spirit of wind-tunnel experiments in engineering). Results: The technology does indeed allow the systematic examination of well-defined cases. We find, for the case of two European governments in the 1980s and 1990s, that they differ considerably in their vulnerability to exogenous shocks.