Party Factions and Government Reshuffles: a General Hypothesis Tested against Data from 20 Post-war Democracies

In the context of a general policy-based theory of how parties behave in democratic governments, a specific hypothesis on party factional behaviour is proposed and tested for the post-war period in 20 democracies. The hypothesis is that reshuffles (replacements and transfers of individuals between ministries) are more frequent where Prime Ministers have more freedom of action and decline where they have less freedom. As Prime Ministerial power is greatest in single-party governments, these are expected to produce more reshuffles – an expectation strongly confirmed by the evidence.