Cabinet Survival and Competing Risks

We attempt to resolve a recent controversy in the study of cabinet terminations pertaining to the shape of hazard rates. On the one hand, Warwick (1992b) provides evidence that cabinets are more likely to terminate the longer they are in office. Alt and King's (1994) analysis, on the other hand, suggests that hazard rates are constant over the life-time of a cabinet. This issue is of particular theoretical importance, since a constant hazard rate would add support to the nonstrategic model of cabinet termination due to Browne et al. (1986) while an increasing hazard rate would seem to favor Lupia and Strom's (1995) strategic approach. By applying a semi-parametric competing risk approach to data on cabinet durations, we are able to show that through its use of theory-based censoring the previous literature in effect analyzed only one mode in which cabinets terminate: the case where one cabinet is replaced by another without a new election. Once cabinet terminations that lead to chamber dissolutions with subsequent elections are analyzed directly, we can show that they are governed by a very different stochastic process. Hazard rates are not flat as in the case of replacements, but increase over the life of the government. Further the covariates governing replacement terminations fail to explain dissolution terminations. These findings add support to the strategic approach suggested by Lupia and Strom.