Intra-party conflict and cabinet survival in 17 West European democracies, 1945–1999

Abstract

This paper makes an empirical contribution to an emerging body of scholarship modelling coalition politics not as a ‘game’ between ‘unitary actors’, but as a system of at least two interlocking political games between political parties: ‘At one level, party leaders do interact with each other, as modelled by classical coalition theorists. At another level, each decision a party leader makes has to be carried through within the party’s internal political system – and of course party leaders will anticipate the need to do this when making commitments to other party leaders'. Whilst authors such as Druckman (1996), Laver (1999), Strom (2001) or Tsebelis (1992, 2002) have made progress in developing theoretical models for the analysis of such complex two-level processes, rigorous quantitative tests of hypotheses derived from their models are rare. Druckman’s (1996) study of the influence of party factionalism on cabinet durability is the only published comparative, quantitative analysis of the intraparty sources of coalition durability in English language. Druckman demonstrates that increasing levels of party factionalism reduce the life expectancy of cabinets significantly, even if other institutional variables are held constant.