Party-system polarisation, legislative institutions and cabinet survival in 28 parliamentary democracies, 1945–2019

Abstract

The resurgence of radical and populist parties has stimulated renewed discussions about the resilience of parliamentary democracy in Europe. This work contributes to this debate by analysing the extent to which positive parliamentarism, the prime minister’s parliamentary dissolution powers, the government’s power to table votes of confidence and the majority requirements for votes of no confidence serve as ‘shock absorbers’ moderating the effect of ideological polarisation in European parliaments. Fitting several Cox Proportional Hazards models to data for 752 cabinets from 28 European democracies between 1945 and 2019, the well-established finding that the restrictiveness of the constructive vote of no confidence mitigates the destabilising effect of strong extreme parties on non-electoral cabinet replacements is confirmed. More counter-intuitively, the absence of positive parliamentarism reduces the risk of non-electoral cabinet replacements when ideologically extreme parties are strong.