Survival of the Fittest? Cabinet Duration in Postcommunist Europe

Abstract

Studies of government duration in transitional democracies are critically important in that they have profound implications for stability, democratic representation and accountability, and the prospects for continued democratic consolidation. For example, there is a long-standing debate on the different effects of presidential and parliamentary systems on the survivability of regimes.1 Examining government duration in postcommunist Europe addresses some key questions about institutional choice in transitional democracies, principally, how specific institutional arrangements are effective in constraining or extending the tenures of postcommunist governments. Yet the majority of studies of cabinet duration focus on western Europe and ignore the interesting cases of transitional democracies.2This article tests whether theories used to explain cabinet duration in western Europe can be transported to the postcommunist context. Although postcommunist states may not exhibit the strongest institutions or the most predictable mass behavior, their governments are still constrained by institutional arrangements that give domestic actors an oppositional role and are lengthened by strong economic performance. Analyses of the postcommunist states of the eastern Europe and Baltic states have been mainly comparative case studies.3 Although there have been attempts to compare them with the western democracies, scholars have argued that different histories, developments, and characteristics represent obstacles to these attempts. Hypotheses developed for the western democracies can address the same characteristics and processes for cabinet duration in eastern European and Baltic states. They are tested using duration models on a sample of ten postcommunist countries from the date of their independence through 2003. Similar to western European governments, tenure in office is determined by a mixture of institutional constraints (effective number of parties, type of government) and policy success (inflation).