Description
This book assesses the larger influences that government termination by parliaments has on executive–legislative relations, claiming that the way in which the governments may be challenged or dismissed has far greater impact than previously understood.
The core feature of a parliamentary system is not that governments tend to emerge from the legislatures in some way or another, but their political responsibility to this body. While in only some parliamentary systems the government needs formal support of parliament to take office, in all parliamentary systems no government can survive against the will of parliament. The academic literature related to the rules for how governments form is vast. Strikingly, scholars have paid far less time to unpack the core institution of parliamentary systems of government – the confidence relationship and the various no confidence procedures. The chapters explore the institutions by which parliaments hold governments accountable and how they balance elected parliaments and appointed governments in parliamentary systems. Contributions move beyond the standard focus on government formation and instead analyse government termination by parliament evaluating its consequences in a detailed and comprehensive manner.
This book will be of interest to students and academics in the field of political science, governance and political theory. The chapters in this book were originally published in West European Politics.
Table of Contents
1. Parliaments and government termination: understanding the confidence relationship
Reuven Y. Hazan and Bjørn Erik Rasch
2. Constitutional parliamentarism in Europe, 1800–2019
José Antonio Cheibub and Bjørn Erik Rasch
3. The vote of no confidence: towards a framework for analysis
Tal Lento and Reuven Y. Hazan
4. Prime ministers, the vote of confidence and the management of coalition terminations between elections
Petra Schleiter and Georgina Evans
5. Termination of parliamentary governments: revised definitions and implications
Yael Shomer, Bjørn Erik Rasch and Osnat Akirav
6. The effect of the constructive vote of no-confidence on government termination and government durability
Ayelet Rubabshi-Shitrit and Sharon Hasson
7. Government termination in Europe: a sensitivity analysis
Daniel Walther and Johan Hellström
8. Party-system polarisation, legislative institutions and cabinet survival in 28 parliamentary democracies, 1945–2019
Henning Bergmann, Hanna Bäck and Thomas Saalfeld
9. Government termination and anti-defection laws in parliamentary democracies
Csaba Nikolenyi
10. Government Selection and Executive Powers: Constitutional Design in Parliamentary Democracies
José Antonio Cheibub, Shane Martin and Bjørn Erik Rasch
