
Florence So
Senior Lecturer

Serious Conflicts with Benign Outcomes? The Electoral Consequences of Conflictual Cabinet Terminations
Author
Summary, in English
Conflictual cabinet terminations are seismic events in democracies, but their consequences are understudied. I argue that the electoral impacts of conflictual cabinet terminations depend on voters’ perceptions of them. Terminations following non-policy conflicts are electorally costly. They signal parties’ deteriorating governing competence, which reduces parties’ vote shares. In contrast, terminations following policy conflicts signal parties’ unwillingness to compromise their policy positions and clarify parties’ policy profiles, thus allowing them to evade voter punishment and junior coalition parties to reap electoral reward, particularly for those terminations preceded by interparty policy conflicts. Statistical analyses using the PAGED dataset support my argument on policy terminations and reveal more nuanced electoral effects of non-policy conflict terminations. These findings are robust to various alternative explanations, as well as multiple cabinet terminations and time passed from termination to election. The findings have large implications on electoral accountability of intra-cabinet conflicts and the quality of governance.
Department/s
- Department of Political Science
Publishing year
2024
Language
English
Pages
1449-1463
Publication/Series
American Political Science Review
Volume
118
Issue
3
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Topic
- Political Science
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1537-5943