ABSTRACT
For a long time political scientists have been preoccupied with the study of coalition government formation. To some extent, they have also addressed the question of coalition duration and termination. Summing up several studies, Laver and Schofield describe four types of factors explaining coalition government stability:1
(1) Attributes of the overall political system, i.e. the number of parties, the ‘size’ of the party system, the presence of anti-system parties, the degree of ideological polarization, the level of policy influence open to the opposition, the salience of elections to the government formation process, and the presence of a formal investiture requirement.
