Intra-Coalition Conflict
Strategic Coalition Termination

Coalition cabinets are the dominant form of government in multi-party parliamentary democracies. Any cooperation of parties implies latent conflict potential, and about a third of all coalitions in postwar Europe terminate early due to conflict. This paper examines how power asymmetries between coalition parties affect government duration and conflictual government turnover. One main factor, we argue, is the PM party's credible options to exit the current government and to form an alternative one, particularly when the PM party can replace its ``troublemakers'' in the coalition. Empirically, we rely on a newly compiled data set that combines the coalition inclusion probabilities of parties in 25 parliamentary democracies with data on coalition conflict and cabinet duration. Using survival analysis, we estimate cabinet stability for 356 coalitions between 1946 and 2017. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of strategic coalition building, bargaining power, and party competition.