Dr Petra Schleiter awarded a grant to explore how the economy affects government survival in Europe

Congratulations to Petra Schleiter, who has been awarded a grant by the John Fell OUP Research Fund to conceptualize, measure and explore economic effects on cabinet survival.

The project explores how the economy affects the durability of governments. As the current economic crisis illustrates, the economy can powerfully impinge on cabinet survival. Yet, conceptual, measurement and methodological problems have hampered political scientists’ efforts to understand the nature of these effects.

This innovative and exploratory project will offer clear conceptualizations of economic performance and shocks and appropriate measures for 30 East and West European countries from 1945 (or democratization) to 2011. Merging these measures with cabinet data, the project will generate the most extensive and nuanced dataset available for the study of cabinet survival to date.

The timing and management of cabinet terminations is a matter of genuine academic and practical importance - policy choices, investment decisions, the stability of markets and even civic peace may hang on it. This project will lay the foundations for a much larger research agenda that will enable political scientists and researchers in the policy community to establish how the economy affects cabinet terminations.