The Duration of Caretaker Periods and the Formation of Parliamentary Governments

ABSTRACT In this article, I focus on an understudied aspect of the cabinet formation process in parliamentary democracies: the caretaker periods associated with it. Building on the existing literature on government formation, I discuss conceptualization and measurement of caretaker periods, defined as periods during which a government is no longer or cannot be tolerated by a majority in the legislature, and encompassing the process of formation of a new government that is and can be tolerated by the same or a different majority. I leverage a dataset of parliamentary events that, on the basis of this conceptualization, allows me to separate full‐power cabinets from caretaker periods rigorously and systematically according to a country's specific constitutional arrangements. Using survival analysis, I examine over 900 caretaker spells across 34 countries between 1945 and 2020. My goal is to assess how institutional and contextual differences account for variation in the duration of caretaker periods, as well as the government formation processes taking place during these periods, across countries and over time. The evidence helps paint a more refined picture of how new cabinets emerge and the occurrence of delays under different sets of conditions in the context of caretaker periods.