The comparative record of cabinet stability shows interesting variation across the three most consolidated post-communist democracies: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Whereas each cabinet has been remarkably stable in post-communist Hungary, no cabinet has survived in its original composition in Poland. The cabinets that have been formed in the Czech Republic show a mixture of stability and instability: the conservative coalition government formed after the 1996 Czech elections collapsed after a little more than a year in office paving the way for early elections. In contrast, the single-party government formed by the Social Democratic Party (CSSD) after the 1998 polls has proved to be stable. In this article it is argued that cabinet stability both within and across the states can be consistently explained by the theory of dominant and central players.
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