Question:  I read in the Huber and Gallardo (2004) article that the “alleged stability of majoritarian systems masks the substantial turnover within the cabinet itself”. I was wondering what specifically was meant by “alleged stability”, please? I was under the impression that majoritarian systems, by not providing tools for dealing with the problems it created (no vote of no confidence), was less stable than consensus democracies or PR systems.

Answer:  The Huber and Martinez-Gallardo article centres on challenging pre-existing definitions of stability (which focus on the time that passes between cabinet formation and collapse), and providing alternative ways of conceptualising stability (focusing on ministers’ experience of being in cabinet, and of holding their specific portfolios). The alleged instability of consensus systems is based on the more frequent collapse of cabinets due to one or more coalition partners leaving government (due to disputes or disagreements between parties). Of course, because consensus systems tend to have PR electoral systems, they are more likely to produce coalition governments (because no single party is likely to receive a majority of votes in elections), which then makes it more likely that there is a coalition partner to leave the government and cause the cabinet to collapse. As the article mentions, the French Third Republic, Weimar Germany, and Italy are taken as evidence of this tendency.

However, by presenting their alternative measures of (in)stability, they show that majoritarian systems such as the French Fifth Republic are not as stable as proposed. It is thought that they should be stable because they are more likely to produce majority government that lasts for the whole of its term (i.e. the cabinet will not collapse because there is no coalition partner who can quit). However, as Huber and Martinez-Gallardo show, majoritarian systems are not as stable as thought when we consider the experience of the ministers in cabinets (both in terms of the time they have spent in cabinet, and in charge of their specific portfolios). This is because, whilst cabinets may be less likely to collapse in majoritarian systems, they may well be reshuffled at the discretion of the prime minister (or equivalent), meaning that the turnover of cabinet ministers can be high.

So, their argument does not relate to the lack of a vote of no confidence in particular. Crucially, the presence of absence of a vote of no confidence is actually to do with whether the system is presidential (no vote of no confidence) or parliamentary (vote of no confidence), rather than strictly whether it is majoritarian or consensus orientated. Remember, of course, that a parliamentary system may be more majoritarian (e.g. the UK) or consensual (e.g. Germany) based to a notable extent on their electoral system. A presidential system will always have the additional consensus requirement that the president must approve bills passed by the legislature but may still be more or less consensus orientated depending on the electoral system used for the legislature.