Government stability is one of the key and basic indicators of feasibility or unreasonableness of various political systems, political institutions and processes’ choice and quality of functioning, a predictor of systemic stability, democratic representation and accountability, and prospects for further strengthening/consolidation of democracy. Minority governments, especially in the European parliamentary democracies, where these institutional scenario (although not in all countries, but on average) are quite often used and are not treated as situational and necessarily “crisis and risk”, constitute no exceptions in this context. Accordingly, the analysis and outline of minority governments’ stability, particularly on the background of current knowledge about theoretical, methodological and empirical characteristics and prerequisites of comparative study, types, theoretical and empirical principles, reasons, models and methods of forming and accountability, party related, electoral, ideological and power-opposition attributes of minority government, executive-legislative and intra- governmental relations and legislative process in the cut of minority government in the European parliamentary democracies, are extremely important and far-sighted, because it is posiible to identify certain patterns of inter-institutional relations. Therefore, the article is dedicated to analyzing patterns of minority governments’ stability in European parliamentary democracies, in particular in the European systems of positive and negative parliamentarism (in 1944–2016). The author has found that minority governments are relatively less stable than majority governments. However, the researcher argues that single-party minority governments on average are more stable than minority coalition governments.
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