The President in the Government Termination Process in European Democracies.

The paper investigates the role of presidential heads of state in the government termination process in European democracies. From the examination of the constitutional powers of the president over the dissolution of parliament in nine West European democracies, we have found that most presidents in these countries have constitutionally-endowed powers to call or not to call premature elections once the incumbent governments lose the confidence ofparliament. Based on these findings, we derive several hypotheses relating the configuration of preferences among the president, parliament, and government to the duration of the government and electoral performance. We find that a government is likely to terminate more quickly, the more ideologically distant it is from the median parliamentary party; that a government lasts longer, the more ideologically distant the president is from the medianparliamentary party; and that president's parties perform better in early elections than in regularly scheduled elections. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]