Csaba Nikolenyi, "Cabinet Stability in Post-Communist Central Europe," Party Politics, 10 (March 2004), 123-150.

First Paragraph:
Since the transition from communism to competitive multiparty democracy, two general elections have been held in the sovereign Czech Republic, and three in both Hungary and Poland.1 With the exception of the 1994 Hungarian elections, each of these elections resulted in a parliament where no single political party controlled a majority of the seats. In addition, with the exception of the Czech elections of 1998, cabinets were formed by coalitions of parties. The stability of the various cabinets has shown variation both within and across the countries. In Poland, no cabinet formed after a general election survived in its original composition. In the Czech Republic, the coalition cabinet formed after the 1996 elections was terminated after a little more than a year in power, while the single-party minority cabinet formed by the 1998 polls has demonstrated remarkable stability. Of the three states, only in Hungary have political parties managed to maintain stable governments.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1. Distribution of seats in the Polish Sejm, 1991-7 (in percentages)
Table 2. Distribution of seats in the Hungarian Orszaggyules, 1990-8 (in percentages)
Table 3. Distribution of seats in the Czech Chamber of Deputies, 1996-8 (in percentages)
Table 4. Composition, size and causes of termination of cabinets in the Czech Republic (1996 2001), Hungary (1990-2001) and Poland (1991-2001)
Figure 1. Cabinet stability in terms of days in office and survival rate
Figure 2. Average cabinet stability per legislature
Table 5. Cabinet types
Table 6. Types of legislature
Table 7. Arithmetically possible minimum winning coalitions
Table 8. Results of the 2001 Polish and the 2002 Hungarian and Czech elections
Table 9. Types of parliament in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland
Figure 3. The ordinal location of political parties from left to right
Table 10. Types of Cabinet in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

First Paragraph of Conclusion:
In this article I have shown that cabinet stability in the three consolidated CEE democracies can be consistently accounted for in terms of the theory of dominant and central players. The predictions of the theory are accurate both within and across the three states. Although the theory of dominant and central players has received empirical evaluation so far only in the context of mature Western multiparty democracies, it appears to have strong significant predictive potential in the context of new democracies as well. At the same time, however, the impact of case selection must also be noted. The three states studied in this article have had the most consolidated party systems in the region. Whether the theory would work equally well in the less institutionalized and inchoate systems of other post-communist states remains to be explored in future research.