Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Political Theory and the History of Ideas Journal, grade: 2,3, University of Mannheim, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper tries always to make a relation between the rational choice theory and its influences on the stability of coalitions. Therefore I make the basic assumption that coalition stability is proved yet by the formation process of the government. If the formation process of the coalition is yet quite hard to handle, the government will tend to be not the stablest at all. The major question of this paper I have posed was in how for the stability of cabinets could be affected. Therefore I would like to give the first proves for cabinet dissolution in giving the motivations which affect this. There are quite a lot of forms of dismissal of cabinets which I will present in the second chapter of this paper. This chapter will also provide a definition in how far coalition termination need to be defined: especially the distinction between duration and durability becomes important within this context. The third chapter will than give some proves for the termination of cabinets: therefore I will present all the relevant variables which determine the stability of coalitions. The third chapter is a purely structural description with a lot of indicators which are typical for coalitions and which can be observed in almost every Western Democracies. The categories I would like to point out are the strength of the parties, the ideological structure of the party landscape and the institutional features of democracies. But you need to consider as well abstract variables which are situated external to the legislature or not at first sight inherently tied to the cabinet dissolution. Chapter four will pick up the idea of the just mentioned abstract concepts of external variables. Therefore I need to consider especially the concept of Warwick who appointed the concept of exogenous shocks and hazard rates. This conceptualization is inasmuch important because it is among other things needed to explain the game theoretic approach of Lupia and Strom who attempts to appoint the stability of coalitions. This game theoretic model seems to be in that an adequate explanation approach which could describe the status quo of the current coalition landscape in Western Europe because Lupia and Strom are taking into account the common policy of coalitions: it is not sufficient to describe its stability in giving a presentation of the institutional context of the coalition, this is maybe a little piece of this puzzle.