The Black Widow effect: why Britain's conservative-liberal democrat coalition might have an unhappy ending

The UK may be relatively unfamiliar with coalition governments, but they are very common in other parts of the worldso much so that political scientists now have a very good idea of what makes some governments last and some end early. This article summarises the cross-national research on coalitions and on the entry into government of parties that are unfamiliar with its constraints, and uses it, together with a case study of another Westminster system that suddenly had to get used to 'hung parliaments', to suggest that we must not assume that the CameronClegg coalition is somehow bound to last the full five years