Defining Caretaker Governments

A close look at the existing literature on coalitions and governments in parliamentary democracies reveals that scholars speak of different types of governments when they speak about caretaker cabinets. Some refer to governments that stay in office after they have officially resigned, while a new government is being formed. Others refer to non-partisan governments or governments that have limited tenure and/or limited policymaking discretion. A third usage of the term equates caretaker governments with governments consisting of experts or “technocrats”. In this chapter, we discuss the constitutional necessity of such cabinets, and we identify the key criteria that differentiate them from other forms of government, arriving at a minimal and ideal typical definition, and we discuss two main subtypes, “continuation” and “new” caretakers. We present a small set of illustrative cases, and we analyse cross-national European data for continuation caretaker governments. We also draw attention to a lack of precise measures on caretaker tenures in most data sets. In the conclusion, we discuss the ways in which future research on caretaker governments can proceed.