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- Game-theoretic modeling of government stability: Evidence from India’s one nation, one election proposal
Game-theoretic modeling of government stability: Evidence from India’s one nation, one election proposal
October 8, 2025
Vidhu Shekhar, Milan Kumar
Abstract
This paper develops a game-theoretic structural hazard model to evaluate how constitutional rules shape government stability. The framework treats government collapse as a strategic interaction in which potential challengers, opposition parties or coalition defectors decide when to attempt bringing down the government, with hazards determined by two state variables: the declining value of remaining tenure and the rising option value of resetting the electoral clock. The model is estimated on a new dataset that records the tenure (in months) of 277 governments at both state and central levels in India between 1989 and 2024, the first systematic panel of government tenures of its kind. Results show that reset incentives are decisive: the coefficient on the option-value term is positive and statistically significant, confirming that the prospect of securing a fresh mandate motivates late-term challenges to sitting governments. Counterfactual simulations of India’s proposed One Nation, One Election (ONOE) reform, which eliminates the reset option, predict that collapses would fall by 71\%, fresh elections by 72\%, and full-term completions would rise by 20.7\%, with average tenure increasing by six months. Interestingly, while ONOE results in stable governments overall, it concentrates instability in year-1, as fragile coalitions face immediate challenges rather than surviving until late-term, when no-reset possibilities make toppling them unattractive. The analysis demonstrates how institutional design alters strategic incentives for both incumbents and challengers and provides a generalisable modelling framework for assessing policy reforms that reconfigure survival horizons in parliamentary systems.
Keywords: portfolio optimization, innovation policy, technological change, experience curves, technology investment
Suggested citation:
Shekhar, V., & Kumar, M. (2025). Game-Theoretic Modeling of Government Stability: Evidence from India’s One Nation, One Election Proposal. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17294779.