Abstract.To date there is no genuine cross‐national analysis of the world economic crisis of the 1930s. of the political turbulence it led to and of the economic and political measures that were taken. In this study the focus is on Great Britain, France. the Netherlands, Belgium. Germany and Austria from 1927 to 1938 or the collapse of the polity. Possible determinants of governmental instability are discussed and considered in preliminary bivariate testing. The main findings are: the survival measure of governments suggested by Sanders and Herman does not add any information at all; parliamentary variables in this analysis do not satisfactorily explain the duration of governments; though exempted from this verdict are variables like proportion of seats held by governing parties. parliamentary fractionalization. share of oppositional seats in parliament and percentage of seats held by anty‐system parties. It is suggested that the economic and political impact of the world economic crisis of the 1930s worked through linkages other than those spelled out in post‐World War II parliamentary and coalitional analyses on the determinants of government stab