Caretaker governments are the product of transitions in which the outgoing authoritarian regime, or perhaps a new elite within the incumbent institutions, initiates a transition in the face of a growing economic deterioration, a severe rupture within the ruling elite, or a threat of opposition and even revolt. The incumbent may also realize that the regime does not fit into the dominant democratic Zeitgeist and that change is necessary, possible and may even be in the interest of the country. The likelihood of a regime-initiated transition is explainable, to a certain extent, in terms of Robert Dahl's famous formulation that a growing perception of the cost of repression, on the one side, and developing awareness that the cost of toleration of change may be low or diminishing, on the other side, adds the optimum conditions for such a regime-initiated transition.

Indeed, in some cases the old regime wishes to head off a potential crisis in good time; in other situations the outgoing administration does so under immediate pressure. In all cases the incumbent regime creates expectations which, if denied, can spur the very upheavals it wishes to avoid; hence the irony that regime-initiated transitions are less likely to go astray than opposition-led provisional governments.

We use the term “caretaker government” to refer to two characteristics. First, the temporal nature of the government and second, its limited functions.