Since the end of communism in Central Eastern Europe (CEE), the governments of the region’s new democracies have experienced high levels of turnover, particularly when compared to the more established democracies in the West. Yet, within CEE, there has been much variation in government duration. While studies have shown that government duration largely follows many expectations established in the literature on Western democracies, more recent work has shown that additional factors need to be accounted for to explain the variation in government stability in CEE. To better understand this variation, this paper investigates the role played by ethnic minority parties, important political players in the ethnically diverse countries in the region. Ethnic minority parties are unique from other parties in the region due to their loyal voter base that continues to support them after serving in government, despite routine punishment of other incumbents. Does the electoral stability of ethnic minority parties lead to greater stability of the coalitions that they join? This paper presents a quantitative test of hypotheses using a dataset of governments since the early 1990’s in ten CEE states. This study gives us insight into both the impact of ethnic diversity on government stability and the important role played by ethnic minority parties in the party systems in which they are present.