Happy political parties never have serious leadership tensions.
Unhappy ones have coups, and while these vary in their details, they have one overriding factor in common - fear.
There'll always be some combination of ambition, loyalty, hatred and ideological differences before a leadership challenge, and usually there'll be chatter and subterranean troublemaking that's stirred, shaken and magnified by the media to the point where resolution, usually of the blood-letting variety, is inevitable.
But nothing concentrates the mind and curdles loyalties like fear - fear of losing government, of losing your seat, of going back to being a non-person in some dreary suburb.
When the polls toll oblivion, anything that half-promises survival will be grasped.
One exception to prove the rule was in 1971, when Billy MacMahon replaced John Gorton in a process that might have been scripted for the Three Stooges, what with Gorton strangely initiating the party room vote of confidence in himself, then stepping down when it was tied.
In those days coups, especially against prime ministers, were rare and this one was not poll-driven. There was plenty of hatred.
The next Liberal coup was more cold-blooded and from opposition. Malcolm Fraser, having lost a leadership ballot to Billy Snedden after the 1974 election that returned Gough Whitlam, got his lieutenants to methodically work the numbers until the time was ripe for a second strike.
But he probably couldn't have succeeded if Snedden had been able to hold his own with Whitlam. And on this occasion, the plotters calculated correctly and Fraser soon had them back in power.
As did the plotters on the Labor side when Bob Hawke, having narrowly lost an earlier vote against Bill Hayden, prevailed just in time to take on Fraser in 1983. Hayden didn't even wait for a vote, stepping down after months of white-anting as his troops became convinced that Hawke was the sure winner he proved to be.
The Liberals, who historically have done opposition badly (Tony Abbott may have broken this mould), invented the revolving leadership door during the Hawke era.
Andrew Peacock blundered out of it in 1985 after a pre-emptive strike against his deputy, John Howard, went wrong. In 1989, Peacock came back with one of the most stunning of all coups. Stunning because of its secrecy.
No one except the plotters knew of it until the night before. Not even the press gallery saw it coming. Then the main plotters poisoned the aftermath by going on television and boasting about how they'd done it.
There were various less-than-noble elements to the Howard-Peacock rivalry, but at least it provided a distinct ideological choice.
Then came the most drawn-out and dramatic challenge of them all, when Paul Keating finally felled Hawke, Labor's most successful leader.
It had all the classic hallmarks - a long period of speculation, charges of treachery from both sides, a failed first challenge, undermining of the leader and his key supporters, a new opposition leader riding high, frightening polls, endless media commentary. Finally, by a mere five votes, one of Labor's great heroes was deposed.
For a time after that, prime ministers had more to fear from the ballot box than their party room, but opposition leaders continued to be an endangered species.
The Liberals went from John Hewson to Alexander Downer and back to Howard, who this time around proved a winner many times over.
Which put the pressure on Labor leaders. Labor, which once stayed loyal to leaders who had suffered multiple defeats, went from Kim Beazley to Simon Crean to Mark Latham to Beazley again and finally to Kevin Rudd.
Rudd - that's when the fun really started.
In December 2007, he could hardly have been riding higher: a prime minister with a decent majority, a heroic Howard-slayer and the Liberals acting like headless chooks.
Following Howard's demise, well-regarded defence minister Brendan Nelson stepped forward, narrowly defeating Malcolm Turnbull by three votes to become opposition leader. He lasted less than nine months.
With a record-low approval rating of just seven per cent, Nelson was dumped for Malcolm Turnbull by just four votes.
Turnbull hung in until late 2009, before falling foul of much of his party room because of his support for Labor's emissions trading scheme.
The pain endured for a week.
Turnbull survived an initial spill, defeating Kevin Andrews by seven votes. A few days later, he lost by one to Abbott.
Through all this Rudd soared. Then, suddenly, he was gone in a coup that was perhaps the most shocking of all for its speed and ruthlessness.
It turned out Rudd was far more popular with voters than with his own Labor colleagues, who had tired of his obnoxious presidential imperiousness and micromanaging.
MPs, with an eye on the polls, were prepared to overlook his faults, but only up to a point.
There had been rumblings but the end was sudden. On a winter's evening in June 2010, deputy Julia Gillard walked into the PM's office and asked for a leadership ballot.
Rather than face the humiliation of a dumping, Rudd quit, becoming the first PM to be removed from office in his first term by his own party.
For the punters, the knifing of a leader they mostly liked was mystifying.
It was one reason, if not the major one, for Gillard failing to achieve complete legitimacy as his replacement.
Unfortunately for her and Labor, Rudd didn't go quietly. During an election campaign several weeks later, he was accused of blatant white-anting.
An inconclusive election result that left Gillard leading a minority government was always going to be problematic for Labor.
And so it turned out: constant speculation, a failed challenge, an aborted one that bordered on farce before the coup de grace in June 2013.
Faced with dismal polls, an ascendant opposition led by Abbott, the media dogs barking and Rudd stalking, Gillard was a dead woman walking.
It came to a head in June 2013. Rudd returned for a second chance as prime minister after defeating Gillard by 12 votes.
While it didn't save Labor at the subsequent September election, many in the party thought the loss would have been worse under Gillard.
The principal beneficiary of Labor's leadership woes was Abbott - who knows as well as anyone the damage endless leadership speculation can do to a government.
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