Ministerial Appointments Research Articles

Gobierno de partidos y designación de ministros en Uruguay, 1985-2024

Objective/Context: The article analyzes the partisan nature of ministers in Uruguay (96 % of the total) during the period 1985–2024, based on the institutional and political constraints of cabinet appointments. Given that the president has moderate legislative powers, nominations are used to build majorities capable of approving government initiatives and preventing the opposition from censuring ministers in Parliament. As the political system operates based on the logic of the party government model, the article explores the consequences of its application by analyzing the behavior of the ruling party’s caucus in a sample of ministerial interpellations conducted in Parliament. Methodology: The research is a case study based on statistical analysis of original data. The main hypothesis considers four independent variables (size of the president’s legislative contingent, party cohesion, type of government, and evolution of the government period) and a series of control variables. Conclusions: The study confirms that Uruguayan presidents make strategic use of ministerial appointments, based on the assumption that the relationship between powers functions as a typical party government model, similar to that observed in parliamentary regimes. Presidents appoint high- ranking partisan ministers when they have support in Parliament and the party is strongly cohesive. They appoint mid- and low-ranking partisan ministers when the president forms coalitions and when the party is less cohesive. Finally, they prefer new or discreet partisan ministers when the president loses his coalition or during the last years of the mandate. Originality: It analyzes the appointment of ministers in Uruguay under a presidential system that, despite not having excessive legislative powers, resembles the typical party government model of parliamentary regimes.

Policy construction of the Constitution of the Republic Indonesia political system rergarding the implementation of the president's prerogative in the appointment of ministers in the era of Joko Widodo administration

Policy construction of the Constitution of the Republic Indonesia political system rergarding the implementation of the president's prerogative in the appointment of ministers in the era of Joko Widodo administration

Representative democracy and cabinet selection: The determinants of ministerial appointment in territorial government

AbstractIn Westminster parliamentary democracies like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, research has found that cabinet composition is driven mainly by longstanding norms and practices that privilege older, white males with certain educational and political experiences. Do these trends apply at the subnational level where the demographic make‐up can be quite different? To answer this question, we draw upon an original dataset of all members of the legislative assembly and cabinet in three Canadian territories from 1979 to 2022. These territories are unique given that Indigenous communities loom large in their governments and societies. Using an event history model, we find that territorial cabinets very much reflect the demographic make up of their legislatures, similar to what occurs at the federal level. We also observe important differences between the territories, which suggest that the influence of Westminster structures and norms are likely mediated by factors unique to each territory.

Technocrat or partisan cabinet ministers: Does it make a difference? Evidence from an endorsement experiment with the bureaucracy

AbstractThis article analyses how high‐level bureaucrats evaluate the leadership of technocrat and partisan cabinet ministers in different roles of policymaking. The argument is that bureaucrats perceive ministers with policy expertise to have a central role in policymaking, especially in policy‐directing tasks. Despite their essential contribution to coalition formation, ministers with political experience are negatively evaluated in all policymaking roles. The article presents evidence based on an endorsement experiment conducted with the high‐level bureaucracy in Brazil. The results show that ministers with policy experience receive positive evaluations from the bureaucracy in policy formulation and implementation roles but not to carry out political coordination activities with the presidency or the legislature. Ministers with a partisan profile receive negative evaluations in all tasks of the policy process. Exploring the mechanism, we show that the negative assessment of ministers with a partisan profile is maintained even when the profile of the bureaucrat is considered. These results show the negative attitudes of high‐level bureaucrats towards partisan ministers in contexts of substantial patronage and corruption and contribute to the debate on ministerial appointments and their implications for policymaking.

Disregarding the Constitutional Court Decision Concerning the Prohibition of Concurrent Deputy Minister Positions

The presence of the deputy minister position in the Indonesian government system has been a constitutional issue, both in its appointment and the issue of the prohibition of holding multiple positions. This article discusses Constitutional Court Decision Number 80/PUU-XVII/2019, which provides clarity on the constitutionality of the appointment of deputy ministers and the prohibition of holding multiple positions, including as commissioners or directors in state-owned or private companies. Despite this decision, the analysis indicates that the prohibition of holding multiple positions for deputy ministers is still disregarded, as some deputy ministers currently serve as Commissioners in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). This research uses a normative approach by analyzing secondary data. The result is that the Constitution is ignored because the Constitutional Court Decision regarding the prohibition of holding multiple positions for deputy ministers is not implemented. To address this non-compliance, if deputy ministers continue to hold positions as commissioners, the President should be able to dismiss them based on the State Ministry Law and Constitutional Court Decision, and impose sanctions in the form of an obligation to compensate the state’s financial loss incurred during the concurrent positions.

The Shifting of the President Prerogative Powers in the Presidential System Post Amendment to the UUD 1945 in Indonesia

Objective: To look for a shift in presidential power from the development of the constitution and constitutional practices in Indonesia. After the amendments to the 1945 Constitution were made, there was almost no authority the President could exercise alone without seeking approval or consideration from other institutions, except for the appointment of ministers. The research aims to determine the factors that cause the President's Prerogative Powers to be inconsistent with the ideal conception of the Indonesian constitutional system. Since the beginning of Indonesian independence, the constitution has placed the prerogative rights of the president very dominantly, now after very fundamental changes to the constitution it also has implications for shifting the prerogative power of the president. Method: The research used juridical-normative. The approaches used in this research are the Legislative Approach, Conceptual Approach, and Historical Approach. Results: In a presidential system, the president has absolute authority in appointing ministers, although in practice the president is also closely tied to supporting parties or other parties who have made political commitments to the president. In the 1945 Constitution after the amendment, there is no longer anything that is truly a prerogative power of the president that can be exercised without obtaining approval or consideration, especially from the People's Representative Council as the people's representative institution. Conclusion: Prerogative power also has an undemocratic and potentially dangerous tendency, so to increase public accountability, the use of prerogative power by the President must apply power by involving institutions as representatives of the people.

Exploring the Causes of Technocratic Minister Appointments in Europe

In the last decade, the appointment of technocratic ministers has become more common than ever before in Europe. Yet, scholarly attention has mostly focused on the economic determinants that lead to the appointment of such political outsiders in governments. In contrast, political determinants have not been fully examined. This article aims to investigate the role of economic determinants, as well as institutional factors (e.g. electoral system), party-system characteristics (e.g. volatility, polarization) and cabinet-related factors (e.g. intra-cabinet heterogeneity, the strength of populist parties within the government). Using a novel data set comprising data for more than 7000 ministers, including around 900 technocrats, our analysis shows that the share of populist parties within the cabinets has the strongest effect on the likelihood of appointing technocrats in national government. However, institutional-level variables appear to have no effect on the levels of technocratic appointments.

‘Is this an opportunity to reset the relationship with the sector or a stepping-stone to higher Ministerial appointment?’

David Wright, ambassador for Paint Pots Nurseries, responds to the appointment of David Johnston as the Department for Education's children's minister at the end of the summer, the eighth person to hold this post within five years.

Who Runs Public Administration? A Longitudinal Study of Technocratic Ministerial Appointments in Post-Communist Romania (1991–2021)

Starting from the traditional public administration dichotomy ‘power versus knowledge’, concerned with the cleavage between politicians and bureaucrats, this paper’s main purpose is to reframe a classic theoretical model, by placing the spotlight on a new, under-conceptualized public sector actor: the technocrat. Second, the paper performs empirical research starting from an own-build comprehensive database that includes all the ministers appointed in the Romanian Government during a 30-year timeframe (October 1991-November 2021). In spite of being a rather young democracy with a communist public sector legacy, research findings indicate that in Romania we can clearly identify patterns similar to other European countries (primarily Italy), consisting of appointing technocrats to the cabinet. Such nominations are discussed in correlation with the advancements of new theories of democracy and public administration, imprinted with Neoliberalism, New Public Management, and Good Governance paradigms.

III. György és Lord Bute szerepe a Pitt–Newcastle koalíciós kormány felbomlásában

The resignation of William Pitt the Elder in October 1761 and that of the Duke of Newcastle in May 1762 had serious consequences: Britain became diplomatically isolated after losing its only ally, Prussia, while in domestic affairs a period of utter instability started, which did not come to an end until 1770. The inexperienced new ruler, George III (1760-1820) had a lot to do with all this. He detested the ministers he inherited and he adored his former tutor, Lord Bute. The study describes the process that led to the breakup of the Pitt-Newcastle coalition government, one of the most successful administrations of the early modern period, which won the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) for Britain. It explains why the young king was unable to trust the politicians he inherited, why he insisted on making Lord Bute Secretary of State, and what other factors resulted in the serious political and social instability of the 1760s. George III did not act unconstitutionally when he dismissed some of the members of the Whig oligarchy and chose new ministers. Nevertheless, he had to face the serious consequences of his decisions. The ministerial appointment of Lord Bute – who was Scottish, a personal confidant of the king and by no means a prominent politician – was an affront to the political class. The disgruntled Whig politicians were determined to discredit the new government and they were able to take advantage of the difficulties that emerged at the end and after the Seven Years’ War.

Informal Power and Short-Term Consequences: Country Presidents and Political Parties in Romania

Country presidents and their political parties have strong connections along partisan lines. However, it remains unclear how this relationship unfolds when country presidents have to be non-partisans and formal ties are not permitted. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature and analyzes how country presidents use informal powers to maintain an influence in the life of their (former) political parties. We use Romania as the most likely case where we would expect such powers to occur and matter, because the country’s constitution bans the country’s president from being a party member once they are elected to public office. We compare the behaviour of the two Romanian country presidents who have each served two complete consecutive terms in office in the post-communist period. Our analysis covers the 2004–2022 period and focuses on the following four dimensions: electing successors, prime ministerial appointments, inclusion in coalition agreements and parties’ electoral performance.

Rząd a parlament w III Republice Francuskiej (do I wojny światowej)

The omnipotence of the parliament in the. Third Republic came about to counteract the constitutional division of authority into the legislative and executive one, and therefore could not be free from hence ensuing contradictions. This tendency was reflected by the attempts to furnish the parliament with powers relating not only to the appointment of ministers and undersecretaries (and thus to manifest its supervision over the government) but also to dissolving ministries and transfering the competence from some to others (this pertained to the very organization of the government). Thus the parliament attempted to abolish the main attribute of the executive, i. e. the right to decide about its interior organization, somas it is the case with the regulation of inner activities of the legislature (the regulations of the houses). The standpoint of the parliament resulted in such an arrangement that actually the ministries were set up and their competence determined by the president, under the political supervision of the parliament and on the condition that respective credits had been granted. The exponents of the doctrine acknowledged the right of the executive to determine about its own functions and offices, even though the praxis had no legislative background. The former right was even recognized as constitutional, since the head of the state was the main executive of the resolutions, and in consequence the competence to organize the executive, i. e. respective offices and to divide competence among them, lay with him.Moreover, in spite of the parliament’s supremacy over the government, the resolutions of the former did not predominate the governmental legislation in the form of the president’s decrees. The latter were actually adopted by ministers during the Council, or outside and independently, and next submitted to the head of the state to be signed. For, apart from the decrees which were to carry out the resolutions, there also existed independent decrees — the remnants of the government legislation (domaine règlementaire), which dated back to the limited monarchy and the traditional, horizontal division of legislature, not the vertical one, put forward by Carré de Malberg. Without any constitutional foundations and oposition on the part of the doctrine the custom of the legislative activity of the president was continued into the Third Republic, although he was provided with no legislative commission whatsoever, either explicit or implicit. The said legislative activities related mainly to the administration of colonies, the order, security, structure and functioning of the public administration — hence the autonomic decisions of the government regarding the ministries. Finally, the president — ’’the civil servant” — though effaced by the parliament, in the doctrinal terms was the ’’only agent of the state” and from time to time he could again play the role of the main political, executive leader, thwart the plans of the candidates for the office of the president of the Council of Ministers, affect the ministerial nominations, play a real part in foreign policy. The mentioned facts indicate that within the said parliamentary system of the political accountability of the French government there were certain elements, or even a trend of the balanced parliamentarianism, where the activities of the government became detached from the parliament, and the former could be autonomous in organizational, legislative and even political terms. However the trend was manifested in legal-organizational sphere rather than in the political one. Consequently there was a political domination of the houses over the executive. Nevertheless the discussed trend gained permanent supporters (so as the case was with the parliamentary absolutism) who considered the executive to account for the actual, natural and primary life of the country and opposed the former being dominated by the legislature.

The silent constitution: the presidency of Republic between constitutional provisions and actual powers

ABSTRACT The living constitution was considerably transformed in the delicate and lengthy transition between the First and Second Italian Republics. These changes have also concerned the role and functions of the president of the Republic. In the last three legislatures, there has been much use of the renowned metaphor of the accordion of presidential power, which expands and contracts according to the role played by the parties in the political system. For although the Constitution has remained unchanged, this period has seen two important ‘exceptional’ responses by presidents to serious political crises: first, the appointment of prime ministers from outside of Parliament and the parties, the so-called governments of the president; and second, the second terms of Giorgio Napolitano in April 2013 and Sergio Mattarella in January 2022. But is this extreme expansion of the accordion really sufficient to demonstrate that we have stronger presidencies? An in-depth analysis of Napolitano’s and Mattarella’s responses to the critical junctures in the political system in fact paints a more complex picture. This article is divided into four parts. The first part analyses the two ‘longest presidencies’ from the perspective of the presidentialisation of the political system. The second outlines the key critical phases of Napolitano’s and Mattarella’s periods in office, with a focus on their ‘governing’ function, as permitted by the silent constitution. The third focuses on the dynamics of the second elections. Finally, the fourth highlights the most significant transformations within the silent constitution over this period.

„Gabinet cieni” w westminsterskim systemie rządów

The „shadow cabinet” appointed by the largest opposition party in the House of Commons is an integral part of the Westminster system of government. The practice of its creation originated in the UK in the second half of the 19th century, where it underwent a significant evolution linked to the coordination of the opposition’s strategy enabling it to become a government cabinet, as well as to the official recognition of the position of opposition party leader, who since 1937 has received a fixed salary. The modern and at the same time permanent appointment of shadow ministers who are at the same time spokespersons of the opposition on specific ministerial issues dates back to the long Conservative Party governments (1951–1964) against which the Labour Party formulated an official „shadow cabinet”. The aim of this article was to show the genesis of the „shadow cabinet”, to define its tasks and functions in the Westminster model of parliamentary-cabinet government.

Voters’ perceptions and evaluations of dynastic politics in Japan

Political family dynasties are a staple part of Japanese politics. According to one study, Japan has the fourth highest number of dynastic politicians among democratic countries, after Thailand, the Philippines, and Iceland. As a result, many scholars have qualitatively studied how these political families are born and managed. In contrast to the wealth of qualitative studies on this subject, however, few quantitative studies on Japanese political dynasties focus on how voters view them. To understand this question, we conducted two nation-wide surveys. Our major findings are that while the majority of respondents dislike dynastic candidates, they also value certain attributes of those candidates, such as their political networks, their potential for ministerial appointments, and their ability to bring pork projects to their constituencies. These results fill a gap in benchmark information on dynastic politics in Japan and are a departure from existing studies that show Japanese voters are neutral regarding whether a candidate is from a dynastic family in voting decisions.

The intra-party bargain over ministerial appointments: how party leader performance affects the ‘partyness’ of government

In parliamentary democracies, the logic of delegation from voters to government requires that political parties control government actions. Recruiting government personnel through the party organisation is the primary mechanism for parties to retain such a dominance over the government. Existing research has examined secular trends and cross-sectional variance in ministers’ party ties, mostly focussing on appointments of party members to government office. By contrast, this article centres on the appointment of members of the party elite as a yardstick for party control over government. It explores short-term variance in the ‘partyness’ of appointments, arguing that performance-related shifts in the intra-party power balance condition party elites’ access to ministerial office. Utilising data on ministerial appointments in Austria (1945–2017; n = 603), the article demonstrates that successful party leaders can relax party control by minimising appointments of party elite members, while relatively unsuccessful leaders have to compensate party elites with government jobs.

Gendering Coalitional Presidentialism in Brazil

Coalitional presidentialism is a power-sharing strategy deployed in multiparty presidentialist democracies that entails the distribution of cabinet positions to coalition partners to facilitate governability. This model of governance is increasingly common worldwide, gaining growing scholarly interest. The consequences of coalitional presidentialism for women’s cabinet representation, however, have received scant attention. In this article, we provide a gendered analysis of the Brazilian experience with coalitional presidentialism. Through the quantitative analysis of an original dataset of all ministerial appointments ( N = 597) under eight Brazilian presidents (1985–2019) and a descriptive assessment of the coalitional dynamics during that period, we evaluate the Brazilian experience with coalitional presidentialism through the lens of Feminist Institutionalism. We show that coalitional presidentialism restricts women's access to cabinet seats, with the demands of multiparty coalition formation and management often overriding presidential considerations about descriptive representation, and coalition parties rarely advancing women to fill portfolios allocated to them by the president.

SOMALIA: Prime Minister Appointed

SOMALIA: Prime Minister Appointed

Regional Ambassadors or State Agents? Assessing the Role of Catalan Cabinet Ministers in Spain

AbstractThis study focuses on Catalan cabinet ministers in democratic Spain with a view to understanding what function they perform in the central government: regional ambassador or state agent? To this end, this analysis draws on a sub-dataset comprised of 22 Catalan cabinet ministers taken from a general pool of 220 cabinet ministers and 371 ministerial appointments from 1977 to 2021. Our findings demonstrate, first, that no Catalan cabinet minister has ever reached the position of Prime Minister and Catalans constitute a kind of ministerial “middle class” occupying intermediate positions in the cabinet. Second, the examination of career paths and publications of Catalan ministers shows that their role varied according to circumstances. Third, in this article we argue that those variations can be best interpreted as a delegation between principal and agent relying on two main variables, namely the type of party they belong to in Catalonia and the parliamentarian majority sustaining the party controlling the Spanish cabinet.

Pediatric Surgical Care During the COVID-19 Lockdown: What Has Changed and Future Perspectives for Restarting in Italy. The Point of View of the Italian Society of Pediatric Surgery.

Background:The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) time exacerbated some of the conditions already considered critical in pediatric health assistance before the pandemic. A new form of pediatric social abandonment has arisen leading to diagnostic delays in surgical disorders and a lack of support for the chronic ones. Health services were interrupted and ministerial appointments for pediatric surgical healthcare reprogramming were postponed. As a result, any determination to regulate the term “pediatric” specificity was lost. The aim is, while facing the critical issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, to rebuild future perspectives of pediatric surgical care in Italy.MethodsEach Pediatric Society, including the Italian Society of Pediatric Surgery (SICP), was asked by the Italian Federation of Pediatric Associations and Scientific Societies to fill a questionnaire, including the following the main issues: evaluation of pre-pandemic criticalities, pediatric care during the pandemic and recovery, and current criticalities. The future care model of our specialty was analyzed in the second part of the questionnaire.ResultsChildren are seriously penalized both for surgical treatment as well as for the diagnostic component. In most centers, the pediatric surgical teams have been integrated with the adult ones and the specificity of training the pediatric operating nursing is in danger of survival. “Emotional” management of the child is not considered by the general management and the child has become again an adults patient of reduced size.ConclusionA new functional pediatric surgical model needs to be established in general hospitals, including activities for day surgery and outpatient surgery. To support the care of the fragile child, a national health plan for the pediatric surgery is required.