Cabinet Ministers Research Articles

Cabinet ministers and inequality

AbstractScholars and commentators increasingly wonder whether governments’ failure to address socio‐economic inequalities is the result of unequal representation. Recent literature on policy responsiveness in the United States and Europe finds evidence that party and parliamentary policy proposals and actual policy outcomes are closer to the preferences of the rich than of the poor. However, the extent and character of such unequal representation remains thinly understood. Among the most thinly understoodmechanismsare the political conditions that link socio‐economic inequalities to unequal representation. This paper thickens our understanding of (unequal) representation by investigating the class composition of parliamentary cabinets and its effect on social welfare policy. With the aid of a new dataset on cabinet ministers’ social class, the paper shows that responsiveness to the social welfare preferences of poorer voters varies by cabinet ministers’ professional backgrounds, above and beyond the partisan orientation of the government.

Policy interactions during the Dutch ‘Public Health Foresight, in the light of COVID-19'

When the sense of urgency of the COVID pandemic increased, in March 2020, the Dutch Ministry of Health commissioned RIVM to do the study “Public Health Foresight, in the light of COVID-19”. The aim of this study was to analyze Impact of the corona pandemic on current and future health and health care, to support broader consideration of measures and to be better prepared in the future. This was done by addressing not only the direct impacts, e.g. the disease burden of COVID-19, but also the indirect impacts of the measures, e.g. mental health, health impacts of changed life styles and delayed health care provision. During this 8 months trajectory, interaction with policy makers was frequent and intensive. In the context of Parliamentary elections there were constant pressures on policymakers from the virologists and hospital and ICU ward managers; as well as non-health Ministers in the government cabinet and the general public questioning decisions on whether to act or not. In the presentation we draw implications for public health experts on do's and don'ts in interaction with policymakers.

Why Change a Winning Team? Explaining Post-Election Cabinet Reshuffles in Four Westminster Democracies

Incumbent prime ministers who win re-election often reshuffle their cabinet ministers. These post-election cabinet reshuffles have important implications for policymaking and present a puzzle: why would prime ministers alter the ‘winning team’ that has just received an electoral mandate? Existing literature has largely overlooked post-election reshuffles, so offers few compelling answers. At most, a plausible but under-theorised and untested conventional wisdom suggests that electoral success increases prime ministers’ authority over their ministers. This article thus provides the first systematic study of post-election cabinet reshuffles in single-party governments. It argues that re-elected prime ministers use a temporary increase in their authority to pre-empt future leadership challenges by moving or sacking cabinet rivals. Larger election victories should thus produce larger reshuffles. However, analysis of post-election cabinet reshuffles in four ‘Westminster’ democracies since 1945 shows no support for this expectation, suggesting that further work is needed to understand these important political events.

Encounter in Umbugland: A Political Intrigue

Encounter in Umbugland is essentially a political play. It unveils the essential nature of the game of politics and also the basic craving for power in human nature. The play unravels the treacherous political intrigues designed to attain positions of authority and the corruption and hypocricy involved in holding on to them. The cabinet ministers make princess Vijaya the queen of Umbugland to use her as their pawn, but their anticipations were belied by her diplomacy and autocracy. This strife for power launches them on an encounter. And the play is interspersed with the shrewd comments on the nature of politics and on that of politicians, Prannarayan, a man of third sex.

Cabinet ministers and the use of agenda‐setting power: Evidence from cabinet ministers in Israel

AbstractCabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies have significant agenda‐setting power. However, not all ministers use it equally. This paper examines what affects the ministers' use of their agenda‐setting power. It explores this question based on the case of Israel, using three measures of agenda change and in‐depth interviews with former ministers. The paper finds that limited agenda capacity constrains the ministers' agenda‐setting power. However, the ministers themselves do not see this as a significant constraint and point at motivation instead. Ministers holding a portfolio that is salient to their party are not likely to change the agenda more. Ministers from small parties change the agenda less, and so do ministers in ministries where a significant proportion of services are provided by street level bureaucrats. Ministers in ministries that are seen as more salient change the agenda more. These findings are consequential for understanding policy responsiveness and proportionality in policy response.

4 - ‘The State of the Continent is Good’: African ‘Foreigners’ and Foreign Direct Investment, Seen from Subimperial South Africa


 
 
 African elites’ perpetual hope for export-led growth based on primary commodity extraction continues to suffer from harsh economic, political and now also climatic and public-health realities. Among the contradictions, COVID-19’s economic lockdown amplified two of the most difficult aspects of South Africa’s regional and inter-ethnic relations: increased working-class desperation as township economies suffered the most from the pandemic, and the inability to send remittances back home. Although new dimensions emerged during 2020 – e.g., mass social-media trolling, Cabinet ministers’ biases translated into legislation, and protests at African countries’ Pretoria embassies – there were indications well before COVID-19 that local hostility to the continent’s people would ratchet up, just as Cyril Ramaphosa took the African Union chair. Xenophobic upsurges regularly witnessed in Johannesburg suggest that this ongoing melting pot of African entrepreneurs suffers some of the continent’s most extreme political-economic contradictions. However, there are antidotes to top-down neoliberalism still emanating from the African Development Bank and World Economic Forum- Africa, some of which are potentially progressive, including unprecedented anti-authoritarian protests in at least 18 countries. But the first step is recognising just how much the official rhetoric, even from organic African elite sources, departs from reality.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Patrick Bond, Professor, University of the Western Cape School of Government, Cape Town. Email: pbond@mail.ngo.z
 
 

Towards Building a Functional Whole-of-Government Monitoring and Evaluation System for Zambia: The Demand Side

Every monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system is comprised of two sides—the supply side and the demand side. This study focused on the demand side of Zambia’s whole-of-government M&E system (WoGM&ES). It investigated the gaps that characterised the public sector system for M&E and proposed a new model for improving the demand side. Primary and secondary sources were used to collect data for the study. Questionnaires and interview guides are the instruments employed to collect information. Essentially, Zambia’s WoGM&ES was found to be very weak on the demand side. The system lacked a unified arrangement for demanding and utilising M&E information. Government and non-government structures and institutions such as the presidency, parliament, line ministries, civil society, the academia and cooperating partners remained fragmented and uncoordinated in the manner they demanded for M&E information to feed into their internal development processes. The general public too had no clear means of engaging the public sector on development issues that affected them. In many cases, M&E reports were not in the reach of the public, making it difficult to engage. More so, political championship at the level of the Presidency and Cabinet ministers as well as at several technical levels across the public sector lacked in Zambia. To address the gaps, this paper is a proposed blueprint for consideration by the Government of Zambia. The model proposes that Government implements the following to build and sustain the demand side: transform the Presidency and top government positions (political and technical) into M&E champions; promote the use of M&E information by the Presidency; link M&E to planning, budgeting and policy processes; promote the use of M&E information by parliament, civil society, academia, media and donors. Decentralised structures of government as well as the general public will also need to be stimulated on the acquisition and use of M&E information. Equally, Government would need to incentivise the strategic users of M&E information across the country. Another similar study has been conducted on the supply side of Zambia’s WoGM&ES. Evidence on both sides will be useful for building and sustaining Zambia’s WoGM&ES going forward!

Editorial note

We argue in the present article that cumulatively over time, inexorable as it is, like change with the evolvement of time, perceptions and values remain immutable to the demands of the day in any society, wittingly or unwittingly. The hearty professor of Political Science from the University of Zimbabwe and former Cabinet Minister in the late former President R G Mugabe’s reign, Professor Jonathan Moyo once remarked: ‘Only a fool does not change his mind’. Does anyone who does change their minds/perspectives answer to the call of wisdom or they actually buttress the foolishness therein ingrained in their life’s outlook/worldview, generally? What is there to gain or lose by adjusting perceptions, positions, persuasions, and strategies to be an active agent in the pursuit of life in its fullness? Is it a crime to shift perceptions in whatever area of one’s life? Is joy always the outcome? In any case, on what authority can one conclusively argue that life is only about the pursuit of happiness, for everyone?

Democratic Subversion: Elite Cooptation and Opposition Fragmentation

Incumbents in electoral regimes often retain power despite having to regularly compete in multiparty elections. We examine a specific channel through which incumbents can seek to prevent the emergence of a strong opposition that might threaten them in future elections. We present a formal model demonstrating that incumbents can strategically induce opposition fragmentation by appointing some opposition members to ministerial cabinet positions. Opposition politicians who have the opportunity to secure a cabinet position in an incumbent’s government tend to compete for office independently rather than coalescing into broad-based parties or electoral alliances. The model shows that weaker incumbents are more likely to rely on this cooptation strategy. Using original data on presidential elections across African countries during 1990–2016, we show that past cooptation of opposition politicians is associated with a more fragmented opposition field in subsequent elections.

The Closed Door: A Democratic Problem in the Post‐Political Careers of Cabinet Ministers

At the end of their political career, some politicians pass through ‘a revolving door’, while others face ‘a closed door’, in the sense that they have difficulty finding a job after their incumbency. Based on in‐depth interviews with 15 Danish ex‐ministers, this study shows how a minister's specialized skills, knowledge and networks related to the decision‐making processes of government are considered by the ministers themselves to be important contextual factors that can lead to a revolving‐door scenario for an ex‐minister. Conversely, political profiling and a negative celebrity effect are key mechanisms that are considered to lead to a closed‐door career outcome for ex‐ministers. This closed door career outcome may discourage people from seeking a political career in the first place, and it may result in politicians continuing in politics after having lost the motivation that originally inspired their political career. Thus, the closed door phenomenon constitutes a potential democratic problem, knowledge of which is therefore an important addition to our knowledge on the democratic problems linked to the exit side of political careers.

Feigned resignation as political strategy: cracking the mysterious case of Phibunsongkhram’s reversal of resignation in 1943

ABSTRACT On 12 February 1943, Field Marshal Phibunsongkhram (Phibun), Thailand’s prime minister, handed a formal letter of resignation to the Council of Regency. The news of the prime minister’s sudden departure shocked the two regents and other cabinet ministers. Nevertheless, when public radio broadcasters announced the news of the premier’s resignation, Phibun retracted the resignation decision and sought to avenge those who drove him from office. Why did he resign and then reverse the decision? How can such confusing and irrational behaviours be explained when they remain a mystery even to historians? This article claims that Phibun engaged in a ‘feigned resignation strategy’, whereby he pretended to resign to see the reactions of different political factions and to test political loyalty. This article traces his pattern of feigned resignations from 1939 to 1944 to prove how he mastered such a strategy. Archival records indicate that he frequently informed his associates that he wished to resign from office but then eventually reversed his decision. Drawing from the concept of feigned resignation strategy, this article argues that the resignation in February 1943 stemmed from Phibun’s motive to identify and root out political opponents.

A media visibility analysis of public leadership in Scandinavian responses to pandemics

This paper analyses public leadership in Scandinavia during the latest two pandemics, the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, by compiling and contrasting national proxies of media visibility among pandemic response actors. Concretely, the paper taps into key media databases to develop indicators of how often national leaders and leading health experts are mentioned in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish media reports about the 2009 and 2020 pandemics. The study reveals a high degree of continuity of public leadership in Sweden during the two pandemics. In contrast, Norway and in particular Denmark both moved from a predominately expert-driven media presence in 2009 to a much stronger top-down ministerial leadership presence during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. In addition, Sweden also displays the most balanced media representation of health experts and cabinet ministers during both pandemics. The paper concludes by discussing the pros and cons of the outlined differences in public leadership and the possible practical implications with regards public debate and trust.

Dynamic network analysis of contact diaries

Analyzing two-mode networks linking actors to events they attend may help to uncover the structure and evolution of social networks. This classic social network insight is particularly valuable in the analysis of data extracted from contact diaries where contact events produce — and at the same time are the product of relations among participants. Contact events may comprise any number of actors meeting at a specific point in time. In this paper we recall the correspondence between two-mode actor–event networks and hypergraphs, and propose relational hyperevent models (RHEM) as a general modeling framework for networks of time-stamped multi-actor events in which the diarist (“ego”) simultaneously meets several of her alters. RHEM can estimate event intensities associated with each possible subset of actors that may jointly participate in events, and test network effects that may be of theoretical or empirical interest. Examples of such effects include preferential attachment, prior shared activity (familiarity), closure, and covariate effects explaining the propensity of actors to co-attend events. Statistical tests of these effects can uncover processes that govern the formation and evolution of informal groups among the diarist’s alters. We illustrate the empirical value of RHEM using data comprising almost 2000 meeting events of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with her cabinet ministers, transcribed from contact diaries covering her first term in office (1979–1983).

“The President's Prerogative”? The Cabinet Appointment Process in Ghana and the Implications for Gender Parity

AbstractThis article seeks to understand why Ghana, unlike several other African countries, has seen relatively few women appointed as ministers to the cabinet since the transition to democracy. We draw on Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet's 2019 bookCabinets,Ministers and Gender, which provides an in-depth analysis of the cabinet appointment process in seven democracies (but no African cases) and demonstrates that the cabinet appointment process is gendered—that is, men and women have different (and unequal) opportunities to be appointed as cabinet ministers. This article covers Ghana's Fourth Republic, during which women's presence in cabinets has increased slowly but steadily. We rely on media reports from five recent presidential administrations and semistructured, in-depth interviews with selected informants, as well as other primary and secondary sources. We find that while Ghana has a fairly empowered president who could appoint a gender parity cabinet, the formal and informal rules governing the selection of cabinet ministers—for example, those related to regional balance and “minister MPs”—work against more women in the cabinet.

Parliamentary Positions and Politicians’ Private Sector Earnings: Evidence from the UK House of Commons

Most democracies allow their members of parliament to concurrently be employed in the private sector. A widespread worry is that politicians leverage their current or past posts within parliament, for example, as ministers or committee chairs, to gain lucrative jobs. However, we know little about whether “moonlighting” income is indeed driven by these positions. I analyze comprehensive new panel data on the private sector earnings of all members of the UK House of Commons during 2010–16. Focusing on within-legislator variation, I find that currently holding an influential position does not cause an increase in income from outside jobs. Politicians do see higher earnings soon after leaving their parliamentary posts, but this effect is concentrated among cabinet ministers. The article advances the literature by identifying which political posts lead to financial benefits in the private sector—and when.

The Canberra Bubble

The Canberra Bubble

Prime ministers in minority governments: the case of Hungary

ABSTRACT Whereas early scholarship depicted minority cabinets as weak recent findings demonstrate how various factors contribute to effective minority governance. Nevertheless, the role of prime ministers (PMs) was largely ignored in the performance of these cabinets. The paper addresses this problem by comparing Hungary's only two minority governments in an MSSD framework. Combining a qualitative review with a quantitative analysis of voting patterns in Parliament, it argues that differences in aforementioned cabinets’ policy performance can be traced back to contrasting ideological position of PMs and subsequent ideological moderation. These findings have important implications for minority governments in majoritarian and polarised contexts.

Stability of minority governments and the role of support agreements

How does the minority status of a government influence cabinet duration? This article analyzes the influence of minority status on cabinet duration by differentiating between different types of minority governments. Minority governments are not in general less stable than majority ones but different types of minority governments have different effects on cabinet duration. The main theoretical argument is that substantive minority governments without support agreements are less stable than majority governments, while contract minority governments that rely on written support agreements with non-cabinet parties which secure majority support in parliament are as stable as majority ones. Drawing on survival analysis, the effect of different minority cabinet types on cabinet stability is tested for 471 cabinets in 30 countries from 1977 until 2019. The results show that only minority governments without support partnerships have a substantially higher risk of early government termination than majority cabinets. The findings of this analysis have important implications for the coalition theory and the evaluation of minority governments.

Small in Size but Powerful in Parliament? The Legislative Performance of Minority Governments

Minority cabinets do not control a legislative majority and are thus vulnerable to parliamentary defeat. Consequently, the legislative performance of minority cabinets has been often brought into question. In this article, I argue that minority cabinets do not perform generally worse than majority cabinets. I hypothesize that only substantive minority cabinets which do not enjoy formal majority support by noncabinet parties work significantly worse than majority ones. The empirical analysis is based on a large new dataset that combines original information on minority‐cabinet attributes and legislative data for 197 governments in 21 parliamentary democracies since the 1980s. The results of a fractional logit analysis support my theoretical expectations and show that not all types of minority cabinets perform worse than majority governments. My findings provide a comparative insight into the functioning of minority governments and have important implications for our understanding of legislative politics, party competition, and policymaking.

Environmental nationalist: Andrew McNaughton and Canada–US relations in the Cold War

Prior to 1945, General Andrew George Latta McNaughton had already made a name for himself as an army general, engineer, inventor, and cabinet minister. After 1945, McNaughton occupied a number of key international roles for Canada: at the United Nations, on the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, and on the International Joint Commission. Even though he became one of Canada’s most important diplomatic actors during the early Cold War period, this aspect of his career has been mostly ignored by international historians. This article examines McNaughton’s key involvement in the evolution of a number of Canada–US water megaprojects, arguing that his nationalism underpinned his approach to bilateral relations, which combined deep technical expertise with a willingness to publicly assert the Canadian national interest. McNaughton’s approach should be studied not only to better understand North American environmental diplomacy in the Cold War but also to draw from it several lessons for contemporary times.