Ministerial Selection Research Articles

Why do Parties Select Non-Partisan Ministers? The Paradox of Ministerial Selection in Austria

ABSTRACT This article seeks to contribute to the bourgeoning debate about technocratic, non-political and non-partisan ministers in party government regimes. At the centre of this study is the identification and analysis of a major paradox – a sizeable number and share of non-partisan ministers operating at the core of an otherwise exceptionally party-centered regime, the Second Austrian Republic, which has widely been considered to mark the epitome of the party state in Europe. The discussion of this phenomenon highlights the importance of particular strategic considerations among political decision-makers that have been largely ignored in the extant literature on ministerial selection and de-selection. We argue that in contexts marked by advanced levels of anti-party sentiment, non-partisan ministers can bring major benefit to the government in terms of legitimacy, popularity and support, and at a rather low cost or risk. As they tend to have few if any party resources of their own, non-partisan ministers can be easily removed whenever deemed politically expedient.

The Territorial Dimension of Ministerial Selection in Spain: Constrained Consociationalism under Majoritarian Cabinets

Although frequently depicted as a purely majoritarian system, the recruitment of executive elites in Spain is said to incorporate unofficial ‘quotas’ allowing the representation of territorial minorities. But does the selection of cabinet ministers in Spain produce consociational-like effects? This study aims to answer this question through a statistical model based on an original dataset of 223 cabinet ministers and 375 appointments from 1977 to 2021. It is demonstrated that territorial selection depends on three main variables: the regional educational level, the marginalization of plurilingual autonomous communities and the exclusion of ethno-regionalist parties at the Congress. Consequently, our main hypothesis must be rejected. The main reason explaining the lack of the consociational ministerial recruitment phenomenon in Spain seems to rely on the behaviour of ethno-regionalist parties at the Congress. To avoid potential electoral losses, these actors have developed a strong preference for national policies favouring their own constituencies, rather than for ministerial positions within the Spanish cabinet.

It's a Long Way to the Top: Women's Ministerial Career Paths

AbstractMinisterial portfolios that promise high status, broad public visibility, and extensive financial and personnel resources continue to be men's domains. In this article, we shed light on gender inequality in ministerial selection processes by studying the duration from a minister's original appointment as a member of cabinet until he or she receives responsibility for a highly prestigious portfolio. We argue that the time it takes for ambitious politicians to prove themselves suitable for this type of cabinet position depends on their sex and the degree to which the policy area for which they are responsible reinforces stereotypical expectations about their personality traits. Empirical evidence from event history analysis of original data including detailed information on all ministerial careers in 27 European countries between 1990 to 2018 supports these propositions. These findings reveal that even highly qualified women politicians who are already members of the executive face additional barriers during their political careers.

Prime ministers, presidents and ministerial selection in Lithuania

ABSTRACT In the semi-presidential system of Lithuania, a tradition to elect non-partisan presidents coexists with re-occurring conflicts between prime ministers and presidents over cabinet composition. We investigate what factors increase the probability of presidential activism in this field, i.e. when the president attempts to affect ministerial selection. We explain the outcomes of such activism by the electoral cycles and the political weakness of prime ministers and their party governments. More specifically, we argue that prime ministers are most vulnerable to presidential activism right after presidential elections and when they do not enjoy strong support in parliament. We test these hypotheses with a data set chronicling all instances of competition between the prime ministers and presidents over ministerial selection. The quantitative analysis is supplemented with qualitative insights from interviews with former cabinet members and high-level officials.

Executive Particularism and Ministerial Selection in India

Why do political parties in parliamentary systems undertake actions, such as joining a coalition government, that will entail significant costs for their members in subsequent elections? Recent research points to the incentive structures faced by differentially positioned members of a parliamentary party: unlike backbenchers, MPs who hold a ministerial portfolio can use the prerequisites of executive office to shield themselves from the costs of governance. This article tests the theory of executive particularism by examining the electoral fortunes of government ministers in India. Sitting government ministers are found to outperform other candidates; however, tests of causality fail to demonstrate that holding a ministerial portfolio causes this electoral benefit. Instead, it appears that a candidate’s electoral performance enhances the likelihood of being granted a ministerial portfolio in the first place. This finding raises questions about the generalizability of claims that party elites can use ministerial office to shield themselves from the costs of governing.

Examining the appointment of women to ministerial positions across Europe: 1970–2015

Under which circumstances are women appointed to ministerial positions? In this article, I provide a theoretical framework for the role of gender in ministerial selection by considering the policy, office, and vote-seeking motivations of party leaders. I present an original data set which details, at the party level, the appointment of female cabinet ministers in 30 European countries between 1970 and 2015. Using negative binomial regression models, I find that left-wing party leaders appoint more women than leaders of right-wing parties. Female party leaders appoint more women ministers than their male counterparts. Women are better represented in governments in gender-progressive countries, and survey data analysis shows that party leaders appoint more women when their supporters have more progressive gender attitudes. This analysis provides an original insight into how gender has shaped the partisan dynamics of ministerial selection across Europe over 45 years.

A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era by April E. Holm

Reviewed by: A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era by April E. Holm Nathaniel Wiewora (bio) A Kingdom Divided: Evangelicals, Loyalty, and Sectionalism in the Civil War Era. By April E. Holm. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Pp. 288. Cloth, $47.50.) How does a religious group remain in the world, but not of the world? This question drives April Holm's study of the ways that evangelicals in the Border States negotiated the crises of the Civil War era. Examining the three largest evangelical denominations—Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians—she traces how these groups worked out the relationship between religion, morality, and politics in a contested region. Holm's main historical contribution is uncovering the way these Border evangelicals made it their business to avoid conflict by separating religion and politics. They fashioned a theology of spirituality and political neutrality that argued that politics had no place in the pulpit. This politics of spirituality, she argues, influenced actions before and during the war, and this desire to avoid conflict decisively shaped the evangelical landscape after the war. Evangelical Protestantism had exponential growth in the western part of the United States during the Second Great Awakening. Holm writes in a nuanced fashion about how the importance of the West in the evangelical imagination led to an intense period of institution building that left these three evangelical denominations strong but resulted in unexpected consequences. Border evangelicals began to conceive of themselves as [End Page 599] distinctive from eastern evangelicals, with different needs and separate institutions. The quick growth of evangelicalism in the west was also brittle, leaving evangelical churches vulnerable to fracture. As northern and southern churches increasingly associated with their region during the Secession Crisis, regional identification with the West broke down amongst Border evangelicals. These churches faced internal conflict over church property and ministerial selection. The discord in the years leading up to the Civil War primed evangelicals in the border region to create a theology of conflict avoidance in response to the ways that local disputes damaged congregations and disrupted worship. Holm finds that Border evangelicals blamed outsiders for these disputes. Border evangelicals believed the problem was that both of these groups tried to answer the question of what to do about slavery in theological terms, while they believed it was a fundamentally political question. Border evangelicals thus concluded debates over slavery were incompatible with preserving unity in the church. Border evangelicals conceived of their theology of spirituality and political neutrality as a morally superior choice, according to Holm. In one of the most fascinating parts of the book, she traces how Border evangelicals took this theology into the Civil War. Holm finds that many Border evangelicals rejected northern admonitions and requirements to show loyalty through patriotic sermons, displays of the U.S. flag in church buildings, and prayers for the victory of the Union Army. She sees their attempts to separate church from state as impossible. The choice to remain neutral was itself a political action that chose ecclesiastical unity over racial equality. Political neutrality also became untenable because of Union military victories and the pressure of these loyalty tests. Union officials transferred property from disloyal to loyal ministers, making it difficult to be a neutral worshipper. This theology of spirituality and political neutrality drove Border evangelicals away from the North in the postwar period as efforts to secure their loyalty broke down outside of the explicitly political realm. Northern evangelical churches sent missionaries to the South and to the Border States during and after the war to establish churches for both African Americans and white Americans. These missionaries preached that the Union victory was providential as they rebuilt churches, demanding a kind of spiritual loyalty. Holm underscores how Border [End Page 600] evangelicals found these efforts more infuriating than those imposed by secular authorities. Holm's final contribution is tracing the ways this theology of spirituality and political neutrality affected reunion and memory during the post-war period. Border evangelicals joined southern churches because they accused northern churches of mixing religion and politics through the promotion of abolition. Southern evangelical churches embraced Border evangelicals because they offered monetary and...

The logic of delegation and institutional contexts: Ministerial selection under mixed-member systems in Japan

How do electoral systems and legislative institutions modify the logic of delegation in ministerial selection processes? This study argues that candidate-centered electoral systems and bicameralism increase the risk of agency loss. I reveal how these two institutional contexts mediate party leaders’ strategies on the allocation of ministerial posts by analyzing Japan’s ministerial-selection data and survey-based ideal point estimates from 2003 to 2014. The empirical results indicate that, under the party-centered electoral systems of the lower house, individuals’ ideological proximity to the party leadership increases the probability of their joining a cabinet. However, party leaders allocate cabinet posts to ideological outliers in the upper house and also select MPs who are ideologically distant from the party leadership under the candidate-centered electoral systems in order to maintain party unity.

Entering the men's domain? Gender and portfolio allocation in European governments

AbstractWhile all government portfolios used to be the purview of men exclusively, more and more women are selected to sit around the cabinet table. But under which circumstances do women get appointed to different ministerial portfolios? This article, proposes a theoretical framework to consider how party leaders’ attitudes and motivations influence the allocation of portfolios to male and female ministers. These propositions are tested empirically by bringing together data on 7,005 cabinet appointments across 29 European countries from the late 1980s until 2014. Considering the key partisan dynamics of the ministerial selection process, it is found that women are significantly less likely to be appointed to the ‘core’ offices of state, and ‘masculine’ and ‘neutral’ policy areas. However, these gender differences are moderated by the ideology of the party that allocates them. Women are more likely to be appointed to ‘masculine’ portfolios when a party's voters have more progressive gender attitudes. This theoretical framework and analysis enhances our understanding of women's access to the government, which has important implications for how ministers are selected, as well as how women are represented in the most powerful policy‐making positions in Europe.

Changing patterns of ministerial circulation: the Italian case in a long-term perspective

The circulation of the ruling class has been a relevant concern in political analysis, but investigation of the determinants of a successful career still remains relatively neglected. This article aims at filling this interpretative gap by focusing on long-term transformations of ministerial careers in Italy. By using an original dataset on ministerial careers between 1976 and 2015, the article explains the patterns of intra-governmental career by analysing the selection for higher government offices. A first descriptive analysis leads to the formulation of a working proposition based on the increasing complexity of the patterns of governmental careers. In this context, the new role of the Prime Minister as a principal in the process of ministerial selection and other procedural constraints are discussed. An ordinal logistic regression analysis confirms the validity of such a general proposition, highlighting the relevance of personalisation and policy expertise in the evolution of intra-governmental careers.

Intra-party diversity and ministerial selection in coalition governments

This study focuses on the allocation of politicians to cabinet offices in different institutional settings. We argue that cabinet ministers are appointed with the aim of minimizing the policy distance to the most important principal, which could be the Prime Minister, the coalition, or the individual parties that form the coalition. We advance this field of research by performing a comparative analysis of different coalition systems. We evaluate our hypotheses by estimating the policy positions of Austrian, German and Swedish politicians on the basis of a computerized content analysis of their speeches given in parliament. The results provide support for our argument and show that the policy distance towards the dominant principal is important for becoming a cabinet member.

The electoral connection of ministerial selection in the UK

ABSTRACTMany studies have examined the determinants of ministerial selection. However, the effect of electoral incentives on government post allocation has so far not been studied in the literature. Drawing on data from the United Kingdom over the period 1992–2015, this article investigates the relationship between the selection of ministers and the electoral interests of the actors in this selection process – party leaders and members of parliament (MPs). The findings demonstrate that the greater the electoral safety of constituencies, the more likely are MPs to have a higher office. The results reveal a broader conception of party strategy in government formation than previously documented. The paper thus suggests that electorates can affect the allocation of ministerial positions in the UK.

The Logic of Party Governance and Ministerial Selection

The Logic of Party Governance and Ministerial Selection

From Ministries to Elective Offices: Partisan and Presidential Strategies to Candidates' Recruitment

This paper analyses ministerial experience as partisan and presidential strategies to foster political career of technocrats ministers under coalition government in Brazil widening the supply of candidates to electoral competition. Former technocrats ministers have become party members and have increased the candidates' supply for elective offices. This trend has challenged the current view of ministerial nomination of technocrats as a presidential strategy to overcome the politicization effects on executive performance. We explain this move as an alternative recruitment of new candidates for electoral competition. We explore the hypothesis that the likelihood of a technocrat minister to be a candidate Increases when they are informally linked with the party responsible for her nomination; they took part in policy communities related to ministerial jurisdiction; ministry is organized alongside to federative structures; if ministerial policies have distributive effects; the minister's visibility and his activism into parliamentary and executive settings; the salience of policy areas. This study explores news implications of coalition politics, focusing on the opportunities for candidate recruitment by ministerial selection.

The Logic of Ministerial Selection: Electoral System and Cabinet Appointments in Japan

Does the kind of electoral system affect the type of members of parliament appointed to the cabinet in a parliamentary system? The literature on electoral reform has investigated many political consequences of changing an electoral system, but whether appointments to cabinets change too has not been investigated. Conversely, there have been many analyses of cabinet selection but they have not investigated any linkage to the type of electoral system. One reason for this is the lack of theory concerning how electoral systems impact party strategies for ministerial appointments. We suggest that the intervening factor is how parties balance their competing goals of vote-seeking, office-seeking and policy-seeking. If cabinet appointments provide an arena where parties balance these three goals, then we should observe a change in this balancing strategy, and in ministerial appointments, following the introduction of different incentives inherent in a new electoral system. To that end, we conducted an empirical test of Liberal Democratic Party cabinet appointments before and after the 1994 electoral reform. We demonstrate that the change in electoral system led the party to rebalance its priorities and consequently adapt its strategy for ministerial appointments.

Ministerial Selection and Portfolio Allocation in the Cameron Government

This paper examines how David Cameron has utilised the Prime Ministerial power of ministerial selection and portfolio allocation within the context of the relationship between party expectations and coalition constraints. Specifically, the paper considers the significance to the Parliamentary Conservative Party of Camerons use of patronage in terms of proportionality (numbers); portfolio distribution (prestige) and reshuffles (renegotiation of numbers and prestige). It argues that Cameron has been relatively astute in terms of his allocation of portfolios to the Liberal Democrats. However, it notes that the constraining impact of coalition has been detrimental to three groups within the PCP: first, those made ministers at a lower level than expected; secondly, those who held shadow ministerial posts in opposition but were overlooked when fewer ministerial roles were available; and, finally, the new intake of 2010 whose career progression has been slower than in previous administrations as fewer reshuffles have occurred.

Drawing from the bargaining pool

This article expands our current knowledge about ministerial selection in coalition governments and analyses why ministerial candidates succeed in acquiring a cabinet position after general elections. It argues that political parties bargain over potential office-holders during government-formation processes, selecting future cabinet ministers from an emerging ‘bargaining pool’. The article draws upon a new dataset comprising all ministrable candidates discussed by political parties during eight government-formation processes in Germany between 1983 and 2009. The conditional logit regression analysis reveals that temporal dynamics, such as the day she enters the pool, have a significant effect on her success in achieving a cabinet position. Other determinants of ministerial selection discussed in the existing literature, such as party and parliamentary expertise, are less relevant for achieving ministerial office. The article concludes that scholarship on ministerial selection requires a stronger emphasis for its endogenous nature in government-formation as well as the relevance of temporal dynamics in such processes.

Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Ministerial Selection in Russia: How Presidential Preferences Shape Technocratic Cabinets

: In Russia, politicians routinely select technical, non-party cabinets whose political outlook is difficult to decipher. The article asks how variation in politicians' preferences along the democratic-authoritarian dimension shapes political skills sought in cabinets and how ministers sharing politicians' aims are selected. The account of ministerial selection is tested in a controlled, comparative analysis of ministerial appointments in Russia, using an original dataset covering all full ministers appointed by presidents Boris Yel'tsin and Vladimir Putin, 1992–2008. The results clarify several important debates about the political implications of changes to cabinet composition in Russia and contribute to a more nuanced general understanding of the politics of technical cabinets.

Cameron and Liberal Conservatism: Attitudes within the Parliamentary Conservative Party and Conservative Ministers

Research Highlights and Abstract This article: Contributes to the development of academic research on the internal dynamics of the Conservative Party under the leadership of David Cameron. Contributes to the development of academic research on the processes of ministerial selection within British Government. Contributes to the development of academic research on cohort effects within parties, and the analysis of comparisons and differences between different parliamentary cohorts. Contributes to the development of academic research on the constraints upon Prime Ministerial power when in coalition. This article identifies the ideological composition of the parliamentary Conservative party (PCP) in order to determine the location and numeric strength of the critics of Cameron. By constructing a data set of attitudes across two ideological divides—the social, sexual and morality divide and the European divide—the article identifies the following. First, despite Cameron's social liberal emphasis both the PCP and his ministerial team is predominantly Thatcherite—i.e. socially conservative. Second, despite numerically having a Eurosceptic PCP and ministerial team, with Europhilia now an inconsequential rump, Cameron faces a minority ‘hard’ Eurosceptic faction of rebels who oppose his ‘soft’ Euroscepticism. Third, the influx of new parliamentarians elected in 2010 may increase social liberal strength, but they are overwhelmingly Eurosceptic, with a significant tranche of hard Eurosceptics amongst them. Finally, through a process of ideological mapping of these two ideological divides the research identifies a core of 50 socially conservative and hard Eurosceptics who are the critics of Cameron.

MINISTERIAL SELECTION AND THE CAMERON GOVERNMENT: FEMALE MINISTERIAL REPRESENTATION AND THE ONE-THIRD OBJECTIVE

When he was leader of the opposition David Cameron announced that it was his intention that one-third of ministers would be female by the end of his first term in office. By considering the ministerial selection literature and identifying the traditional variables that influence ministerial selection, as well as the comparative coalition ministerial selection literature, this article will identify how (whilst numerically possible) there are numerous intra- and inter-party obstacles which will impede Cameron in securing his objective.