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Objective/context: This article analyzes the partisan profiles of cabinets in Panama from the transition to democracy to the present day. Methodology: Using an original methodological approach, a case study is conducted to empirically measure the degree of partisanship among the ministers who have served in Panamanian cabinets since the democratic transition. Conclusions: The data reveal that Panama is a case of cabinet partisanship, despite the growing presence of independent ministers. The most prominent party members are rewarded with positions in the government and leadership of the most significant ministries. Originality: This work provides empirical evidence, based on a database compiled by the author, about the differences in party affiliation among various ministers. While some are strong figures within the party, others are newcomers. It offers previously unexplored data on a case study that has been scarcely addressed in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: This article analyzes the partisan profiles of cabinets in Panama from the transition to democracy to the present day. Methodology: Using an original methodological approach, a case study is conducted to empirically measure the degree of partisanship among the ministers who have served in Panamanian cabinets since the democratic transition. Conclusions: The data reveal that Panama is a case of cabinet partisanship, despite the growing presence of independent ministers. The most prominent party members are rewarded with positions in the government and leadership of the most significant ministries. Originality: This work provides empirical evidence, based on a database compiled by the author, about the differences in party affiliation among various ministers. While some are strong figures within the party, others are newcomers. It offers previously unexplored data on a case study that has been scarcely addressed in the literature.

This 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the territorial dimension of ministerial recruitment has been explored in several countries, it remains a blind spot in France. Nevertheless, the geography of political elites matters, since it tends to channel debates and national policies around specific areas. Therefore, this research note aims to fill this gap by investigating the regional origin of cabinet ministers under the Fifth Republic through an original data set entitled GeoMin. This descriptive analysis stresses the existence of three concentric circles in terms of ministerial appointments: Paris (overrepresented), mainland regions (underrepresented) and peripheral territories (almost absent). The sharing of portfolios follows the same logic. Parisian ministers have occupied all the possible positions—especially the highest ones—but most ministers from mainland France have also led important ministries. Though the matching is far from perfect, some portfolios are more frequently attributed to ministers from a given region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The party affiliation of cabinet ministers is a critical but neglected notion. While its application and theoretical centrality is indisputable in many research fields, explicit definitions are difficult to find, while operationalizations tend to rely on rudimentary categorizations. Departing from formulating a definition consistent with the party government model, we propose a flexible typology to categorize and rank variants of partisans both within and beyond consolidated parliamentary democracies. We show that the new approach can capture important unobserved dynamics well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political elite studies so far have often dealt with career paths before entering a particular political position, focusing mostly on individual states of a career. However, they have consistently neglected what comes after a political office and the temporal–sequential character of biographies. This paper addresses these two issues. Using sequence analysis techniques, it examines the post-cabinet careers of ministers from the German states in the period 1945–2014 using a newly created, original dataset containing 1400 trajectories and over 12,000 coded person years. The descriptive analysis shows partly significant differences in post-cabinet careers by gender, state, decade, and last ministerial portfolio, but less so by party membership. Three of the five clusters found represent comparatively homogeneous post-cabinet career structures. Whereas in the early years of the republic most politicians did not have a subsequent (long) professional career after leaving office, switching to the private business sector and, above all, remaining in politics at the state level, represent the two most prominent career paths. A springboard career in federal politics, on the other hand, is rare, but certainly possible. From a methodological point of view, this study shows the potential, but also the problems of sequence analysis for research on political elites and offers ideas on how to continue with this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet decisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We find that co-responsibility is assigned strategically by cabinet members weighing the risk of a drift against the costs of imposing co-responsibility. These findings demonstrate an understudied mechanism through which coalition governments narrow ministerial autonomy and informational advantage once policies reach the cabinet. In doing so, this research contributes to a better understanding of policymaking in coalition governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will examine how Margaret Thatcher utilised the Prime Ministerial power of Cabinet ministerial appointment between 1979 and 1990. The article will utilise the Norton taxonomy on the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) to determine the ideological disposition (non-Thatcherite versus Thatcherite) of her Cabinet members across her eleven years in office. It will assess the ideological trends in terms of appointments, promotions and departures from Cabinet and it will use archival evidence to explore the advice given to Thatcher to assist her decision-making. Through this process the article will demonstrate how Thatcher was more ideologically balanced than academics have traditionally acknowledged when discussing her Cabinet selections. Moreover, the article will also demonstrate the significance attached to media presentation skills to her decision-making, thus challenging the emphasis on ideology as a dominant determinant of Cabinet selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a crisis, the public expects the government to handle the situation. In parliamentary democracies, these expectations are directed to the cabinet and its ministers. Cabinet ministers are expected to be highly involved in policy making under their jurisdiction and in general. During periods of politics as usual, ministers differ in their policy involvement. This paper asks whether that changes during a crisis. Based on an analysis of cabinet ministers in Israel during the first wave of the COVID19 crisis, this paper finds that ministers' policy involvement during a crisis is relatively low. Most ministers are little involved in issues outside their jurisdiction. Ministers less central to the crisis management are also little involved in issues under their jurisdiction. Ministers central to the crisis management are highly involved in introducing decisions on issues under their jurisdiction, but not necessarily in other aspects of policy making. These findings have implications for issues of accountability and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political elite studies so far have often dealt with career paths before entering a particular political position, focusing mostly on individual states of a career. However, they have consistently neglected what comes after a political office and the temporal–sequential character of biographies. This paper addresses these two issues. Using sequence analysis techniques, it examines the post-cabinet careers of ministers from the German states in the period 1945–2014 using a newly created, original dataset containing 1400 trajectories and over 12,000 coded person years. The descriptive analysis shows partly significant differences in post-cabinet careers by gender, state, decade, and last ministerial portfolio, but less so by party membership. Three of the five clusters found represent comparatively homogeneous post-cabinet career structures. Whereas in the early years of the republic most politicians did not have a subsequent (long) professional career after leaving office, switching to the private business sector and, above all, remaining in politics at the state level, represent the two most prominent career paths. A springboard career in federal politics, on the other hand, is rare, but certainly possible. From a methodological point of view, this study shows the potential, but also the problems of sequence analysis for research on political elites and offers ideas on how to continue with this approach.

Cabinet 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars 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 understood mechanisms are 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is widespread agreement in the ministerial promotion and resignation literature that experience matters, experience has typically been defined as the length of time a legislator has worked in politics or served in a legislature. This approach fails to account for the different kinds of experience legislators accumulate as they progress through their political careers prior to appointment to cabinet. We demonstrate how researchers can use sequence and cluster analysis to obtain a more complete understanding of ministerial appointment. We identify four data-driven archetypes of political careers in Canada for the period 1968–2015. We find that MPs with diverse political careers are more likely to be appointed to cabinet, while MPs with opposition experience are more successful than MPs with government experience. We also find that parliamentary secretary is not necessarily a stepping stone to a full cabinet position, calling into question traditional conceptions of parliamentary politics as a 'ladder'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of the "China Model" suggest that autocracies, particularly in East Asia, reward competence more than democracies. However, a competing literature argues that autocracies are less likely to reward competence because autocrats fear that competent officials could challenge for power. We argue that autocracies do not fear technical competence ; they fear political competence. As such, autocracies may promote ministers with technical competence but punish the politically competent. Democracies, by contrast, place a premium on political competence when deciding whom to promote. We provide the first test of this theory on how ministerial behavior is rewarded using a unique data set of political performance and promotions in nine East Asian countries. Our findings show that autocracies promote officials with technical competence as long as the ministers limit their political behavior. In democracies, parliamentary and presidential democracies promote those displaying political competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Edward Heath utilised the Prime Ministerial power of ministerial appointment between 1970 and 1974. It does so within the context of the difficulties that Heath experienced in managing the ideological tensions within his party during his leadership tenure and his subsequent removal from the leadership of the Conservative Party in early 1975. Critically, by utilising Cabinet Office papers (PREM 5), the article demonstrates how his Chief Whip, Francis Pym, made a series of recommendations on how ministerial allocation could be used to aid party management and address backbench criticism about his leadership, and how Heath disregarded much of this advice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Elites and their formation have become a matter of increasing public concern and research interest in recent years. The lessons from such research can be made more generalisable if a measure of elite formation could be developed that is comparable across different elite formation systems, whether they differ by elite, time or country. But, the nature of elite formation renders this a complex task. Nevertheless, in this article, by building upon measures employed in other fields such as industrial economics, indices are constructed that facilitate the comparison of elite formation systems. This is illustrated through a comparison of the schooling of Irish and British cabinet ministers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some commentators have observed that today's Cabinet ministers are younger and less experienced than their predecessors. To test this claim, we analyse the data for Labour and Conservative appointments to Cabinet since 1945. Although we find some evidence of a decline in average age and prior experience, it is less pronounced than for the party leaders. We then examine the data for junior ministerial appointments, which reveals that there is no trend towards youth and inexperience present lower down the hierarchy. Taking these findings together, we propose that public profile is correlated with 'noviceness'; that is, the more prominent the role, the younger and less experienced its incumbent is likely to be. If this is correct, then the claim that we are witnessing the rise of the novice Cabinet minister is more a consequence of the personalisation of politics than evidence of an emerging 'cult of youth'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Circulations and qualities of political elites are subjects of abiding interest in comparative political sociology. Pairs of articles in this issue examine (1) long-term circulations of parliamentary elites in Norway, Denmark, and other Nordic countries; (2) changing compositions of ministerial and parliamentary elites in Spain and Russia since both countries transited from authoritarian rule; (3) personality traits of German parliamentary elites, compared with those of the German adult population, and proclivities of American and British elites since World War II. This introduction compares and contrasts the three pairs of articles with previous comparative studies of political elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that ministers in decentralized political systems can use sub-national institutions to obtain experience and access to cabinet. This affects the number of ministers coming from Parliament. We analyze the Spanish case, characterized by unusually low number of parliamentarians in cabinet. Previous work had suggested various explanations for this phenomenon: traditions of bureaucratic governments, parties with open candidate selection systems and "presidential" preference for outsiders. Our data about Spanish ministers (1977-2010) call into question the usefulness of these explanations for the Spanish case, and test the increase of ministers passing through the local or regional arena. The result is the emergence of multi-level career ministers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the presentation of the Medieval Tibetan Empire's central political official system in the book "New History of the Tang." A Tibetan central political official system named zhang lon ched po dgu is described. The author compares information from several books, manuscripts, and textual records on the subject to determine the validity of this official system and its nine cabinet ministers. The author feels that the records of "Monograph of the Tubo" of the "New History of the Tang" were interpreted in a biased manner.