Cabinet Ministers, Party Preferences and Government Policy Outputs

Abstract

Despite a long tradition of scholarly work on partisan effect on government policy, we do not yet know enough about the conditions through which cabinet parties are most likely to make a difference in policy-making. The present panel seeks contributions on portfolio allocation and the selection (and turnover) of individual ministers to uncover mechanisms that may account for variation in levels of partisan effects. It welcomes papers on the impact of prime ministers, finance ministers, coalition agreements, collective cabinet decision-making, personal expertise and experience on ministerial discretion, ministerial turnover, potential policy drift and actual policy outputs.