Does Policy Prioritisation Foster Ministerial Expertise? A Governmental Policy Agenda Approach

This paper aims to shed more light on a fundamental aspect of ministerial recruitment, namely, to what extent governmental policy priorities (either defined within the cabinet or the parties supporting it) influence the selection of ministers. The basic theoretical argument is that ceteris paribus, cabinet selectors (being these the PM or the parties in government) will prefer to appoint to the ministerial departments in charge of preferred policies (those situated at the top of the governmental agenda) to individuals with prior substantive expertise in the policy’s subject matter. In order to explore this theoretical argument, we test an alternative strategy: check the influence of explicit policy priorities (as argued by the prime minister or the incumbent party) on the ministerial team design. Hence, our research design combines data on individual ministers of the Spanish national governments compiled by the authors, and available data of governmental policy priorities extracted from the manifestos of incumbent parties and inauguration speeches of Spanish Prime Ministers, coded using the coding frame of the Comparative Agendas Project (Chaqués, Palau, and Baumgartner, 2015). References: Chaqués Bonafont, L., Palau, A. and Baumgartner, F.R., 2015. Agenda dynamics in Spain. London: Palgrave