Resignation Calls and Ministerial Turnover in Presidential Systems

This paper analyses the effect of calls for the resignation of cabinet members on presidents’ protection policy and dismissal rule in 12 Latin American countries between 1976 and 2021. The indicators of resignation calls are entirely unprecedented and were constructed by applying data mining and machine learning algorithms to press archives. By combining protection and dismissal, presidents can limit agency loss and moral hazard and incentivise political activism through reallocations and ministerial terminations. This is evaluated using a semiparametric approach of competing risks and propensity score matching to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) for observational studies, that is, the effect on ministers who received calls. In addition, using moderation analyses, we tested the reliability of the dismissal rule under electoral, parliamentary and government performance conditions. Our findings show that the risk increases more than ninefold as from a second call and is moderated under opposition fragmentation.