In coalition government, the relationship between parties and ministers is a relationship of double delegation: from the party to the minister and from the coalition of parties to the individual minister. This implies the risk that ministers ‘drift’, ie. focus on their own priorities rather than defending the best interests of the coalition parties. For some (i.e Laver and Shepsle’s 1990, 1996), this possibility is accepted as a fact by party leaders, who attribute portfolio’s assuming that ministers would subsequently have exclusive jurisdiction over their area of expertise. This assumption, however, have been recently much debated (see for example Strøm and al. 2010, Thies 2000, Martin and Vanberg 2004, 2005). Basing myself on interviews with more than 40 key cabinet actors (13 former ministers, 15 chief of staff and 12 top civil servants) in three countries, I show that parties and their leaders have a much larger variety of mechanisms to keep track each others’ activities that it is commonly believed. What emerges from these interviews is the crucial role – almost completely ignored by coalition literature - played by top civil servants (in the Netherlands) and Ministerial chief of staff (in Belgium and Italy). A great majority of the interviewees, indeed, consider the meetings of ministerial personal staff or civil servants preparing the Meeting of the Council of Ministers as a crucial mechanism for governmental governance. Another very interesting finding is the fact that a noticeably 98% of the interviewees identifies the lack of trust amongst partners as the first explanation for long and comprehensive coalition agreements.
