1

Cabinet ministers and parliamentary government: How institutions and internal

party politics affect ministerial accountability

Cristina Bucur1

Dublin City University

Abstract

Ministerial accountability is an important problem in political science. To account for it

scholars have usually focused on the prime minister’s ability to hire and fire cabinet

members. This paper argues that in parliamentary democracies ministers are accountable

not only to prime ministers, but also to their own parties and directly-elected presidents.

The hypothesis tested in this paper is that each principal’s ability to hold ministers

accountable depends on their formal powers and on the party relations between ministers,

presidents and prime ministers. Moreover, the presidents’ and prime ministers’ ability to

control cabinet composition under certain institutional conditions is thought to derive

from their formal or informal positions as party leaders. This expectation is tested on a

unique data set on the tenures of French, Portuguese and Romanian ministers during two

legislative terms. Survival analyses of ministerial durability find that presidents and prime

ministers who act as de facto party leaders are in a better position to influence the process

of ministerial deselection certain institutional conditions. Conversely, the party

principal’s ability to sanction agency loss declines when either of the two chief executives

is a de facto leader. These findings speak to the debate regarding the challenges faced by

the party government model in parliamentary democracies and draw attention to the

consequences of increasingly autonomous chief executives for ministerial accountability.

1 Paper prepared for presentation at the workshop “The Evolution of Parliamentarism and Its Political Consequences”, Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium of Political Research, Salamanca, April 10–15, 2014.

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Introduction

Following his election as President of France in 1995, Jacques Chirac nominated Alain

Juppé, one of his closest collaborators, for the presidency of the Rally for the Republic

(RPR) party and appointed him as prime minister. Four years later, Nicolas Sarkozy gave

up running for the presidency of the Gaullist party after President Chirac warned him that

the leader of the majority party would not be prime minister in 2002. Despite Sarkozy’s

abandonment of the party leadership race, he was not appointed as prime minister in 2002

when Jacques Chirac was re-elected. In 2004, Sarkozy contested the presidency of the

Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) after Alain Juppé stepped down amid accusations

of embezzling public funds. Before new party elections were organised, though, Chirac

warned that ministers elected as party leaders must give up their cabinet seats to prevent

any damage to the prime minister’s authority over cabinet ministers. As a result, Sarkozy

stepped down from government in November 2004, when he was elected as UMP leader.

Six months later, the Raffarin government resigned following the rejection of the

referendum on the European Constitution and Sarkozy was re-appointed in government as

interior minister and second in hierarchy only to PM Dominique de Villepin.

Apart from illustrating the nature of intraparty competition in France, the events

described above raise an important question for students of party politics. Why did

President Chirac appoint the leader of the majority party as prime minister in 1995, but

refused to do so in 2004 and 2005? And why was Nicolas Sarkozy asked to step down in

2004 as a result of his election as UMP leader, only to be re-appointed in government six

months later? President Chirac’s concern about the personal loyalty of prime ministers

and leaders of the majority party suggests that party relations should be taken into account

when assessing variation in presidential and prime ministerial authority over the cabinet.

Therefore, this paper focuses on the way in which both political institutions and internal

party politics structure accountability relations between cabinet ministers and their

superiors in the government and party hierarchy.

My aim is to connect the literature on ministerial accountability to the debate on

the challenges faced by the model of party government in modern democracies (Mair

2008). Regardless of the definitions given to the concept of party government, one of the

conditions enabling parties to influence government requires that political leaders are

selected within parties and held responsible for their actions through parties (Rose 1969;

Katz 1986, 1987; Mair 2008). The parties’ ability to place their agents in public office is

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seen as a form of institutional control that operates for the benefit of the party

organisation (Kopecký and Mair 2012: 7). However, party government scholars argue

that simply having party members appointed to cabinet is a weak measure of party control

over the executive (Andeweg 2000; Müller 2000). Andeweg (2000: 389) argued that only

a direct link from parties to individual ministers can prevent the problem of agency loss.

However, he found little evidence that the link between parties and their agents goes

beyond the appointment of party members to ministerial office and argued that only the

use of recalls and reshuffles could indicate that parties effectively control their agents in

ministerial office. Thus, the parties’ ability to contain agency loss by firing their minister

agents is a good test for the challenges that the model of party government faces in

modern parliamentary democracies.

To capture variation in ministerial accountability to different principals in the

government and party hierarchy, I employ a multiple-principal model of ministerial

accountability. One-principal models are the industry standard in the literature of

ministerial turnover (Dewan and Dowding 2005; Fischer et al. 2006; Dewan and Myatt

2007, 2010; Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008; Indridason and Kam 2008). However,

their use outside Westminster systems is problematic. The institutional rules governing

the hiring and firing of ministers vary considerably in coalition systems, where ministers

report separately to prime ministers and their own parties (Dowding and Dumont 2009;

Fischer et al. 2012). The involvement of multiple principals in the origin and survival of

cabinets in semi-presidential system further blurs the lines of ministerial responsibility

and accountability (Protsyk 2006; Schleiter and Morgan-Jones 2009). Therefore, a

multiple-principal approach is a more adequate choice for the study of ministerial

accountability outside Westminster systems and one that can also take into account the

party relations between ministers-agents and their competing principals.

To take advantage of the largest intra- and inter-case variation in principal-agent

relations that enable presidents, prime ministers, and political parties to act as competing

principals for cabinet members, I test the multiple-principal model of ministerial

accountability in three semi-presidential countries, France, Portugal, and Romania. The

core of the empirical analysis consists of survival analyses of ministerial durability that

take into account personal characteristics and performance indicators such as resignation

calls and conflicts with the three principals. I find that chief executives who act as de

facto party leaders reduce the party principals’ ability to hold cabinet members

accountable. Presidents and prime ministers who deliver electoral victories as party

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leaders are in a better position to control cabinet composition under certain institutional

conditions. These findings highlight the impact that formal and informal hierarchies of

party leadership have on the ability of presidents and prime ministers to limit agency loss

and explain the discrepancy between the formal powers held by political actors and their

actual influence over the cabinet.

This paper is structured conventionally. The next section discusses theory,

singling out the factors that explain variation in ministerial accountability in semi-

presidential systems and outlining the expectations regarding the variation in the authority

of presidents, prime ministers and party principals over the cabinet. Then I explain the

case selection and the time period under analysis, and I introduce the measures and

methods with which I test for the variation in the ability of principals to control cabinet

composition. After presenting the survival analysis, which is the main method of

empirical analysis, I summarise the findings and I discuss the implications of the results

for the comparative study of ministerial accountability in parliamentary democracies.

Theory

To explain variation in ministerial accountability in semi-presidential systems, one needs

to focus on the factors that account for the variation in presidential and prime ministerial

authority over the political system. Three research approaches are available. The first one

adopts a purely institutional view on the relationship between institutional conditions and

the extent of presidential and prime ministerial influence. This idea has been inspired by

the operation of semi-presidentialism in France. Even before the first occurrence of

cohabitation in France, there was an expectation that if the president ever had to put up

with an opposing parliamentary majority, then semi-presidentialism would work not as a

synthesis of parliamentary and presidential systems, but as an alternation between

presidential and parliamentary phases (Duverger 1980: 186). Arend Lijphart also defined

semi-presidential systems as an alternation of presidential and parliamentary phases,

where the political power shifts from the president to the prime minister depending on

whether the president’s party has a majority in the legislature (Lijphart 1992: 8). This

argument, according to which presidents are powerful when they are on the same side of

the parliamentary majority (a situation known as unified executive) and weak when they

oppose the majority (the situation defined as cohabitation), has been embraced by many

French scholars (Parodi 1997; Portelli 1997; Ardant and Duhamel 1999; Peyrefitte 1999).

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Despite its popularity in France, the idea that one should expect presidential

leadership under unified executive and prime ministerial leadership under cohabitation

has not received unanimous support. For example, Margit Tavits (2008) reckons that

presidents have few incentives to be politically active during periods of unified

government, when policy preferences are likely to be compatible across all branches of

government. She thinks that presidents are likely to pursue their objectives more actively

during periods of cohabitation, when their party is not in power and they face opposition

both in the government and parliament (Tavits 2008: 16). Cindy Skach (2005, 2007) also

expects presidents to be more active when they do not enjoy the support of the legislature

and during periods of minority government. These competing explanations suggest that

the variation in presidential and prime ministerial influence under different executive

scenarios should not be taken at face value. Moreover, the occurrence of unified

executive and cohabitation may not make any difference for the extent of presidential and

prime ministerial authority. For example, in countries like Ireland, Austria, Iceland, or

Slovenia, presidents are always weak regardless of their relationship with parliamentary

majorities and prime ministers have full control over the cabinet (Elgie 2009: 261).

Therefore, executive scenarios do not fully capture the variation in presidential and prime

ministerial powers in semi-presidential systems.

Secondly, some scholars focus on contextual factors. For example, Tavits (2008)

does not believe that whether presidents are directly elected or not makes a difference for

the extent of their activism. She thinks that the level of presidential activism depends on

the framework of political opportunities. Presidents are more likely to be active when the

level of political consensus is low, during periods of cohabitation. The incentives for

activism should be even stronger under conditions of minority government, irrespective

of whether the cabinet is ideologically opposed to the president, as the other

policymaking institutions, the government and parliament, are likely to be weak and

fragmented (Tavits 2008: 39–40). Using the share of non-partisan ministers as a measure

of presidential activism in both parliamentary and semi-presidential systems, Tavits

(2008: 49) finds that presidents are more active in the case of minority government and

during periods of cohabitation irrespective of their mode of election. Therefore, the

determinant for the variation in presidential authority does not always (or necessarily)

reside in the institutional structure of semi-presidentialism.

The third option is to take into account the combined impact of institutional

scenarios and contextual factors on the extent of presidential and prime ministerial

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powers. Here I focus on internal party politics. The party relations between presidents,

prime ministers, and cabinet members play an important role in the process of delegation

and accountability in parliamentary democracies. Although political parties take part in

each step of the delegation process from voters to elected politicians and bureaucrats,

their direct intervention to control agents in public office is often limited by legitimate

public concerns regarding the independence of national institutions from anonymous

party machines (Müller 2000: 311). As a result, party principals have to share control

over cabinet members with presidents and prime ministers who own the formal or

informal power to fire ministers.

The balance of power between party principals and party agents varies across

different types of political systems. In pure parliamentary systems, where political parties

retain the power to recall prime ministers, intraparty politics determines who runs the

government (Samuels and Shugart 2010: 120). This balance of power can change in semi-

presidential systems. A highly valued presidency loosens the party-government

relationship, as political parties have no ex-post control mechanisms for their agents in a

directly elected presidential office (Schleiter and Morgan-Jones 2009: 668). Under certain

circumstances, presidents may be able to keep a strong grip on the cabinet. Samuels and

Shugart (2010) argue that the presidents’ influence over the political system derives from

their de facto position as party leaders. From a principal-agent perspective, ‘when

presidents are de facto party leaders, the importance of parliamentary confidence to the

chain of delegation […] vanishes, because the premier becomes an agent of the president’

(Samuels and Shugart 2010: 43). Presidents who carry on in their role as de facto leaders

reverse the party-leader principal-agent relationship by turning prime ministers into their

own agents, which deprives political parties of the ability to control either of their two

agents (Samuels and Shugart 2010: 121). If parties lose control over the prime minister,

then they are also likely to lose control over cabinet members to the benefit of the head of

state. This is how the party hierarchy between presidents and prime ministers may explain

the asymmetry between weak formal powers and de facto control over the executive.

To test the hypothesis that the chief executives’ influence over the government

derives from their de facto position as party leaders, I operationalise the concept of de

facto partisan authority by taking into account the positions held by presidents and prime

ministers in the party hierarchy before they take office. Thus, I expect that presidents who

step down as party leaders, only to be sworn in as heads of state continue to control their

parties. By contrast, I expect that presidents who did not contest the presidential race as

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party leaders have little or no impact on cabinet composition regardless of executive

scenarios. Consequently, I do not expect them to control the cabinet either. This

expectation is in line with Duverger’s anticipation that a de facto party leadership position

is the sine qua non condition for strong presidents during periods of unified executive: ‘If

the president is not the head of the majority party, while belonging to it or coming under

it, this means that the party has decided to give its leader the office of prime minister, to

whom the real power then belongs’ (Duverger 1980: 184). This is how Duverger explains

the figurehead positions of Austrian and Irish presidents, who have never been regarded

as leaders of parliamentary majorities, although they have usually been part of it.

If presidents are de facto party leaders, then they should also be relatively strong

during periods of divided executive. This is the situation when the president and the

prime minister belong to different parties in the ruling coalition. This expectation is also

supported in the literature. For example, Samuels and Shugart (2010: 101) find that

presidents are able to dismiss prime ministers who are not their co-partisans in semi-

presidential systems. The president’s unexpected capacity to hold accountable other

parties’ agents is put down to the functions of alliance-formation: ‘In multiparty systems,

parties sometimes form coalitions in which one party gets the presidency while another

gets the premiership. When entering such alliances, parties apparently accept a deal in

which the president determines how long the premier and the cabinet stay in office’

(Samuels and Shugart 2010: 105). Hellwig and Samuels (2007: 70) also assume that the

president leads the government when s/he and the prime minister belong to the same

ruling coalition but not necessarily to the same party.

Unless the president enjoys formal constitutional powers over the government

and/or individual ministers, I do not expect partisan sources of authority to matter for her

ability to hold cabinet members accountable under cohabitation. Intra-party politics are

likely to matter more under this executive scenario, when presidents lack both formal and

partisan means of influence over the cabinet. As a result, ministers no longer need to act

as presidential agents. To sum up, once de facto leadership positions are taken into

account, one may expect presidents to be less influential during periods of divided

executive than under unified executive, but more powerful than under cohabitation.

Similarly, prime ministers who are party leaders should be able to keep a tighter

grip on the cabinet. If prime ministers are not party leaders, then I expect them to be

relatively weak irrespective of whether there is unified executive, divided executive, or

cohabitation. However, as opposed to presidents, prime ministers enjoy a range of formal

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powers over the cabinet, including the right to fire ministers. Due to this institutional

feature, I expect that prime ministers who are party leaders take advantage of both

constitutional powers and intraparty mechanisms of control and hold cabinet members

accountable irrespective of executive scenarios. However, their authority may decrease

during periods of divided executive if they share executive power with presidents who

also act as de facto party leaders.

Lastly, due to their centrality in the chain of democratic delegation in

representative democracies, party principals should retain a certain amount of influence

over the cabinet under all circumstances, as long as they can hold accountable their agents

in government, including the president and the prime minister. Thus, if neither the

president, nor the prime minister is a party leader, I expect party principals to keep a tight

grip over cabinet ministers at all times. However, if the president and/or the prime

minister are party leaders, then party principals will lack the means of sanctioning agency

loss during periods of unified executive and divided executive. All else equal, party

principals should be more influential under cohabitation even when the president and the

prime minister are party leaders. In this case, the president is opposed to the

parliamentary majority and has fewer means to compete for control over the cabinet,

while parties can sanction agency loss by replacing the prime minister. Table 1

summarises the expectations outlined above.

Table 1 Presidential, prime ministerial, and party influence over cabinet ministers across

executive scenarios and as a function of de facto party leadership

PRESIDENT Unified Divided Cohabitation

President party leader? Y +++ ++ +

N 0 0 0

PM Unified Divided Cohabitation

PM party leader? Y +++ ++ +++

N 0 0 0

PARTY Unified Divided Cohabitation

President and PM party leaders? Y 0 0 +

N +++ +++ +++

Controlling for the party hierarchy between presidents and prime ministers allows

one to determine to what extent and under what circumstances de facto party leadership

positions account for the discrepancy between the formal powers held by political actors

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and their actual influence over the decision-making system. The distinct focus on the joint

impact of executive scenarios and internal party politics on the balance of power between

party principals and party agents differentiates this study from other works that associate

the variation in the authority of presidents and prime ministers over cabinets with the

occurrence of executive scenarios.

Case selection, data and variables

The empirical analysis is carried out on a new data set on the tenure of French,

Portuguese and Romanian ministers. These countries have been selected according to the

principles of the most-similar system design. They belong to the premier-presidential sub-

type of semi-presidential systems, where cabinet members are formally accountable only

to the legislature (Shugart and Carey 1992). The aim of the empirical analysis is to

account for the cross-country variation in the ministers’ accountability to presidents,

prime ministers and party principals despite a common institutional framework.

The three countries vary in ways that illustrate and put to the test the theoretical

expectations outlined above. The alternation of dual-executive scenarios in France,

Portugal and Romania and the variation in the party leadership roles played by presidents

and prime ministers in these countries provide significant variation in the key explanatory

variables. The time period under analysis in France includes one spell of cohabitation and

one of unified executive. The most recent period of cohabitation occurred between 1997

and 2002, when the Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and the Socialist PM Lionel Jospin

shared executive power. To control for different styles of prime ministerial leadership, the

period of unified executive included in the analysis is that between 2007 and 2012, when

President Sarkozy of the UMP shared executive power with Prime Minister Fillon for the

entire length of the term. Had the second presidential term of President Chirac between

2002 and 2007 been included in the analysis, it would have been more difficult to account

for different prime ministerial leadership styles as two prime ministers held office during

this period of time (Jean-Pierre Raffarin between 2002 and 2005 and Dominique de

Villepin between 2005 and 2007).

The time period under analysis in Portugal spans from 2002 until 2009 and

includes two spells of cohabitation and one of unified executive. President Mário Soares

of the Socialist Party cohabited with the Social-Democratic cabinets led by Manuel

Durrão Barroso and Pedro Santana Lopes between 2002 and 2005. The Socialist Party’s

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victory in the 2005 general election generated a period of unified executive, which lasted

until March 2006, when Ánibal Cavaco Silva of the Social Democratic Party succeeded

Mário Soares as President of Portugal.

The time period under analysis in Romania includes the governments that were

formed between 2000 and 2008. The Social-Democratic government that took office in

December 2000 operated under a scenario of unified executive, as President Iliescu and

PM Năstase of the Social Democratic Party shared executive power until 2004. The new

government formed after the 2004 elections started off under a scenario of divided

executive, as President Traian Băsescu of the Democratic Party appointed Călin Popescu-

Tăriceanu of the National Liberal Party as the prime minister of a coalition cabinet that

was dominated by the two parties. The period of divided executive ended in April 2007,

when President Băsescu’s party left the government coalition. This event triggered the

onset of a period of cohabitation that lasted until new legislative elections were organised

in December 2008. Table 2 maps the cabinets, the occurrence of executive scenarios, and

the time period under analysis in the three countries.

Table 2 Countries, cabinets, time period, and executive scenarios

France Portugal Romania

Scenario Cabinet Time period Cabinet Time period Cabinet Time period

Unified

executive Fillon

17/05/2007

10/05/2012 Socrates

12/03/2005

11/03/2006 Năstase

28/12/2000

28/12/2004

Divided

executive Tăriceanu 1

29/12/2004

05/04/2007

Cohabitation Jospin 2/06/1997

6/05/2002

Barroso 17/05/2002

17/07/2004

Tăriceanu 2 06/04/2007

22/12/2008 Santana Lopes

17/07/2004

13/12/2004

Socrates 11/03/2006

26/10/2009

Table 3 classifies the cabinets under study according to executive scenarios and

the party leadership positions held by presidents and prime ministers before taking office.

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Table 3 Executive scenarios and party leadership positions before elections

SCENARIO

LEA

DE

RS

HIP

Unified Cohabitation Divided

PR (RO) Năstase (2000/04)

(FR) Fillon (2007/12)

PM (PT) Socrates (2005/06)

(PT) Barroso (2002/04)

(PT) Santana Lopes (2004)

(PT) Socrates (2006/09)

PR, PM

(FR) Jospin (1997/02) (RO) Tăriceanu 1

(2004/07) (RO) Tăriceanu 2

(2007/08)

Neither

The distribution of party leadership roles across the three countries confirms the

expectation that if the presidency is a highly valued office, then political parties are likely

to nominate their leaders as presidential candidates. This is the case in France and

Romania. The French and the Romanian cases also vary as far as the party leadership

positions held by prime ministers before and after elections are concerned. While Lionel

Jospin stepped down from the presidency of the Socialist Party after he became prime

minister, newly appointed PM Năstase succeeded Ion Iliescu as president of the Social-

Democratic Party. Party relationships do not vary in Portugal, where political parties do

not nominate their leaders as presidential candidates. Although the Portuguese presidents

covered in this study had also been party leaders at some point during their political

career, they had not contested the presidency of the country from this position. The

importance of party leadership roles in Portugal is borne out by the fact that all prime

ministers included in the analysis held the presidency of their parties before and after

elections, regardless of the executive scenario under which their government operated.

The data set covers 232 ministerial appointments and includes all ministers and

delegated ministers who served in the two governments under study. State secretaries are

excluded from the analysis because their subordination to specific ministries rules out

their accountability to multiple principals. The data set includes the exact dates when

ministers take and leave office. The dependent variable records the length of ministerial

tenure. A ministerial spell is defined as the uninterrupted length of time served by the

minister upon appointment. The ministers’ observed tenure is right-censored if they leave

office collectively as a result of a government termination. The duration in office is not

interrupted if ministers are assigned to different portfolios. However, if the same

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ministers leave the cabinet and return after a certain period of time, they are recorded as

new cases. Of the 232 ministerial appointments included in the analysis, 120 were early

exists2 from office.

While the units of observation in the data set are the 232 ministers, the units of

analysis are the events experienced by ministers. Overall, 5,058 observations related to

the events experienced by ministers were recorded from 50,921 full-text articles

published in Le Figaro, Diário de Notícias, and Evenimentul zilei. The articles were

accessed through the newspapers’ online archives and using LexisNexis and were

selected using a similar range of keywords3.

Two types of events that are used as indicators of ministerial performance and

measures of principal-agent relationships make up the main explanatory factors. The

indicator of individual performance is the number of resignation calls experienced by

ministers while in office. A resignation call is recorded each time a cabinet member is

asked to resign over a personal, professional, departmental, policy, or party issue.

Multiple resignation calls over the same issue are recorded only if different actors ask for

the minister’s resignation or if new information is added to the case. The Resignation

calls variable records 374 episodes of this type across the three countries.

The literature that uses single-principal models to study agency relationships at

cabinet level sees resignation calls as one of the main instruments that prime ministers

can use to decide how long cabinet members can continue in office (Dewan and Dowding

2005; Fischer et al. 2006; Berlinski et al. 2010, 2012). The relationship between

resignation calls and firing decisions is not as straightforward in multiple-principals

models, where this indicator of ministerial performance cannot indicate the principal who

decides on when ministers should go. To identify who can hold ministers accountable a

direct measure of each principal-agent relations is needed. The chosen measures for

principal-agent relations are three explanatory variables that record conflicts between

2 While in some cases ministers may be ‘pulled’ from the cabinet to be promoted to prestigious positions in international organizations (Dowding and Dumont 2009: 12), most resignations follow overt criticism from political actors and mass media and are seen as ‘pushed’ resignations (Fischer et al. 2006: 712). Due to the lack of theoretical criteria that could be used to differentiate between different types of early exists from the cabinet, I have preferred to lump together resignations and dismissals. 3 Year-by-year searches were carried out for each ministerial appointment included in the data set for as long as the ministers held office. Each search included the full name of the minister and a list of keywords. The keywords used for the selection of articles on French ministers were: animosit!, arbitrag!, bras de fer, critiq!, confli!, contr*d!, contest!, démiss!, demett!, destit!, désac!, discord!, dissens!, élimin!, écart!, erreur, revoc!, revoq!, reman!, responsab!. The keywords used for the selection of articles on Portuguese ministers were: demissao, demitir-se, remodelacao, erro, acusacao, responsabilidade, conflito, divergencia, contestacao, protesto, queda, polemica. Where possible, the searches included wildcard characters in order to maximise the number of articles returned.

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ministers and presidents (PR Conflicts), prime ministers (PM Conflicts) and party

principals (PARTY Conflicts). This data is collected in the same way as the resignation

calls and indicates the number of times ministers are criticised by their principals, as

reported in the press. Similarly to resignation calls, one conflict for each issue over which

ministers are criticised by their principals is recorded. I assume that the risk of losing

office increases when conflicts are made public. The accumulation of conflicts between

ministers, presidents, prime ministers and parties is therefore a proxy for agency loss that

each principal should aim to contain. If the principals have the power to fire agents, then

they should be in a position to do so when the level of conflict with their agents increases.

If the ministers’ risk of losing office does not increase in the presence of conflicts with

principals, then I assume that the latter do not have the ability to sanction agency loss.4

The remaining variables included in the analysis of ministerial durability control

for other events that ministers may experience during their time in office. The Reshuffles

variable records individual shifts from one portfolio to another. To check whether

personal characteristics influence the risk of deselection I control for gender and political

experience. Cabinet experience indicates the ministers who have previously served as full

cabinet members. Parliamentary experience records the number of ministers who were

selected from among incumbent parliamentarians5 and who were not at their first

legislative mandate at the moment of appointment. Local office is a proxy for experience

in local administration and records ministers who held an elective position in local

administration at the moment of appointment. Next are the party experience variables.

Party executive controls for the importance of political partisanship as a channel for

ministerial appointments and equals one for ministers who are members in their parties’

4 Several alternative explanations regarding the conditions under which conflicts between ministers and their principals can be observed must be considered. While public evidence of conflicts between ministers and their principals is a strong indicator of agency loss, some principals choose to keep some conflicts outside the public arena and may see it in their best interest not to take action even when they make other conflicts public. For example, presidents, prime ministers and parties outside public office may not wish to harm their electoral chances by publicly exposing the mismanagement errors of their representatives in government. In this case, the reasons for the ministers’ demotion may be difficult to observe. Unpopular principals may also find it disadvantageous to criticise or sanction popular ministers. Principals who lack the formal power to fire ministers, such as presidents under a situation of cohabitation, may criticise cabinet members simply to draw attention upon themselves. By contrast, principals who can actively exercise the power to fire may choose not to criticise their ministers in public. Other strategic reasons might determine principals to keep ministers who perform badly in office so that they suffer long-term damage (Dowding and Dumont 2009: 15). Overall, while there are numerous reasons why some conflicts are made public while others are not, their systematic recording can provide valuable information about the circumstances under which principals decide to make public their perception of agency loss and to sanction their agents. 5 Romanian senators are included in this category, due to perfect bicameralism of the Romanian Parliament. However, French senators are excluded from this count, due to the fundamental differences between the methods of election and the powers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in this country.

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national executive bodies, while Local party leader indicates the ministers leading local

party organisations at the moment of appointment. Table 4 provides summary statistics

for events and fixed characteristics across executive scenarios.

Table 4 Average events and personal characteristics across executive scenarios

Unified Divided Cohabitation Overall

Variables Mean Std.

dev. Mean

Std.

dev. Mean

Std.

dev. Mean

Std.

dev.

N. Ministers 105 37 111 253

N. Failures 44 29 47 120

Length of

tenure (days) 762.64 459.12 446.34 267.70 838.81 556.45 759.55 504.49

Personal characteristics

Gender 0.21 0.41 0.14 0.35 0.16 0.37 0.18 0.38

Cabinet

experience 0.27 .0.45 0.14 0.35 0.26 0.44 0.25 0.43

MPs & 2

mandates 0.43 0.50 0.24 0.44 0.37 0.48 0.38 0.49

Local office 0.39 0.49 0.17 0.38 0.31 0.46 0.32 0.47

Party executive 0.25 0.44 0.41 0.50 0.27 0.45 0.28 0.45

Local party

leader 0.16 0.37 0.21 0.41 0.06 0.24 0.12 0.33

Events

Conflicts PR 1.02 1.99 1.03 1.94 1.07 2.17 1.05 2.06

Conflicts PM 0.79 1.19 1.45 2.56 0.93 2.12 0.94 1.88

Conflicts PARTY 2.15 3.72 1.55 1.99 1.47 2.90 1.75 3.17

Resignation

calls 1.74 2.78 2.07 2.59 1.39 2.63 1.61 2.68

Reshuffles 0.48 0.86 0.03 0.19 0.23 0.53 0.30 0.67

The length of ministerial tenure and the risk of losing office appear relatively

balanced under unified executive and cohabitation. By comparison, ministers incur a

much greater risk of losing office during periods of divided executive. The variation in

the mean length of tenure observed under unified executive and cohabitation on the one

hand and during periods of divided executive on the other hand is explained by the

existence of only one spell of divided executive in the data set. The breakup of the

Romanian ruling coalition in April 2007 resulted in the simultaneous stepping down of

several ministers and triggered a change of executive scenario outside a general or

15

presidential election. Hence the decrease in the length of mean observed tenure

corresponding to the spell of divided executive.

The data related to fixed characteristics shows that the ministers included in this

study make up a relatively homogenous population. About one fifth of the ministers

appointed under each executive scenario were women. One quarter of the cabinet

members were experienced ministers and around one third had some experience as

parliamentarians. About one third of the ministers also had an elective position in local

administration at the moment of appointment. As far as the experience in a political party

is concerned, at least one quarter of the ministers in office under any of the three

executive scenarios were holding a position in their party’s national leadership. The

relative homogeneity of personal characteristics across the three executive scenarios

reduces the risk that the results might be driven by idiosyncratic factors related to the

process of ministerial appointment at different moments of time.

Model specification

The technique used to estimate the impact of principal-agent relationships on the

likelihood of ministerial deselection is parametric survival analysis. Exponential,

Gompertz, Weibull, log normal and log-logistic models were tested for goodness of fit

according to the Akaike Information Criterion across the hazard of ministerial deselection

in the three countries under study. As the Weibull model performed best, the analysis is

presented in the form of Weibull regressions in the relative hazard metric.

Simply summing up events and conflicts between ministers and their principals

might overestimate the extent of career-control powers. In this context, a simple additive

model is completely oblivious to the passing of time and fails to take into account the

relativity of the principals’ powers because it has no capacity to ‘forget’. As a result, the

influence of a particular conflict on the resulting risk of ministerial deselection cannot be

observed since all conflicts are equipotent. The additive model can be improved by

adding a specification that allows it to ‘forget’ events when the time of their occurrence is

sufficiently far back into the past with respect to the moment of ministerial deselection.

The use of decay functions is a common modelling strategy in the study of civil war

durations, as it allows scholars to estimate the declining utility of third party interventions

over time (see for example Regan 2006 and Gent 2008). To weigh the impact of events

on the hazard of early exits from the cabinet by the time left until the moment of

16

deselection or collective government termination, we use the following exponential decay

function

������������� The value of lambda is determined with respect to the event half-life, defined as

the period of time after which the likelihood of being fired because of that event drops to

50%. As a result:

λ = − log�0.5t���� The value of lambda is estimated from the data by iteratively fitting the Weibull

model for all half-time values between 1 and 1816 days (which is the maximum length of

tenure corresponding to the ministerial appointments included in this dataset). The model

that best fits the data across executive scenarios (i.e. the one with the highest log-

likelihood) is attained for a half-time value of 138 days. All models failing the link test at

the 0.05 level (which verifies the use of an adequate parameterisation) were not

considered in the estimation of lambda. The decay function allows one to model the

declining impact over time of the events ministers experience while in office. The event’s

half-life indicates that following a certain period of time after its occurrence, the

likelihood of being fired due to that event is halved. The half-time value corresponding to

our data is 138 days. Thus, every 138 days after an event occurs, the likelihood of being

fired because of that particular event drops by 50 per cent. New values for the event’s

half-life are computed each time a model is estimated by interacting the conflict variables

with scenario6 and leadership7 dummies.

Results

Table 6 presents four models that estimate the impact of personal characteristics, events,

and party relations on the length of ministerial tenure. Model 1 estimates the impact of all

variables across executive scenarios and serves as a baseline for comparison. Model 2, 3,

6 The best event half-life values fitting the data under unified executive, divided executive and cohabitation are 151, 118, and 102 days respectively. 7 The best event half-life value fitting the model that takes into account the formal party leadership roles held by prime ministers after they take office is 161 days. The event half-life values fitting the models that take into account the presidents’ and prime ministers’ positions in the party hierarchy before elections are 148 and 151 days respectively.

17

and 4 assess the extent to which conflicts with presidents, prime ministers, and party

principals affect the ministers’ risk of losing office under each executive scenario. To

adjust for within-minister correlation without biasing the cross-minister estimators

cluster-robust standard errors are used. The observations are clustered by ministerial

spells and the data set includes 232 clusters. The models present coefficients from

Weibull regressions and report standard errors clustered by ministers. Positive

coefficients indicate that the risk of deselection increases and indicate a shorter length of

tenure, while negative coefficients decrease the hazard rate and are expected to increase

the length of tenure.

Overall, the four models highlight the relatively limited explanatory power of

personal characteristics. Interestingly, the models emphasise that previous experience in

full cabinet positions increases the risk of losing office. Although one may expect that

experience correlates with ability and greater durability, this finding is in line with similar

evidence produced for the survival of British ministers, which shows that ministers

without previous experience are less predisposed to a premature departure from office

(Berlinksi et al. 2009). From a principal-agent perspective, the longevity of less

experienced ministers may be accounted for by the longer period of time they need to

master their jurisdictions. Inexperienced ministers are less likely to deviate from the

preferred positions of their principals during the course of their first term in office and

less prone to conflictual relationships. The local politics route to national office also

seems to have a significant impact on the length of tenure. Ministers who held an elective

position at local level are shown to incur a lower risk of losing office. A high position in

the party hierarchy also emerges as a strong determinant of ministerial survival. These

findings substantiate the expectation that local strongholds and party experience increase

a minister’s standing at the cabinet table (Duhamel 2011: 604). The robustness of these

results across the four models confirms the limited impact of fixed characteristics on the

length of ministerial tenure with regard to institutional context.

The results shown in Table confirm that resignation calls increase the risk of

losing office (Dewan and Dowding 2005; Fischer et al. 2006; Berlinski et al. 2010).

Similarly, the positive and statistically significant coefficients of PR Conflicts, PM

Conflicts, and PARTY Conflicts in Model 1 indicate that, overall, conflicts with any of

the three principals increase the risk of deselection. The results shown in Table 6 confirm

that resignation calls increase the risk of losing office (Dewan and Dowding 2005;

Fischer et al. 2006; Berlinski et al. 2010). Similarly, the positive and statistically

18

Table 6 Determinants of ministerial durability: Weibull regressions in proportional hazard form

Across scenarios Unified executive Divided executive Cohabitation

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Fixed characteristics

Gender -0.25 (0.26) -0.23 (0.25) -0.21 (0.27) -0.22 (0.25)

Cabinet experience 0.43 (0.22)+ 0.47 (0.21)* 0.56 (0.23)* 0.40 (0.23)+

MP & 2 mandates -0.07 (0.20) 0.01 (0.20) 0.03 (0.22) -0.01 (0.22)

Local office -0.64 (0.24)** -0.68 (0.24)** -0.53 (0.25)* -0.74 (0.26)**

Party executive -0.44 (0.22)* -0.49 (0.22)* -0.55 (0.22)* -0.40 (0.23)+

Local party leader 0.21 (0.30) 0.33 (0.38) 0.04 (0.31) 0.01 (0.31)

Events

Reshuffles 1.04 (0.77) 1.13 (0.89) 1.45 (0.87)+ 1.50 (0.94)

Resignation Calls 0.78 (0.11)*** 0.81 (0.10)*** 0.78 (0.14)*** 0.77 (0.12)***

PR Conflicts 0.55 (0.12)*** 0.33 (0.16)** 0.72 (0.12)*** 1.01 (0.27)***

PM Conflicts 0.41 (0.11)*** 0.38 (0.11)*** 0.70 (0.41)+ 0.42 (0.12)***

PARTY Conflicts 0.31 (0.11)** 0.36 (0.11)*** 0.28 (0.19) 0.40 (0.15)**

Executive scenario

Unified -0.24 (0.22)

PR Conflicts × Unified 1.09 (0.33)**

PM Conflicts × Unified -1.21 (0.66)*

PARTY Conflicts × Unified -0.20 (0.29)

Divided 1.23 (0.27)***

PR Conflicts × Divided -0.51 (0.45)

PM Conflicts × Divided -0.42 (0.42)

PARTY Conflicts × Divided 0.15 (0.22)

Cohabitation -0.38 (0.21)+

PR Conflicts × Cohabitation -0.20 (0.28)

PM Conflicts × Cohabitation 1.02 (0.39)**

PARTY Conflicts × Cohabitation -0.29 (0.24)

Shape parameter (p) 1.36 (0.13) 1.34 (0.13) 1.48 (0.14) 1.42 (0.13)

Log likelihood -116.75 -114.04 -104.42 -105.21

LR Chi2 526.91*** 542.57*** 603.32*** 564.80***

Observations 5,058 5,058 5,058 5,058

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Note: Robust standard errors clustered by ministers in parentheses; + p

19

significant coefficients of PR Conflicts, PM Conflicts, and PARTY Conflicts in Model 1

indicate that, overall, conflicts with any of the three principals increase the risk of

deselection. The results in Models 2-4 indicate to which extent the impact of conflicts

with principals varies across different executive scenarios. Table 7 presents the

coefficients corresponding to the interaction of conflict variables with the scenario

dummies and their level of significance8.

Table 7 Principal-agent relations and risk of deselection across executive scenarios

Unified executive Divided executive Cohabitation

PR Conflicts 1.42*** 0.21 0.82***

PM Conflicts -0.83 0.28** 1.44***

PARTY Conflicts 0.17 0.43*** 0.12

Note: * p

20

power. Figures 1-3 show hazard rates for ministerial durability at maximum level of

conflicts with the three principals under each executive scenario.

Figure 1 Impact of principal-agent relations under unified executive

Figure 2 Impact of principal-agent relations under cohabitation

President

Prime minister

Party

0.5

11

.52

Ris

k o

f te

rmin

ation

0 500 1000 1500 2000

days

Conflicts under unified executive

Prime minister

PresidentParty

0.5

11

.52

Ris

k o

f te

rmin

ation

0 500 1000 1500 2000

Days

Conflicts under cohabitation

21

Figure 3 Impact of principal-agent relations under divided executive

Next, the paper examines how party relations affect the ability of presidents,

prime ministers and party principals to hold cabinet ministers accountable. Party relations

vary as a function of whether presidents and prime ministers hold a party leadership

position or not. To account for the influence that presidents and prime ministers may

derive from their informal position as party leaders, I record their position in the party

hierarchy before and after they take office. The analysis should reveal if the ministers’

risk of losing office as a result of conflicts with the three principals varies as a function of

the formal or de facto party relation taken into account.

First I consider the formal leadership positions occupied by prime ministers after

they take office. To determine whether leadership roles make a difference for the prime

ministers’ ability to fire ministers, the conflict variables are interacted with a dummy

variable that is one for prime ministers who held a formal position as party leaders during

their time in office and zero otherwise9. Table 8 presents the coefficients for the conflict

variables interacted with the leadership dummy and their level of significance. The

9 For example, Lionel Jospin, who stepped down as party leader when he became a prime minister is coded with 0, while Adrian Năstase, who succeeded Ion Iliescu as party leader in 2004 is coded with 1. The other prime ministers who preserved their position as party leaders in the aftermath of elections are coded with 1.

Party

Prime minister

President

0.0

1.0

2.0

3

Ris

k o

f te

rmin

ation

0 500 1000 1500 2000

Days

Conflicts under divided executive

22

variation in the length of ministerial tenure is estimated across executive scenarios, as

well as separately under unified executive and cohabitation. Due to the existence of only

one spell of divided executive in the data set, a separate model could not be estimated for

this scenario.

Table 8 Impact of principal-agent relations and party relations after elections

Party leadership roles after elections PR Conflicts PM Conflicts PARTY Conflicts

PM is NOT Leader Across scenarios 0.74** 0.91** 0.14

PM Leader Across scenarios 0.33* 0.28** 0.31**

PM is NOT Leader Unified 1.78*** 0.10 -0.38

PM Leader Unified 1.13 -1.60*** 0.58**

PM is NOT Leader Cohabitation 0.63 1.38*** 0.41*

PM Leader Cohabitation 0.60** 0.50* -0.16

Note: * p

23

cohabitation means that the variation in the length of ministerial tenure cannot be

estimated separately within each scenario. The alternative is to separate the risk of losing

office in one scenario compared to the other two scenarios.

Table 9 Impact of principal-agent relations and party relations before elections

Party leadership roles before elections PR Conflicts PM Conflicts PARTY Conflicts

PM is NOT Leader Across scenarios 1.42*** -0.83 0.17

PM Leader Across scenarios 0.33** 0.38*** 0.36***

PM is NOT Leader Unified & Cohab 1.44*** -0.79 0.27

PM Leader Unified & Cohab 0.49** 0.86** 0.19

PM is NOT Leader Unified & Divided 1.41*** -0.80 0.11

PM Leader Unified & Divided -0.04 0.24** 0.34**

Note: * p

24

Figure 4 Impact of principal-agent relations under unified executive and cohabitation as a

function of the prime ministers’ position in the party hierarchy before elections

Lastly, I assess whether the presidents’ position in the party hierarchy ahead of

their election makes a difference for the extent of their influence over cabinet

composition. Table 10 presents the coefficients and level of significance for the conflict

variables interacted with a leadership dummy that indicates presidents who were party

leaders before elections11. The lack of variation in the party leadership roles held by

presidents before elections during periods of unified and divided executive means that the

impact of party relations on the risk of deselection can be estimated separately only

during periods of cohabitation. The results indicate a statistically significant relationship

between conflicts with presidents and shorter lengths of tenure only in the case of

presidents who were party leaders ahead of elections. This finding substantiates the

hypothesis that the presidents’ position in the party hierarchy ahead of elections makes a

difference for the extent of their authority over cabinets.

11 In this set of models the French and the Romanian presidents are coded with 1, while the Portuguese presidents are coded 0.

Prime minister

PresidentParty

0.5

11.5

2

Ris

k o

f te

rmin

ation

0 500 1000 1500 2000

days

PMs are party leaders before elections

President

PartyPrime minister

0.5

11.5

2

0 500 1000 1500 2000

days

PMs are not party leaders before elections

Conflicts under unified executive and cohabitation

25

Table 10 Impact of principal-agent relations and party relations before elections

Party leadership roles before elections PR Conflicts PM Conflicts PARTY Conflicts

PR is NOT Leader Across scenarios 1.51* 1.62*** 0.64

PR Leader Across scenarios 0.52** 0.40*** 0.31**

PR is NOT Leader Cohab 1.00 2.03** 1.08

PR Leader Cohab 0.80** 1.14** 0.49

PR is NOT Leader Unified & Cohab 1.18 1.60** 0.91

PR Leader Unified & Cohab 0.68*** 0.65* 0.26

PR is NOT Leader Divided & Cohab 1.57* 1.76** 0.51

PR Leader Divided & Cohab 0.37** 0.43*** 0.46***

Note: * p

26

difference for the ability of presidents and prime ministers to control cabinet composition:

presidents are in a better position to influence the deselection of ministers during periods

of unified executive, while prime ministers gain control over cabinet members under

cohabitation. The fact that conflicts with the president are not completely risk-free even

under cohabitation confirms Duverger’s (1996: 517) expectation that although presidents

have fewer power than prime ministers when this scenario occurs, they are still not

completely powerless. However, the expectations regarding the balance of power between

party principals and party agents have not been met.

Second, party principals do not seem to increase their control over cabinet

composition under cohabitation compared to periods of unified executive. This finding

indicates that the party principal’s influence over ministers does not depend only on

whether presidents are able to turn cabinet members into their own agents, but also on the

authority and autonomy of prime ministers relative to their own parties. In other words,

the leadership resources and autonomy of prime ministers from their parties have the

same effect on limiting the party principal’s control over its minister agents as

unaccountable agents in a directly elected presidential office. Surprisingly, party

principals appeared in a better position to hold ministers accountable during a period of

divided executive, when the president and the prime minister were both acting as the

facto party leaders. These results may indicate that intra-executive deadlock between the

president and the prime minister may shift the balance of power in the favour of party

principals. However, as the data related to ministerial turnover under divided executive is

limited to just one occurrence of this scenario in only one country, this result should be

interpreted with caveats.

Third, by taking into account the positions held by prime ministers and presidents

in the party hierarchy before and after elections, one can explain why executive scenarios

make a difference for the authority of some presidents and prime ministers over cabinet

composition but not for others. Both presidents and prime ministers have more control

over cabinet members if they contest elections as party leaders. Due to the institutional

configuration of semi-presidential systems, prime ministers were shown to keep a strong

grip over cabinet members during periods of cohabitation regardless of their position in

the party hierarchy before or after elections. However, the analysis has also shown that

prime ministers who led their parties during the preceding general elections were able to

control the cabinet under all executive scenarios, not only during cohabitation. Similarly,

presidents who are party leaders before elections are able to preserve some influence over

27

cabinet composition even under cohabitation. However, due to the institutional

configuration of semi-presidential systems, prime ministers were shown to keep a strong

grip over cabinet members during periods of cohabitation regardless of their position in

the party hierarchy before or after elections. These findings highlight not only the

considerable weight of intraparty politics on executive politics, but also the impact of

informal hierarchies of party relationships on the extent of political leadership. They

provide substantial evidence that de facto leadership positions and informal party

hierarchies make a difference for the extent of both presidential and prime ministerial

leadership in cabinet governments.

Conclusion

The findings of this paper cast a new light on the joint impact of political

institutions and formal and informal party hierarchies on ministerial accountability.

Institutional factors account to a certain extent for the variation in presidential and prime

ministerial influence over cabinet composition. Nevertheless, institutional factors alone

cannot explain why some presidents are more powerful than others under similar

institutional conditions and why some prime ministers keep a tight grip on their cabinets

regardless of the variation in institutional conditions. By taking into account both

institutions and internal party politics, this paper has shown that presidents are able to

influence cabinet composition only when they come to office as party leaders. Similarly,

prime ministers who take office as party leaders keep a tight grip on their cabinets

regardless of variation in institutional conditions, while prime ministers who are not de

facto leaders are faced with an increased level of presidential activism. These findings

bear out the impact of internal party politics on ministerial accountability in semi-

presidential systems and account for the discrepancy between the formal powers held by

political actors and their actual influence over the cabinet.

The findings of this paper also speak to the debate regarding the challenges faced

by the party government model in modern democracies. Party politics scholars have

highlighted the challenges faced by party government over time (Katz 1986, 1987; Mair

2008) and the need to assess how well this model fits contemporary democracies, whether

new or long-established (Webb et al. 2002; Webb and White 2007). This paper has

focused on one aspect of party government, the personnel involved in the governing

process. As the ideological differences between political parties wane, the parties’ ability

28

to place their agents in governmental institutions is seen as one of the sinews of party

government (Kopecký et al. 2012). However, the selection and deselection of ministers

should be regarded as twin conditions for party government. After all, if patronage is

regarded as a mechanism through which parties ensure the provision of safe pair of hands

in key corners of the policy-making process (Kopecký and Mair 2012: 12), then parties

should also be able to remove the office-holders who deviate from the preferred positions

of their patrons. So, the extent to which parties can fire their agents is a good

complementary test for the extent of their control over the executive decision-making

process and can be used as a direct and measurable indicator of party government.

Finally, the variation in the balance of power between party principals and party

agents as a function of the president’ and the prime minister’s leadership resources draws

attention to the trend towards the “presidentialisation” of political leadership in modern

democracies (Poguntke and Webb 2005a). This paper adds to the literature pointing to

increase in the leadership resources and autonomy of chief executives from their parties

across regime types (Poguntke and Webb 2005a; Webb et al. 2012). By studying the

implications of this phenomenon for the chief executives’ ability to hold cabinet members

accountable, this paper speaks to the “executive” and the “party” faces of

presidentialisation that characterise the tension between political parties and their leaders

(Poguntke and Webb 2005b).

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