In the last two decades, the study of government formation in presidential systems has evolved substantially to become one of the most vibrant research agendas in the study of presidentialism. Skepticism about the sustainability of presidential institutions gave way to sophisticated theories about the conditions that make it more likely that inter-party cooperation will arise in government formation and about the institutional and political conditions under which this cooperation is more likely to last and, ultimately, to provide a fertile ground for democracy.
The Presidential Cabinets Project (PCP) seeks to contribute to this broad literature by bringing together a group of researchers to address a number of theoretical and empirical issues that we consider are still outstanding in the literature on portfolio allocation. Empirically, the biggest issue is the lack of systematic data on presidential cabinets that is comparable across a wide number of presidential systems and that is publicly available. Several individual researchers have collected data on a single country or a set of countries, but these efforts have produced datasets with different cases, criteria and structure, making comparative work difficult. One of the main goals of our project is to generate this type of data and make it publicly available in the Project’s website (under construction).
Additionally, the PCP is built on the idea that the deep knowledge and expertise of local researchers is invaluable in understanding portfolio allocation and cabinet dynamics. To leverage this local knowledge, the PCP is composed of dedicated country teams, each in charge of following the cabinets in their country and gathering detailed data on minister recruitment and cabinet composition.
Theoretically, the PCP is rooted in a framework that sees the allocation of portfolios as a central tool that presidents use to balance the resources they need to design and implement their agenda. Our research coincides with existing work that cabinet appointments are essential as part of the president’s legislative strategy (see for example Amorim Neto 2006, Martinez-Gallardo 2014). Beyond the political support required to build a legislative majority, however, we argue that presidents also use appointments to secure the technical expertise needed to design and implement policy, and the loyalty they need to fend off political challenges within and outside their party. These traits are not mutually exclusive—they can even coexist in a single individual. But, most typically presidents will appoint ministers with different characteristics, professional trajectories, and political allegiances, in order to balance these resources and maximize the likelihood they will reach their political and policy goals.
The PCP moves beyond the focus on the legislative logic of portfolio allocation in a couple of important ways. First, we revisit the partisan connection between ministers and their party in the legislature. Explanations of portfolio allocation based on the legislative goals of the presidents rely heavily on the assumption that partisan ministers are in the cabinet with the explicit endorsement of their political party in the legislature. This assumption, however, is not always borne out in reality; in some countries (like Argentina) partisanship is routinely overestimated although party ties tend to be weak in practice. In other cases, like Ecuador, partisanship is hard to determine and the extent of support for the president in congress can be easily underestimated.
The PCP also tries to move away from binary definitions (partisan/non-partisan) to look more carefully at whether ministers have the active support of their party and the explicit charge to represent the party’s interests in the cabinet. We code the partisanship of ministers in two ways. First, country teams follow convention and code partisanship as dichotomous, considering as partisan any member who belongs to a political party and as non-partisan any minister for whom there is no evidence of membership to a party (Partisan in Figure 1 below). A second variable, however, is based on the following three categories: Non-partisans are ministers for whom there is no evidence of membership in a political party; Soft partisans are ministers for whom there is evidence of membership in a political party and Strict partisans are ministers for whom there is evidence of active membership in a political party.
Figure 1 uses data on ministers in fourteen presidential countries in the Americas to compare traditional dichotomous measures of partisanship with the PCPs distinction between soft and strict partisans. It is clear from the figure that dichotomous measures of partisanship miss a lot of variation in the degree of connection between ministers and their party in the legislature—and thus, in the extent to which partisan appointments guarantee presidents the legislative support they seek. In some countries (Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic), dichotomous measures do not miss much information; in others, however, party ties are much weaker. In Honduras, for example, although most ministers have some ties to a political party, only about 40% are active members of a party and thus can be expected to act as reliable agents of the party. The same is true in Colombia and the United States.
Figure 1. Different measures of partisanship in presidential systems in the Americas
Second, the focus on the president’s legislative strategy has meant that ministers are typically described exclusively in terms of their partisan affiliation. But current research has failed to recognize—and explain—the strategic importance of other, non-partisan appointments (for exceptions, see Camerlo and Perez-Linán 2015 and Martínez-Gallardo and Schleiter 2015). Beyond the construction of legislative majorities through partisan appointments, we argue that the appointment of non-partisan ministers also serves distinct purposes as part of presidents’ wider political strategy. The PCP teams describe ministers based not only on their party membership, but also the extent of their technical or policy skills and their loyalty to the president.
Figure 2 describes the inaugural cabinets in eight presidential countries in the Americas, combining information on ministers’ expertise and partisan affiliation. As the Figure shows, the emphasis on partisanship typical of current work on portfolio allocation, masks interesting variation in the types of skills ministers bring to the cabinet and on their contribution to the president’s political and policy strategy. Comparing the composition of cabinets in the United States and Peru, for example, we can see that the percentage of ministers with an affiliation to a party (Partisan + Party Expert) is similar (around 40%). However, if we delve deeper and look at ministers who also have policy expertise, we can see that most partisan ministers in the United States are also policy experts, while in Peru only a very small proportion of ministers affiliated to parties can be described as experts.
Figure 2. Profiles of ministers in presidential systems in the Americas
In the last decades we have learned a lot about government formation in presidential regimes. Through the PCP, we want to contribute to this literature by refining and rethinking some of the basic premises that have guided this research. Most centrally, we rethink the predominance of partisanship in studies of portfolio allocation, at the expense of other important criteria such as expertise and loyalty. We agree that it is impossible to understand presidents’ portfolio allocation strategies without taking into account the party membership of ministers. But to expand our understanding of portfolio allocation we need to include in our theories the appointment of ministers with different profiles that bring to the cabinet their policy expertise, their connections with other groups or social actors, and/or their personal loyalty to the president, and not only their association with a political party.
Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the executive in Latin America, including work on government formation, portfolio allocation and the dynamics of presidential approval.
Marcelo Camerlo is a researcher at ICS-Universidade de Lisboa; co-ordinator at Presidential Cabinets Project.