Journal Articles

Choosing Whom to Trust Agency Risks and Cabinet Partisanship in Presidential Democracies

---

Presidential cabinets include on average more nonparty ministers than governments in any other form of democracy, and critics of presidentialism have argued that this compromises representativeness, accountability, and governability. Yet cabinet partisanship in presidential democracies remains poorly understood. Existing studies argue that the partisan composition of cabinets reflects the degree to which presidents prioritize building legislative support. We demonstrate that a better understanding of government formation requires attention to a second dimension of choice: agency risks. Focusing on the relationship between presidents and their own parties, which is at the core of every presidential government, we show that party-affiliated ministers are not always reliable agents for presidents and that presidents appoint nonpartisan ministers to limit agency loss. We test this argument using original data on the partisanship of single-party cabinets in 12 Latin American countries and find support for the key claims.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Comparative Political Studies

Call Number

-

Publisher

Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications., 2015

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0010-4140

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Volume 48, Issue 2 February 2015, 231-264

Subject(s)

cabinets
Latin American politics
Presidents and executive politics
Bureaucracies

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment