Cabinet Turnover in Parliamentary Democracies

这个研究项目考察了议会制民主国家内阁部长更替的模式。该项目开发并测试了一个理论，该理论解释了制度环境和政党制度的特点如何影响个人进出关键内阁职位的决定。在这样做的过程中，它考虑了个人积累技术专家专业知识的动机，这是特定于特定投资组合的，以及政治经验，这对任何投资组合都是有用的。该项目建立在研究政府组建和内阁不稳定性的悠久传统之上，但在几个方面有所不同。首先，该研究考察的是控制投资组合的个人的更替，而不是导致每个政府下台的最终事件。其次，理论方法将授权理论引入到理解首相和政党领导人如何利用人员流动来发现最有才华的人，并在特定时刻将最优秀的人放在最重要的职位上。因此，分析将控制其他人所强调的具有不同偏好的各方之间讨价还价过程的影响，并集中于发展和检验关于促进或阻碍特定类型经验积累的变量的论点。这种方法将注意力引向在内阁不稳定性研究中缺失的解释变量，例如总理的制度特权、政党内部的决策规则以及部长和公务员之间的组织关系。第三，大多数关于内阁治理的研究集中在先进的议会制民主国家，而本研究结合了对先进民主国家和发展中民主国家的研究。更广泛的影响。拟议研究的更广泛影响涉及其对社会的好处，政治科学基础设施的改善，以及独特的教育合作。对社会的益处涉及对如何设计有效民主治理的制度安排的新见解。了解人员流动如何影响决策需要了解导致人员流动的原因。为此，调查人员采取了明确的“制度”视角，考察正式规则在政治制度和政党内部的影响。这使得探索制度安排如何影响民主表现成为可能，使我们能够开始构建更精确和有用的论点，以确定哪些权衡将与不同制度形式的选择相关联。发展这样的论点对于帮助在世界各地建立稳定和成功的民主至关重要。在基础设施方面，该项目将公开提供一些数据集，这些数据集将对进行议会民主研究的学者有用。这些数据包括38个国家的内阁组成数据，以及党内组织、内阁决策制度安排和公务员组织的数据。重要的是，这些数据来自“发达”和“发展中”国家。因此，该项目将使学者们更容易超越学术界经常存在的传统的“发达”国家与“发展中”国家的二分法。最后，关于教育合作，该项目解决了这里描述的形式的社会科学机构研究（即正式模型和经验检验）与政策学校教育之间经常存在的脱节。政策学院的学生通常会参与制定制度改革进程，但他们的政策学院课程通常没有给他们一个清晰的框架来思考这些选择。在这个研究项目中，PI将与哥伦比亚大学国际与公共事务学院来自发展中民主国家的硕士生合作，教授他们理性选择传统的学者如何研究制度权衡，以及如何设计研究以允许对这些权衡提出实证主张。

This research project examines patterns of turnover among cabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies. The project develops and tests a theory that explains how features of the institutional environment and the party system influence decisions to move individuals in and out of key cabinet posts. In so doing, it considers the incentives of individuals to accumulate both technocratic expertise, which is specific to particular portfolios, and political experience, which is useful in any portfolio. The project builds on the long tradition of studying government formation and cabinet instability, but it differs in several respects. First, the research examines turnover in the individuals that control portfolios rather than the terminal events that end each government. Second, the theoretical approach brings theories of delegation to bear on understanding how prime ministers and party leaders use turnover to discover the most talented individuals, and to put the best people in the most important jobs at a given moment. The analysis will therefore control for the effect of bargaining processes among parties with divergent preferences, which have been emphasized by others, and concentrate on developing and testing arguments about variables that facilitate or discourage the accumulation of particular types of experience. This approach directs attention toward explanatory variables that are absent from studies of cabinet instability, such as institutional prerogatives of prime ministers, decision-making rules within political parties, and organizational relationships between ministers andcivil servants. Third, most studies of cabinet governance focus on advanced parliamentarydemocracies, whereas this research combines the study of advanced and developing democracies.Broader impact. The broader impact of the proposed research relate to its benefits to society, infrastructure improvements in political science, and unique educational collaborations. The benefits to society concern new insights into how to design institutional arrangements for effective democratic governance. Understanding how turnover affects policymaking requires knowledge of what causes turnover. To this end, the investigators take an explicitly "institutional" perspective, examining the effects of formal rules within the political system and within political parties. This makes it possible to explore how institutional arrangements affect democratic performance, allowing us to begin building more precise and useful arguments about which tradeoffs will be associated with the choice of different institutional forms. Developing such argument is crucial to aid in the creation of stable and successful democracy around the world.Regarding infrastructure, the project will make publicly available several data sets that will be useful to scholars who conduct research on parliamentary democracies. These include data on cabinet composition in 38 countries, as well as data on internal party organization, institutional arrangements for cabinet decision-making, and civil service organization. Importantly, these data are from both "advanced" and "developing" countries. Consequently, the project will make it easier for scholars to transcend the conventional "advanced" versus "developing" countries dichotomy that often exists in the scholarly community.Finally, regarding educational collaboration, the project addresses a disconnect that often exists between social scientific institutional research of the form described here (i.e., formal models and empirical tests) and education in policy schools. Students from policy schools often go on to become involved in shaping institutional reform processes, but their policy school curriculum typically does not given them a clear framework for thinking about these choices. In this research project, the PI will work with Masters students from developing democracies at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs to teach them how scholars in the rational choice tradition study institutional tradeoffs, and how research can be designed to permit empirical claims about these tradeoffs.