Cabinet Turnover in Parliamentary Democracies

本研究项目探讨了议会民主国家内阁部长的更替模式。该项目开发和测试一种理论，解释制度环境和政党制度的特征如何影响个人进出关键内阁职位的决定。在这样做的时候，它考虑了个人积累技术官僚专门知识和政治经验的动机，技术官僚专门知识是特定投资组合所特有的，政治经验在任何投资组合中都很有用。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，这项研究考察的是控制投资组合的个人的流动率，而不是结束每个政府的最终事件。其次，理论方法将授权理论用于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个人，并在特定时刻将最优秀的人放在最重要的工作岗位上。因此，分析将控制其他人强调的不同偏好的当事方之间谈判过程的影响，并集中于发展和检验关于促进或阻碍积累特定类型经验的变量的论点。这种方法将注意力转向内阁不稳定性研究中缺乏的解释变量，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都集中在先进的民主国家，而本研究则结合了对先进民主国家和发展中民主国家的研究。拟议研究的更广泛影响涉及其对社会的好处，政治学基础设施的改善以及独特的教育合作。对社会的好处是对如何设计有效民主治理的体制安排有了新的认识。要理解人员流动如何影响决策，就需要了解人员流动的原因。为此，调查人员采取了明确的“制度”的角度，审查正式规则在政治制度和政党内部的影响。这使得我们有可能探索制度安排如何影响民主绩效，使我们能够开始建立更精确和有用的论点，关于哪些权衡将与不同制度形式的选择相关联。为了在世界范围内建立稳定、成功的民主制度，开展这样的论证是至关重要的。在基础设施方面，本项目将公开几组数据，这些数据将对研究议会民主制的学者有用。这些数据包括38个国家的内阁组成数据，以及党内组织、内阁决策的体制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，该项目将使学者更容易超越传统的"先进"与"发展中"国家的二分法，往往存在于学术界。最后，关于教育合作，该项目解决了脱节，往往存在于社会科学机构研究的形式在这里描述（即，正式模型和实证测试）和政策学校的教育。来自政策学校的学生通常会参与制定机构改革进程，但他们的政策学校课程通常没有给他们一个明确的框架来思考这些选择。在这个研究项目中，PI将与来自哥伦比亚国际和公共事务学院的发展中民主国家的硕士生合作，教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的经验主张。

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.