IntroductionThe exploration of ministerial careers has attracted considerable attention among political scientists in recent years~Dewan and Dowding, 2005;Dowding and Kang, 1998; Martinez-Gallardo, 2004, 2008;Kam, 2006;Kam and Indridason, 2005;Laver and Shepsle, 1994;Sutherland, 1991a; Woodhouse, 1993! The purpose of this article is to present a new perspective on a burgeoning area of study by focusing on ministerial appointments rather than the determinants of ministerial exit or survival. This article introduces an original dataset of ministerial appointments for a single country, Canada, for the period 1935-2008. This dataset serves as the foundation for an event history model that highlights the causal mechanisms that underlie the ministerial appointment process while simultaneously considering the effects of time. The results of the event history analysis systematically confirm many commonly held assumptions regarding cabinet appointments in Canada; they emphasize the particular significance of gender and legal training as well as previous ministerial experience and leadership challenger status as characteristics that accelerate an appointment to cabinet. The article concludes with recommendations for continued research in this field of study.Some certainties can be put assumed when discussing ministerial appointments in Canada. First, most elected representatives to the House of Commons are ambitious and would welcome a seat at the cabinet table.Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Kenneth Benoit, Keith Dowding, Patrick Dumont, Kelly Blidook, Eoin O'Malley, and Denise Ledoux, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers of the CJPS, for their comments and suggestions.
The Canadian federal parliament is unique among Westminster parliamentary democracies due to the unusually high level of voluntary and involuntary MP turnover that occurs at each general election. This article builds on existing research to test the hypothesis that the MP career duration is related to MPs' expectations about parliamentary roles, insofar as voluntary turnover is concerned. Data on MPs drawn from historical records collected by the Library of Parliament and from surveys conducted in 1993 and 20011 are used to develop an event history model which estimates the hazard of voluntary career termination when different parliamentary roles are taken into consideration. Findings suggest that a number of individual factors play a role in voluntary turnover, most notably that MPs who enter Parliament hoping to affect policy are the most likely to move on.
Abstract. The Canadian federal cabinet stands out among Westminster parliamentary democracies because of the large number of first-time ministers who are appointed to cabinet without any previous parliamentary or political experience. Several explanations have been put forward to account for this peculiarity but no attempt has been made to examine how Canadian prime ministers overcome the information deficit associated with appointing ministers with no experience. How can prime ministers be confident that they are making the right choice? This paper explores the subject by estimating the survival functions of ministerial turnover for potential, but not yet appointed, cabinet ministers were they to survive to a defined political benchmark; these survival rates are included in a logit model of Canadian ministerial appointment following four general elections (1957, 1979, 1984 and 2006) in which the prime minister was tasked with appointing a cabinet with ministerial neophytes.Résumé. Le Conseil des ministres fédéral du Canada se démarque dans l'ensemble des démocraties parlementaires britanniques en raison du grand nombre de ministres novices qui sont nommés au Conseil alors qu'ils ne possèdent aucune expérience parlementaire ou politique antérieure. Plusieurs explications de cette anomalie ont été proposées, mais aucune démarche d'analyse ne s'est encore penchée sur la manière dont les premiers ministres du Canada arrivent à surmonter le manque d'information associé à la nomination de ministres sans expérience. Comment les premiers ministres peuvent-ils être certains d'avoir fait le bon choix? Cette étude scrute le sujet en évaluant le coefficient de survie, en cas de remaniement ministériel, pour les ministres du Conseil potentiels, mais pas encore mandatés, advenant que ces derniers survivent à certains jalons politiques précis. Ces taux de survie font partie intégrante d'un modèle de répartition des nominations ministérielles qui sont survenues à la suite de quatre élections générales (1957, 1979, 1984 et 2006) où le premier ministre a dû constituer un Conseil des ministres composé de néophytes.
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