This article is made up of two main parts. The first part points out two different definitions of cabinet – that is, functional and legal definitions. It also highlights the strong points and the shortcomings of both, proposing at the same time a new definition more suitable for a comparative analysis. In doing this, it puts forward some useful criteria with a view to establishing what a minister actually is, what a cabinet is and how it is made up. The second part provides an overview of the structures of governments in 38 countries, from core to junior ministers, on this basis.
The concept of career, while ubiquitous in elite research, has hardly received any comprehensive analytical treatment in the study of political executives. This chapter will summarize and develop the basic theoretical and methodological approaches as well as empirical findings of studies investigating political careers of cabinet members in democratic parliamentary and semi-presidential systems at the national level. It is divided into three sections. The first provides a sketch of the basic research questions that have been raised (and discussed) in the field of executive careers studies over the past decades. The second part offers a systematic survey of the current state of the literature concerned with ministers’ and prime ministers’ political careers. The third section presents some avenues for future research, including the potential for further theoretical and methodological improvement, followed by some concluding remarks.
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