Policy Monitoring and Ministerial Survival: Evidence from Multiparty Presidentialism

Abstract

studies on policy monitoring and ministerial survival within coalition governments are usually conducted separately. in this study, we bring these topics together and argue that the strategy of coalition partners to oversee the implementation of one another's policies has surprising consequences on the duration of office-holding ministers. Our main theoretical insight suggests that the degree to which ministers behave as faithful agents of the government depends on their expectations about their partners' monitoring behavior, such that when they expect to be under high scrutiny, they moderate their drifting behavior. using evidence from legislative information requests on the activities of individual ministers over all multiparty cabinets formed in Brazil between 1995 and 2014, we demonstrate that: (1) greater policy monitoring by coalition partners is observed under more ideologically heterogeneous cabinets, and (2) more frequent policy-monitoring efforts by coalition partners lead to a lower ministerial replacement within the government term.the delegation of ministerial authority to different political parties in coalition governments presents a challenge for government officials. Joint governance and a policymaking process marked by separated electoral accountability highlight the fact that cabinet ministers in coalition governments must act under two counteracting pressures-the executive government and their

Too Legit to Quit? Analyzing the Effect of No-Confidence Motions on Cabinet Members’ Instability in Presidential Systems: The Cases of Colombia and Peru

“…However, considering the regime-type setting in which the NCM is proposed, it is relevant to include some analytical elements of presidential systems that might affect the oversight relationship between Congress and the executive power. These are the time constraints (Linz 1990) reflected in the honeymoon period and the electoral calendar (Chaisty et al 2014), and the strength of the ruling party coalition in Congress, built on a strategy of the cabinet portfolio location (Shugart and Carey 1992;Mainwaring and Shugart 1997;Amorim Neto 2006;Cheibub 2007;Alemán and Tsebelis 2011;Kellam 2015;Mejía-Guinand et al 2018;Silva and Medina 2022). In that sense, I derive the following hypotheses: H2.…”

“…Impeachments are proposed by the legislative power to expose presidential mistakes and express discontent after policy shocks (Llanos and Pérez-Li ñán 2021), especially when exposing presidential involvement in corruption scandals (Kim 2014), and partisan support in Congress for the president reduces the hazard of impeachment execution (Martínez 2017). Conversely, cabinets created by ideologically distant party coalitions provide stronger policy supervision among coalition members, resulting in lower ministerial replacement in the government (Silva and Medina 2022). In sum, the current literature on this topic in presidential systems has left out a critical tool of legislative oversight: NCMs toward cabinet members.…”

O partido do presidente do Brasil no Legislativo: centralização de trabalho nas comissões permanentes

“…Contudo, o partido responsável pelo ministério temático controla uma variedade de recursos e de staff que o auxilia a convencer o ministro da Casa Civil sobre a qualidade e adequação de sua proposta. Portanto, há uma assimetria informacional em favor do ministro temático (Laver;Shepsle, 1996;Thies, 2001;Vanberg, 2020) (Kim;Loewenberg, 2005;Carroll;Cox, 2012;Inácio;Rezende, 2015;Fortunato;Vanberg, 2019), via atuação dos relatores, a fim de controlar o conteúdo das proposições durante o seu escrutínio (Freitas, 2016;Vanberg, 2020) e pelo uso de requerimento de informações (Araújo, 2017;Silva;Medina, 2022) A autora demonstra que mais de 80% das alterações realizadas nas matérias apreciadas pelas comissões ocorreram por quem ocupa esse cargo. Desse modo, o processo de alteração de propostas de leis "é coordenado pelos partidos que compõem a maioria, via relatores, que, por sua vez, têm um papel central na construção do consenso em torno das políticas" (Freitas, 2016, p. 111).…”