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Cabinet Composition, Collegiality, and Collectivity: Examining Patterns in Cabinet Committee Structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2021

Kenny William Ie Open the ORCID record for Kenny William Ie [Opens in a new window]
Kenny William Ie*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BCCanada
*
E-mail: kenny.ie@ubc.ca
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Abstract

This article examines one arena of decision-making in cabinet government: cabinet committees. It assesses the relationship between the composition of cabinets – their party make-up – and the structure of cabinet committees. Cabinet committees are groups of ministers tasked with specific policy or coordination responsibilities and can be important mechanisms of policymaking and cabinet management. Thus, the structure of committees informs our understanding of how cabinets differ in their distributions of policy influence among ministers and parties, a central concern in parliamentary government. We investigate two such dimensions: collegiality – interaction among ministers – and collectivity, the (de)centralization of influence. We find that cabinet committees in coalitions are significantly more collegial, on average, than single-party cabinets, though this is driven by minority coalitions. At the same time, influence within cabinet committees is less collectively distributed in most types of coalitions than in single-party cabinets.

Keywords

cabinetcoalition governmentcabinet committeesgovernment formation
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 115 - 133
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research

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