Controlling Agency Loss An Analysis of Ministerial Turnover in

German and Swedish Post-War Cabinets

Hanna Bäck

Department of Political Science

Lund University

Hanna.Back@svet.lu.se

Henk Erik Meier

Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences

University of Münster

Henk.Erik.Meier@uni-muenster.de

Thomas Persson

Department of Government

Uppsala University

Thomas.Persson@statsvet.uu.se

Paper for presentation at the 70th Annual MPSA Conference in Chicago, April 12–15 2012.

1

Abstract

By framing parliamentary democracies as based upon a ‘chain of delegation’, we aim to

contribute to the understanding of principal-agent relationships within the core executive. In

order to do so, we examine discretionary reshuffles of cabinet ministers by the PM. We

assume that ministers are likely to survive longer on their posts when they have been

extensively ‘screened’ before appointment. Thus, ministers with parliamentary experience,

high party positions, previous ministerial experience, and more salient ministerial posts

should be less likely to be dismissed. However, we assume that if the PM exerts less control

over ministerial selection, he or she faces higher risks of agency loss since screening

processes may work less efficiently to align the interests of the PM and the ministers, which

is likely to result in different dismissal patterns. In order to evaluate these hypotheses, we

analyze cabinet reshuffles within two political systems where the PM faces very different

constraints, Sweden and Germany. The results show that ministers in Sweden are likely to

survive longer on their posts if they have been extensively screened. No such effects are

found for Germany, in line with the argument that Chancellors are more severely

constrained when it comes to selecting cabinet members.

2

Introduction

An increasing amount of power in contemporary political systems revolves around the

government. In order to assess the democratic quality of a political system, it is therefore of

utmost importance to determine who has control of the core executive. We follow authors

who have characterized parliamentary democracies as based upon an uninterrupted ‘chain of

delegation’, where citizens or voters delegate power to representatives, who in turn delegate

power to a cabinet and a PM, who delegates power to ministers (Strøm 2000; Müller 2000).

However, such delegation of power may create considerable problems if ministers as agents

do not act in accordance with the interests of their principals.

Several researchers have stressed that the selection and de-selection of ministers is an

important element of any control over the core executive since it defines actors’ opportunity

to mitigate the typical delegation problems (cf. Dowding and Dumont 2008). While

extensive ‘screening’ is the most important ex ante measure to avoid agency loss arising

from delegation, the most important ex post measure is to simply end the principal-agent

relationship. Thus, the opportunity to dismiss ministers that are deemed incompetent,

disloyal or exceeding their range of discretion is typically characterized as an effective

instrument for the PM to sanction agency loss.

The main aim of the paper is to contribute to our understanding of PA relationships

within the core executive in different institutional settings by examining discretionary

reshuffles by the PM. We evaluate four hypotheses focusing on the fact that agency loss is

less likely to be present when ministers have been carefully ‘screened’ before appointment,

suggesting that ministers are likely to survive longer on their posts when they have been

members of parliament, when they hold or have held high positions in their party, when they

have previous ministerial experience, and when they hold more salient ministerial posts.

While we share a view on parliamentary democracies as based upon an uninterrupted

‘chain of delegation’, we side with recent accounts that have pointed to the existence of

‘competing principals’ in parliamentary democracies (see e.g., Kam et al. 2010).

Accordingly, a number of political actors compete in order to align ministers to act in their

interest. By implication, these competing principals might hold strong preferences regarding

the staffing of the cabinet and might impose constraints on the PM’s control over ministerial

selection. We believe that a more constrained PM might face higher risks of agency loss

than a PM with fewer constraints, which is likely to result in different dismissal patterns.

Moreover, limited control over ministerial selection implies that screening mechanisms do

not necessarily reduce the PM’s risk of agency loss.

In order to examine the relevance of some of these constraints, we employ a comparative

research design. Thus, we present two quantitative case studies on cabinet reshuffles within

two political systems where the PM faces very different constraints, that is, Sweden and

Germany. The results show that cabinet ministers in Sweden are likely to survive longer on

their posts if they have been members of parliament, and if they hold more salient posts. No

such effects are found for Germany, in line with the argument that the German Chancellor is

more constrained when it comes to selecting ministers and to deal with agency loss ex ante.

3

Theory and hypotheses

The principal-agent framework and delegation problems in cabinets

Parliamentary democracies represent complex systems of delegation since they are based on

an uninterrupted ‘chain of delegation’ that has its origin in the electorate and reaches to

legislatures acting as principal of the executive and to the PM as principal of the ministers

(Strøm 2000). As principal-agent (PA) theory suggests, such delegation relationships require

the principal to employ several control mechanisms to mitigate ‘agency loss’.

In terms of democratic accountability, the control of the executive branch is of utmost

importance since delegating executive power to PMs and ministers alike inevitably implies

granting them a substantial range of discretion. Moreover, the double role of the PM, who

serves as an agent of the entire legislature, of his or her party and of the coalition partners,

and as principal of the cabinet ministers, creates a complex system of competing principals

(Kam et al. 2010; Bäck, Debus and Müller 2011, 2011b; Carey 2007). These complex

relationships can potentially increase the risk of agency loss. Therefore, researchers have

increasingly focused on PA problems within governments and addressed how legislatures

and PMs mitigate delegation problems (se e.g. Martin & Vanberg 2005; Strøm et al. 2010).

Here, we follow the suggestion of PA theory to distinguish analytically between

delegation problems arising from adverse selection and from moral hazard. The problem of

adverse selection arises when the principal does not have access to relevant information

(e.g. preferences and competencies) about potential agents. Moral hazard problems, on the

other hand, arise when agents, once they have been selected, have motives to act in ways

that are contrary to the principal’s interests (Strøm 2000: 270–1).

In general, the main control mechanism to avoid adverse selection is to apply ex ante

control mechanisms, that is, extensive screening of potential candidates for ministerial posts.

For legislatures, such screening is central for aligning the preferences of the candidates for

key political offices since legislatures often lack credible mechanisms for ex post oversight

and control. Usually, the screening of potential cabinet members is performed by

centralized, cohesive, policy-oriented political parties (see Müller 2000; Strøm 2003).

However, ex ante screening of politicians by political parties refers to a multidimensional

bundle of distinct abilities, such as, competence, loyalty, ambition and talent to mobilize the

electorate. These abilities are not necessarily intercorrelated and political parties might hold

a preference for charismatic members who are loyal to the party’s doctrine and traditions

(Bäck et al. 2012), but who lack the specific skills a minister needs. Such skills involve

technical expertise, the political skills to compromise with key actors, to interact effectively

with the press, to defend government policies before parliament and court, and to manage

civil servants (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008: 169-70).

Therefore, even extensive screening by various principals does not necessarily serve to

mitigate problems of adverse selection for the PM. At the time of appointment, the PM

might still not have complete information about a minister’s abilities to run a department

effectively and in accordance with the PM’s wishes (Indridason and Kam 2008: 16).

4

Using cabinet reshuffles to control agency loss

However, the power to sanction agency loss ex post is mainly in the hands of PMs who have

the formal power to hire and fire cabinet ministers at will, subject only to the ultimate need

to maintain the confidence of the legislature. As previously argued, the PM might decide to

rely on reshuffles to sanction agency loss for several reasons (Bäck et al. 2012).1

First, dismissals serve to mitigate the adverse selection problem ex post by ‘re-matching’

portfolio and talents or weeding out of ‘bad’ ministers (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008;

Indridason and Kam 2008). In so far, reshuffling serves to ensure that the cabinet is staffed

with the right person at the right post (see e.g., Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2004).

Second, the PM faces moral hazard problems that can arise from ‘ministerial drift’ since

‘all ministers have motive and opportunity to use their portfolios in a manner that runs

against the PM’s interests’ (Indridason and Kam 2008: 624). Some of these moral hazard

problems can arise from the fact that the PM is not in control of screening and selection

procedures for potential cabinet members, which is particularly evident when the PM

presides over a coalition government. As competing principals, the (coalition) parties are

likely to select ministers that might feel more loyal to the party doctrine than to the policy

considerations of the PM, which increases the risk of ministerial drift (in relation to the

PM’s ‘wishes’). Moreover, the party might even force the PM to accept ambitious rivals as

cabinet members, which again makes ministerial drift within the cabinet more likely.

Furthermore, as heads of government departments, ministers face a partially different

incentive structure than the PM, prompting them to implement policies different from those

favored by the PM. As Indridason and Kam (2008) have put it, a minister’s political

fortunes are at least partly independent of those of the government as a whole. For example,

ministers may have their own policy preferences. Moreover, ministerial drift can arise from

the fact that ministers show a tendency to become too aligned with their particular portfolio

and the sectoral interests associated with it (Andeweg 2000). Certain interest groups that

represent a ministry’s core clientele could also be seen as competing principals if they

possess the ability to sanction a minister’s policy decision by mobilizing the public or

withdrawing essential policy support. In result, the minister might adopt a sectoral

perspective, which is likely to create conflicts with the PM’s more general policy aims.

Therefore, the ‘re-matching’ of ministers and portfolios can prevent ministers from ‘going

native’ and contribute to policy innovation by outsiders.

Furthermore, from a PA perspective, the contract between the PM as a principal and the

minister as her or his agent is unavoidably ‘incomplete’ (Hart and Moore 1988). In other

words, the PM will never be able to specify all policy consequences of every possible event

that can arise in a dynamic and complex policy environment. Thus, policy disagreement

between the PM and ministers is likely to emerge as new policy issues materialize during

the cabinet term. Therefore, reshuffles can be necessary to sanction ministerial drift arising

from incomplete contracts and to realign a ministry’s policy.

1 Our reasoning is not to suggest that all reshuffling is due to delegation problems. We are well aware

that in some cases reshuffles represent purely a tactical device serving the central strategic goal of the

PM to stay leader of government (see e.g., Kam and Indridason 2005; Dewan and Dowding 2005).

5

Finally, since cabinet members are always colleagues and rivals for the PM, some

ministers might develop higher ambitions and may even try to challenge the incumbent PM.

Acting as head of a certain ministry might serve ambitious highflyers to gain reputation or

to create a power base independent of the PM. Such ministerial drift can be sanctioned ex

post by employing cabinet reshuffles. Empirical studies have also shown that PMs seem to

use reshuffles when they face intra-party rivals (cf. Kam and Indridason 2005).

Our reasoning on control mechanisms for mitigating agency loss allows us to formulate

some expectations on which ministers are more likely to be dismissed. First, we assume that

extensive screening of potential cabinet members serves to effectively reduce the risk of

agency loss, which suggests that the PM’s need to reshuffle in the cabinet is diminished

when ministers have specific backgrounds. In particular, we suggest that the legislative

venue allows ex ante screening of potential ministers in terms of their competence and

loyalty. Accordingly, we hypothesize that:

H1: Ministers with parliamentary background are likely to last longer on their posts.

Moreover, it seems reasonable to assume that having a successful party career, indicated by

individuals holding high party positions, serves as an alternative or additional screening

mechanism for selecting competent and loyal ministers. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

H2: Ministers with high positions in their party are likely to last longer on their posts.

Regardless of all ex ante screening mechanisms, none of the involved principals has

complete information about the abilities and the loyalty of a prospective minister until she or

he starts heading a department. Thus, if only executive performance provides reliable

information about the ministerial qualities of a politician, previous experience represents the

most effective screening mechanism to avoid agency loss. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

H3: Ministers with previous cabinet experience are likely to last longer on their posts.

You may of course also argue that ministers with previous cabinet experience are more

likely to have developed a certain type of competence, which could also explain a positive

correlation between experience and survival. However, we should note that in their studies

of British ministers, Berlinski et al. (2007, 2012) found evidence that was not in line with

this hypothesis – instead, cabinet members with ministerial experience faced higher hazard

rates than those without such experience. Berlinski et al. (2007: 258-9) suggest that this

counter-intuitive finding may be explained by the fact that for a minister, the marginal gains

from remaining in office diminish over time.

Concerning the question of which portfolios are more likely to be affected by reshuffles

or de-selection, there are some different suggestions. Indridason and Kam (2008: 623-4)

stress that the risk of ministerial drift is particularly high for politically more important or

complex portfolios. Monitoring of complex portfolios is more difficult and at the same time

more needed since in ‘politically influential departments even small deviations from the

PM’s ideal point can blow the whole government off course’. By implication, reshuffles will

6

in particular be used to control ministers responsible for important portfolios. In contrast,

Huber and Martinez-Gallardo (2008: 172) argue that ministers who have the greatest

potential to influence policy, which is assumed to be those who hold ‘portfolios that are

most central to the government’s policy agenda’, are more likely to be carefully screened at

the time of appointment. By implication, ministers holding important portfolios are less

likely to be affected by reshuffles because they have been more intensely screened before

taking office. Following Huber and Martinez-Gallardo (2008), we hypothesize that:

H4: Ministers holding important portfolios are likely to last longer on their posts.

However, other arguments can also be made in support of this hypothesized effect of

saliency on cabinet reshuffles. For example, the PM may be more constrained when it

comes to ‘firing’ untouchable political ‘heavyweights’, who are likely to hold the most

important posts in the cabinet (Bäck et al. 2012). A government, might also use the less

prestigious portfolios to test new and young ministers’ readiness for ministerial tenure. If it

turns out that they are not capable, it is less problematic for a government to lose a Minister

of Culture than a Minister of Finance (Hansen et al. 2012). Previous empirical evidence has

also shown that ministers with higher ‘rank’, or holding more important portfolios, are less

likely to be reshuffled (cf. Berlinski et al. 2007; Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008).

Competing principals and potential constraints

So far, we have focused on the fact that agency loss can be mitigated by careful ex ante

screening. However, as Huber and Martinez-Gallardo (2008) have argued, the political

context affects the probability of adverse selection as well as the capacity of politicians to

respond to agency loss. Thus, whereas the power to select and dismiss ministers is formally

in the hand of PMs, she or he competes with other principals trying to align ministers with

their specific preferences and to make them act as ‘their’ agents. By analyzing data on the

ideological positions on cabinet members in Britain, Kam et al. (2010) show that it is

backbenchers and not party leaders who act as principals to ministerial agents. Thus, party

leaders appear far from being all-powerful when it comes to ministerial selection.

As already argued, the existence of competing principals makes it likely that the PM is

still confronted with problems of adverse selection since other principals’ interests may not

align with the PM’s. This is particularly likely, when the PM resides over a coalition

government and has to accept the coalition partners’ proposals for staffing the cabinet

(Müller and Meyer 2010). Moreover, following arguments presented by Berlinski et al.

(2007) and Huber and Martinez-Gallardo (2008), we suggest that coalition governments

decrease the competition for leadership positions within government and, accordingly,

increase the risk of adverse selection, in particular when the involved parties are small.

In general, we assume that PMs exerting little control over ministerial selection due to

the existence of competing principals, will face higher risks of agency loss than PMs who

are able to control the ministerial selection process. Therefore, PMs facing higher

constraints on ministerial selection should have more need to sanction agency loss ex post.

While this higher need to use ex post mechanisms to control agency loss might not be

reflected in a higher frequency of reshuffles (since PMs constrained on selection might also

7

be constrained when it comes to de-selection), a PM facing constraints to control ministerial

selection should at least reshuffle for different reasons. Since competing principals’ control

over the selection process does not avoid adverse selection and moral hazard, a constrained

PM is more likely to be confronted with substantial risks of agency loss resulting from

policy conflicts and performance failures within the cabinet. Therefore, we theorize that:

H5: PMs are more likely to de-select ministers due to policy conflicts and performance

failures in settings where ministerial selection by the PM is highly constrained.

Moreover, if competing principals exert substantial influence over ministerial selection,

their control should affect the efficiency of ex ante screening mechanisms for the PM. In

other words, competing principals will also rely on extensive ex ante screening of ‘their’

candidates for the cabinet in order to align them with their preferences. By implication, in a

setting where the PM exerts little control over ministerial selection, the fact that a minister

has been extensively screened through various channels before assuming office does not

necessarily imply that the minister’s characteristics has been successfully aligned with the

PM’s preferences. Thus, in a highly constrained setting, screening mechanisms do not

necessarily work in a manner satisfactory for the PM. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

H6: The effects of the ‘screening’ variables (H1–H4) on ministerial tenure should be

smaller in settings where ministerial selection by the PM is highly constrained.

Hence, we suggest a conditional effect of our main variables, where we should see stronger

effects of the various background or portfolio variables related to the screening of potential

ministers in contexts where ministerial selection is not too severely constrained.

We have so far focused mainly on the needs that the PM faces when it comes to using

the de-selection instrument to deal with agency loss. But the PM may of course also face

severe constraints when it comes to de-selection, that is, a number of factors may influence

the PM’s ability to reshuffle in the cabinet. For example, the competing principals might

even be willing and able to engage in conflict with the PM when the PM tries to unilaterally

sanction agency loss by dismissing ministers. Therefore, the existence of competing

principals is also likely to impose constraints on the PM’s ability to deal with agency

problems ex post. Previous research has consistently found that reshuffles are more frequent

when the PM enjoys more freedom in terms of de-selection in relation to other ministers,

party factions and coalition parties (e.g., Budge 1985; Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008).

To sum up, we here hypothesize that ministers who have a parliamentary background,

who hold high positions in their party, who have ministerial experience, and who hold more

salient portfolios, have been more carefully screened, and should therefore last longer on

their posts. In addition, we also specify one hypothesis dealing with the fact that if the PM is

highly constrained when selecting ministers, he or she may face higher needs to reshuffle

the cabinet in order to deal with agency loss. In the following section, we describe our

research design, aimed at measuring the effects of the various features on ministerial

survival in two countries with varying levels of constraints, Germany and Sweden.

8

Methods and data

Case selection: a comparative case study of Germany and Sweden

In political systems with relatively low constraints on the chief executive, the PM should be

able to act more effectively as dominant principal of her/his ministers. Therefore, we

assume that formal constraints, such as constitutional constraints and the number of veto

points within the political system are decisive mediating factors behind the PM’s discretion.

Moreover, informal and normative constraints can also prevent the PM from de-selecting

ministers at her/his own discretion. With this in mind, we have chosen to study two

countries where the scope for action by the PM differs considerably, Germany and Sweden.

The most striking difference between the two countries is that the German Chancellor is

more constrained than the Swedish Prime Minister. This reflects the fact that Germany is a

federal state with many veto actors whereas Sweden is a unitary state with fewer veto

players. But there are also additional explanations that are rooted in the two countries’

different political cultures.

From a constitutional standpoint, the Swedish PM has enjoyed increasing freedom of

action in this regard over time (Bergman et al. 2003: 186-88; Bäck, Persson, Vernby and

Wockelberg 2009). The PM may in fact appoint or dismiss a minister at any time, and there

are no constraints on replacement options except that a minister must be a Swedish citizen.

Moreover, Swedish PMs often preside over single-party cabinets freeing the PM from

coalition constraints. Despite there being few formal restrictions on PMs, informal rules or

norms still limit the scope for action. These norms vary across cabinets. For instance, the

task facing a Social Democratic PM has been described as solving ‘a puzzle in a tight frame’

(Elmbrant 1989: 264), meaning that the PM must take into account a number of restrictions

that competing principals try to impose on her/him. For example, the PM must consider

representativeness in terms of gender, regions, and party factions.

However, the German Chancellor has even less leeway when it comes to selecting and

replacing ministers. The selection of ministers resides only formally completely in the hands

of the Chancellor (Bergman et al. 2003: 186-88). However, the Chancellor’s freedom to

select ministers is constrained because coalition governments are typical for Germany.

Thus, the coalition treaty of the ‘grand coalition’ between Christian Democrats and Social

Democrats of 2005 stated explicitly that the right to propose ministers was preserved to the

coalition parties and not to the Chancellor. However, such constraints on the Chancellor’s

power were common also before such ‘formalization’. Moreover, coalition parties are not

completely free to choose their own candidates – instead candidates completely

unacceptable to one partner are usually vetoed (Saalfeld 2000). Furthermore, German

federalism requires the Chancellor to appoint ministers from different federal states in order

to secure support in the Second chamber, the Bundesrat (Fischer and Kaiser 2009).

Therefore, the destiny of ministers rests not only with the federal Chancellor but also with

the minister’s own party (Fischer et al 2006: 730).

Thus, given relatively lower informal constraints when it comes to ministerial selection

in Sweden and higher informal constraints in Germany, we expect that the Swedish PM is

more likely to be able to rely on various screening mechanisms to control agency loss ex

ante, that is, the needs to control for agency loss ex post through reshuffles should be lower.

9

On the other hand, it is also possible that the ability to control for agency loss through

cabinet reshuffles may differ between the countries. The fact that the PM in Sweden has

more control over the de-selection process, for example due to the fact that he has presided

mainly over single-party cabinets, suggests that the PM may also face lower challenges

when dealing with agency problems ex post. It is therefore conceivable that constrained and

unconstrained PMs likewise do not employ many discretionary reshuffles because

constrained PMs have no opportunity to do so and unconstrained PMs face substantially less

agency loss. This suggests that it is important to control for various constraints facing the

PM when it comes to de-selecting ministers in our analysis. Such control features are further

described in the following section.

Data on ministerial background and exit reasons

Our research design builds on earlier studies of ministerial tenure and reshuffles (e.g.

Dowding and Kang 1998; Dewan and Dowding 2005; Berlinski et al. 2007). Unfortunately,

there exists no common definition of reshuffles within the literature. Some scholars have

adopted a rather narrow definition, restricting the term ‘reshuffles’ to the ‘simultaneous

movement or replacement of two or more ministers’ (Budge 1985: 330, see also:

Woldendorp et al. 1993; Kam and Indridason 2005; Indridason and Kam 2008). Others use

the term reshuffle simply as a synonym for ministerial resignation (Bäck, Persson, Vernby

and Wockelberg 2009; Berlinski et al. 2009). The reason for choosing a narrow definition of

reshuffles is some scholars’ concern that ‘isolated personnel moves’ are caused by purely

idiosyncratic factors defying causal analysis. A more theoretical reason for using a narrow

definition is the belief that such moves by the PM clearly indicate her willingness to trade

off organizational stability for other objectives (Kam and Indridason 2005).

In contrast, we focus here on the PM’s ability to act as a principal monitoring and

sanctioning cabinet ministers. Therefore, our definition of ministerial reshuffles focuses on

the question whether the PM dismisses ministers at his/her own discretion, which can be

addressed by examining exit reasons. Thus, a reshuffle is here defined as a ministerial

resignation indicating a sanctioning of agency loss by the PM. By implication, resignations

of ministers for reasons of health, death, retirement and outside appointment are not covered

by that definition. Based on these considerations, we have gathered micro-level data on

individual ministers’ appointments and terminations including among others, exit reasons.

Since we are here not focusing on evaluating whether constitutional conventions or just

public pressures force ministers to resign, we do not study ‘non-events’ (for such an

approach, cf. Dowding and Kang 1998; Dewan and Dowding 2005; Fischer et al. 2007).

For the coding of exit reasons, we rely on the coding scheme as suggested by the

SEDEPE (Selection and Deselection of Political Elites, SEDEPE 2011) network that

represents a refinement of the design employed by Dowding and Kang (1998) (cf.

appendix). As mentioned above, we are mostly interested in exit reasons indicating an

exercise of PM power intended to sanction agency loss due to for example policy

disagreement or performance failure. Thus, we focus on Policy disagreement, Departmental

error, Performance failure, and Cabinet reshuffles as ‘discretionary’ exit reasons, whereas

other exits, more specifically, Retirement/outside appointment, Personality clash, Financial

scandal, are seen as ‘non-discretionary’.

10

The main Swedish data source is a data set on all 609 ministerial spells2 under the post-

war period. Data consists of information on 211 individuals in altogether 24 cabinets. For

each spell we coded an exit reason or censored it respectively in case the minister lasted in

office until the end of the government. Similarly, the German data encompasses all 474

ministerial spells since the formation of the Federal Republic in 1949. It includes 190

individuals who served in 23 cabinets. Based on historical accounts (Kempf and Merz 2001,

2008), we have coded primary exit reasons for every minister leaving office.

To measure our main independent variables, we also need information on a number of

background features of the ministers, and we therefore coded such information on the basis

of biographical information available on each cabinet member, drawing on various

handbooks and webpages, following the SEDEPE codebook (see also Bäck, Dumont, Meier,

Persson and Vernby 2009; Bäck et al. 2012 for sources and more information). We here

measure whether the minister has a Parliamentary background, simply telling us whether

the minister had been a member of parliament. We also include a dichotomous measure

describing whether the minister held (at appointment) or had previously held a High

position in the party.3 Ministerial experience is here a simple dummy variable measuring if

the appointed minister had been a member of a previous cabinet. Our fourth hypothesis

focuses on the saliency or importance of the portfolio that the minister is holding, and we

here measure Portfolio saliency relying on the Druckman and Warwick (2005) expert rating,

assigning saliency scores to every ministry.4

In addition, we include some control variables, to take into account that various features

may act as constraints or underlying causes to resignations. We thus measure whether the

Minister belongs to the PM’s party, since we expect PMs to be more free to appoint and

reshuffle ministers who belong to their own party. We also include a variable for the

Swedish case, describing if the minister is part of a Coalition (or single-party) cabinet, since

we expect higher constraints on selection and de-selection in such cabinets. For Germany,

there is too little variation in such a variable, which makes it impossible and less relevant to

include as a control.5 Lastly, we include three individual-level background characteristics,

which may influence selection and de-selection, namely, High education, Age and Gender.6

2 Similarly to Berlinski et al. (2007), a spell is defined as the minister’s length of time in one and the

same portfolio in one and the same cabinet.

3 For Sweden, we here classified ministers who were part of the so called Verkställande utskott or

Partistyrelsen, as holding high party positions. For Germany this classification was less

straightforward, and we have here chosen to code any minister holding a position at the federal party

level (either as member of the federal party executive, head of a federal level party body or member

of the leadership of the parliamentary party in the federal parliament) as having a high party position.

4 In case of merged ministries, ratings have been summed up (Druckman and Warwick 2005).

5 There have only been four very brief phases of single-party governments in Germany, where three

of these lasted only a few weeks, most being the result of an early termination of a cabinet, for

example due to one party leaving the cabinet (see Saalfeld 2000: 43).

6 For the education variable, we here had to rely on a slightly different coding for Sweden and

Germany. In Sweden, all individuals with any kind of university degree are classified as having

‘higher education’, whereas such a classification did not produce enough variation in the German

case, where most ministers have a Ph.D. We therefore chose to code German ministers with a Ph.D.

as having ‘higher education’.

11

An event history approach

The application of event history analysis, also called survival models, is the standard

approach used when analyzing cabinet duration (see e.g. King et al. 1990; Diermeier and

Stevenson 1999). In the specific application of event history analysis to cabinet reshuffles or

ministerial de-selection, we are interested in the duration of individual ministers on their

posts (see e.g. Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008). Or as described by Berlinski et al.

(2007: 247), we are interested in the features that might increase or decrease the length of

time a minister survives at his or post. As mentioned above, a ministerial spell can end due

to a number of reasons, for example the PM may reshuffle the cabinet or fire a minister, a

minister may retire or die, or a minister may leave the post due to the end of government.

An especially important issue when dealing with event history data is ‘censoring’.

Censoring occurs when we have not observed the entire event history of a unit, and so called

‘right-censoring’ is a common problem in event history analysis. A standard regression

framework does not distinguish between censored and uncensored observations, whereas the

event history approach enables us to do so. The question is which cases to censor. Here

different so called ‘censoring regimes’ can be applied. First, we should of course treat cases

that have not experienced the terminating event when our data collection ended as

censored.7 Second, many authors use so called ‘theoretically motivated’ censoring regimes,

focusing only on ‘interesting failures’ (see Diermeier and Stevenson 1999: 1059). We have

here chosen to censor all ministerial spells where the minister died at his or her post, left the

post due to health reasons, or where the minister survives until the end of the government.8

In event history analysis, we are in general interested in modeling the so called ‘hazard

rate’, which can be interpreted as ‘the instantaneous probability that an event occurs given

that the event has not yet occurred’ (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 1997: 1427). Here, the

hazard rate describes the probability or ‘risk’ that an individual minister exits his or her post

at time t, given that the minister has not exited the post before that time. The statistical

model used here is a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model, which allows us to

study the relationship between a number of features and the duration of ministerial spells

without making any specific assumption about the shape of the hazard function.

We here apply a ‘competing risks approach’, where the idea is to investigate multiple

modes of termination or ‘risks’. Such approaches have been applied to the study of cabinet

duration, distinguishing between cabinets ending due to ‘dissolution’ and ‘replacement’

(Diermeier and Stevenson 1999: 1052, 1057). As argued by Box-Steffensmeier and Jones

(1997: 1437), ‘when assuming that events are mutually exclusive, the estimation is

straightforward since every other type of event is treated as censoring’. In our application,

we thus estimate a separate model of ministerial terminations that occur due to reasons that

can be seen as indicating an exercise of the PM sanctioning agency loss, that is

‘discretionary’ reasons, treating all other exit reasons as censored. The results when

analyzing only such ‘discretionary’ exits are compared with a model where we instead focus

on ‘non-discretionary’ reasons and all other exit reasons are treated as censored.

7 I.e. when the minister sat at his or her post when our study ended (31st of December 2006).

8 We here count a change of cabinet whenever: 1) general elections are held, 2) there is a change in

the party composition of the cabinet, 3) there is a change of Prime Minister.

12

Empirical analysis

Descriptive analyses of reshuffles in German and Swedish post-war cabinets

In order to provide a first preliminary evaluation of our hypotheses we here describe the

duration of ministerial spells in Germany and Sweden for different types of ministers. Since

our prime interest relates to survivor functions for ministers with different backgrounds and

portfolios, we present separate Kaplan-Meier graphs of tenures for German and Swedish

ministers who have a parliamentary background, a high position in the party, ministerial

experience or hold salient portfolios (see Figure 1). The horizontal axis indicates the number

of days whereas the vertical axis indicates how large the share of ministers is that ‘survive’

until a specific point in time. Dents in the graphs indicate that one, or occasionally several,

ministers have been reshuffled or dismissed due to discretionary reasons.

The survivor functions for ministers with parliamentary background provide support for

hypothesis 1, at least among Swedish ministers (see Figure 1). Thus, ministers with a

parliamentary background tend to survive longer on their posts in Sweden, which is in line

with the idea that ministerial candidates who have been properly screened are less likely to

be de-selected or reshuffled by the PM. This finding, however, does not apply to German

ministers. It is actually more likely that German ministers without parliamentary background

survive longer, at least for those who have managed to stay in cabinet for more than (about)

two years. When looking at the survivor functions for ministers with high party positions we

similarly find that they tend to stay somewhat longer in Swedish cabinets, lending support to

hypothesis 2, whereas the opposite is true for German ministers. Moreover, we also find that

Swedish ministers are somewhat more likely to survive longer on their posts if they hold

more salient portfolios, in accordance with hypothesis 4. The opposite effect is found for

Germany, where ministers holding salient portfolios tend to have higher hazard rates. These

results are all consistent with the idea that the German PM is more constrained when it

comes to selecting ministers and thereby less able to exercise ex ante control of agency loss.

One interesting finding, however, is contrary to what we hypothesize (H3). Ministers

with ministerial experience tend to have higher hazard rates in both Sweden and Germany.

This counterintuitive finding is nevertheless in line with what has been found by others

before us (see e.g. Berlinski et al. 2007; 2012). We will return to discuss this result in more

detail in the next section, where we examine if this result holds in a multivariate analysis.

[FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE]

So far, we have focused on the fact that agency loss can be mitigated by careful ex ante

screening, which seems to work better for Swedish PMs than German Chancellors. This is

also consistent with our expectations. In cases where competing principals can control the

selection of potential cabinet members, such as in Germany, extensive screening of potential

cabinet members does not help the PM to mitigate the problem of agency loss. PMs in more

constrained setting therefore have greater needs to sanction agency loss ex post. Note,

however, that this higher need to use ex post mechanisms to control agency loss might not

be reflected in a higher frequency of reshuffles since PMs constrained on selection might

also be constrained when it comes to de-selection. Therefore, we expect instead that more

13

constrained PMs will de-select ministers for other reasons than PMs with more leeway, such

as dismissals due to policy conflicts and performance failures within the cabinet (H5).

We evaluate this hypothesis by comparing exit reasons between the two countries. As

indicated by Table 1 we find in total 91 reshuffles in Germany and 126 in Sweden, of which

66 are considered discretionary exits in Germany and 67 in Sweden. Accordingly, we find a

similar level of discretionary reshuffles in the two countries, although Germany shows a

higher relative share. More importantly, however, there are substantial differences between

the two countries in the reasons for dismissals or exits from ministerial posts. Thus, whereas

Swedish PMs seem to ‘rotate’ or ‘re-match’ ministers and portfolios, as indicated by the

high proportion of ‘reshuffles’, German PMs are likely to respond to policy disagreements,

performance failures and departmental errors. This result is in accordance with what we

hypothesized, i.e. that in settings where ministerial selection is more constrained, PMs are

more likely to dismiss ministers due to policy disagreements and bad performance.

[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]

Let us illustrate these figures with some striking examples. The most spectacular case of

ministerial exit due to a policy disagreement was certainly the resignation of the Social

Democrat Oskar Lafontaine as Minister of Finance in 1999. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder

had to appoint his long-time intra-party rival as minister because Lafontaine was then head

of the Social Democratic Party and the most influential voice of the party’s left wing. Soon

after the Schröder government had assumed power in 1998, it became obvious that Schröder

and Lafontaine strongly disagreed over economic policy-making. Thus, after Schröder had

stated in cabinet meeting on 10 March 1999 that he was not going to support anti-business

policies, Lafontaine resigned on 11 March 1999 (Filc 1999).

Also in Sweden it happens that ministers have to resign due to policy disagreements with

the Prime Minister. One illustrative example was when Minister of Finance, Erik Åsbrink,

was forced to resign in April 1999 after clashes with Prime Minister Göran Persson over

Swedish macroeconomic policy (Johansson & Tallberg 2010). However, resignations due to

policy disagreements are, as our figures show, rare events in Sweden.

It is more common that ministers are dismissed due to performance failures. To mention

just one example, Ines Uusman was Minister of Transport, Communications and

Information Technology between 1994-1998, and came to be criticized heavily for, among

other things, the handling of the Estonia disaster, and the building of a railway tunnel

through a ridge in southern Sweden, which led to an environmental scandal (Wockelberg

2011). But by far the most common type of exit reason in Sweden is ‘cabinet reshuffles’, in

which the Prime Minister ‘rotate’ or ‘re-match’ ministers and portfolios. This type of action

by the PM does not only include ‘demotions’, whereby the PM is sanctioning agency loss,

but also ‘promotions’. When looking at the long list of cabinet rotations in Sweden, one will

find many prominent names that were on the rise in their careers, such as Olof Palme and

Ingvar Carlsson, as well as those who have been moved to other positions because of their

abilities to handle different types of portfolios. Among the ‘problem solvers’ that can

replace failing ministers in government, we find for instance Lena Hjelm-Wallen, a Social

14

Democrat who held no fewer than six different portfolios in six different governments

between 1974-2002, more than any other Swedish minister (Hermansson & Vernby 2010).

Our data also suggest that German Chancellors often employ cabinet reshuffles to

promote loyal cabinet members to more influential posts and to ‘test’ new cabinet members.

Thus, Helmut Kohl promoted Wolfgang Schäuble to Minister for the Interior in 1989 after

Schäuble had loyally and efficiently headed the Chancellery. Such reshuffles can turn into

complex moves because they have to adhere to the multiple constraints Chancellors face

when staffing the cabinet. For example, when the Christian Democrat Franz-Josef Jung had

to resign as Minister for Labor in 2009 – due to a bombardment of Afghan civilians when

Jung headed the Ministry of Defense – Chancellor Angela Merkel had to take care that the

influential conservative Christian Democratic Union’s state association of Hesse remained

represented in the cabinet. Therefore, Merkel promoted one of her most loyal cabinet

members, Ursula von der Leyen, from Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens,

Women and Youth to Minister of Labor. In exchange, the hardly known MEP Kristina

Köhler from Hesse took over the family ministry (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2009).

Discretionary reshuffles are also employed by German Chancellors to sanction adverse

selection. Thus, after the Christian Democrat Rupert Scholz had proven to be unable to head

the Ministry of Defense (Der Spiegel 1988), Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not hesitate to

‘sack’ the minister in 1989 after less than a year of service. However, German PMs face

serious obstacles to sanction even blatant departmental errors as the dismissal of Andrea

Fischer (Greens) due to failure in the BSE crisis illustrates. Chancellor Schröder could only

sack Fischer as Minister of Health after he agreed to also dismiss Karl-Heinz Funke (Social

Democrat) as Minister of Agriculture so that the blame was not exclusively put on the

Greens. Moreover, jurisdictions were re-negotiated (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2001).

These illustrative examples demonstrate the different ways in which PMs are trying to

control agency loss. In the next section, we test whether the empirical patterns found here

persists also when we control for various factors in a multivariate analysis.

A multivariate analysis of reshuffles in German and Swedish post-war cabinets

We now turn to performing a multivariate analysis focused on studying the effects of

various background and portfolio features on ministerial survival in Germany and Sweden

when we control for other features. As mentioned above, we here rely on event history

analysis, and the statistical model used is a Cox proportional hazards model. The dependent

variable describes the duration in days that a minister has sat at his or her post. In all

models, we present hazard ratios (the exponentiated coefficients) and standard errors. A

hazard ratio smaller than one means that the hazard or risk of ‘termination’ decreases as the

covariate increases, whereas a hazard ratio greater than one, means that the risk is increasing

with the covariate (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 2004: 63).

In table 2, we present separate analyses of German and Swedish cabinet reshuffles. For

each country, we present three models, all including the various features of ministers and

their portfolios described above, where the main features of interest are High party position,

Parliamentary background, Ministerial experience, and Portfolio Saliency. In the first

model, we look at the pooled sample in each country, that is, analyzing all ministerial exits.

In the second and third models for each country, we present the competing risks analysis

15

described above, focusing either on ‘discretionary exit reasons’, with the aim of measuring

an exercise of PM power intended to sanction agency loss (with other exits censored), or

focusing (last model) on other exit reasons such as scandals, personal error and retirement.9

Looking at the results for Sweden in Table 2, we can see that in the pooled analysis

(model 1) only two variables exert a significant effect in the expected direction:

parliamentary background and portfolio saliency, with both features decreasing the risk of

ministerial termination when the independent variable increases. Hence, for the Swedish

case, we find support for the hypotheses that ministers with parliamentary background, and

ministers holding more salient portfolios are likely to last longer on their posts. This gives

support to the idea that certain ministerial candidates have been more thoroughly screened,

and that they are therefore less likely to be de-selected or reshuffled by the PM.

[TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]

These results also hold when we focus on discretionary exit reasons only (model 2), whereas

the effects of these two variables are not significant when analyzing non-discretionary exit

reasons (model 3). These results in the competing risks analysis are very much in line with

our theoretical reasoning, where we would expect that the effect of various features

signaling that the minister has been thoroughly screened should only appear when studying

ministerial exits that can clearly be connected to the PM’s discretionary actions to sanction

agency loss. Instead, when we look at exit reasons which are not clearly connected to such

discretion of the PM, such as exits due to scandals or retirement, we should not find such

clear effects of features related to various screening mechanisms. Instead, here other

background features should have an effect, for example, we can see that there is a clear age

effect in the Swedish case when looking at non-discretionary exits (model 3): ministers who

are older are more likely to exit their post due to such reasons, which is as expected since

we in this model for example look at retirement as a specific non-discretionary exit.

So far the results have been in line with what can be expected. However, we also find

two effects that need further explanation, looking at ministers holding high party positions

in the discretionary model (model 2), and looking at ministers who have previous ministerial

experience (in all three models), we find significant effects in the direction opposite to the

hypothesized. In fact, the significant non-hypothesized effect of ministerial experience also

appears in all models when analyzing the German data (models 4-6): ministers who have

previously been members of cabinet, have a significantly higher risk of termination, or

differently put, have shorter durations, than ministers without such experience.

How can we explain these non-expected results? Let us first discuss the effect of

ministerial experience, which we also discussed in the descriptive section. We suggest that

two reasons may lie behind this effect. First, we believe that PMs in all settings, even in the

less constrained Swedish setting, are likely to be more or less forced to appoint ministers

who have previous executive experience (e.g. due to ‘heavyweight status’). However, such

9 Ideally, we would like to have done an even more specific competing risks analysis, since we are

interested in investigating whether PMs are more likely to de-select ministers due to policy conflicts

and performance failures in settings where ministerial selection by the PM is highly constrained (H5).

However, such a detailed distinction would lead to a very low number of failures in each model.

16

constraints on ministerial selection may lead to that the PM does not hire the most

‘appropriate’ candidates (i.e. the ones whose interests are most in line with the PM’s), and

hence, when the minister is running a department, he or she may be more prone to

ministerial drift. Thus, such ministers are more likely to be de-selected. However, second,

we should also keep in mind that the pooled sample and the discretionary sample, includes

exits which we have here classified as ‘reshuffles’ or ‘re-matching’, which may not only

include ‘demotions’, but also ‘promotions’. Hence, the fact that ministers with a longer

experience are moved to other positions, may simply be due to their capabilities to run a(ny)

department, and should not be seen as a ‘negative’ sanctioning of agency loss.

As mentioned above, the effect of having a high position within the party is also not in

line with our hypothesis, in fact for all models (1-6), also looking at the German case, this

feature increases the risk of termination, that is, ministers who have high party positions are

more likely to be reshuffled or de-selected. However, this effect is only significant when

looking at discretionary reshuffles in the Swedish case. This effect did not appear in the

descriptive analysis, but instead appears when we control for various other features. We

believe that similar explanations as discussed for the ministerial experience variable could

apply for this party position effect. First, PMs are more likely to be constrained by the party

to appoint those individuals who hold high positions in the PM’s own party, or for coalition

governments, also those who hold high positions in the other coalition parties. As discussed

above, when PMs are highly constrained when selecting his or her cabinet members, agency

loss is more likely to arise in the delegation relationship between PM and minister, which

could explain why such ministers are more likely to be terminated. However, we also cannot

exclude that the discretionary terminations also include more ‘positive’ reshuffles by the

PM, where those individuals with high party positions may be the more competent ministers

who are also more likely to be hired to run various departments, or may even be ‘promoted’.

Looking more specifically at the results for the German post-war cabinets, we do not find

many significant effects at all, and only one of the four main variables exert an effect in the

expected direction – ministers with parliamentary background are somewhat less likely to be

reshuffled (the hazard ratios are below one for models 4-6), however this effect is not

statistically significant. All in all, we suggest that these results give some first preliminary

support to hypothesis 6, which says that the effect of ‘screening’ features should be smaller

in settings where the PM is highly constrained when selecting his or her ministers. That is,

when we compare Germany and Sweden, the German PM is expected to be more

constrained in ministerial selection, and therefore the ‘normal’ screening channels may not

work in favor of the PM, making it necessary to control agency loss ex post.

All in all, we find support for three of our hypotheses (H1, H4, H6) in this analysis:

ministers who have parliamentary background and who hold more salient posts are less

likely to have to leave their posts ‘early’, when looking at the Swedish case. Some

hypotheses are not given support here, and the most interesting non-supported result here is

that ministerial experience has a clear negative effect on duration, in both Germany and

Sweden. Lastly, we also find some support for a conditional effect of constraints on

ministerial selection and various background features: it is only in the Swedish case, where

the PM is not too constrained, that we find that ministers who have been screened through

parliament or other channels, have a higher likelihood to stay at their posts.

17

Concluding remarks

The main aim of this paper has been to enhance our understanding of principal-agent (PA)

relationships within the core executive in different institutional settings. Thus, we have

studied discretionary reshuffles of ministers by the Swedish PM and the German

Chancellor. Based on previous accounts on ministerial tenure and cabinet reshuffles, we

assumed that discretionary reshuffles by the PM represent effective means to mitigate

agency loss resulting from adverse selection and moral hazard.

However, in accordance with the literature on PA problems (Müller 2000; Huber and

Gallardo-Martinez 2008; Kam et al. 2010), we assumed that careful ex ante screening before

a minister gets appointed serves to make agency loss less likely. By implication, ministers

are likely to survive longer on their posts when they are or have been members of

parliament, when they hold or have held high positions in their party, when they have

previous ministerial experience, and when they hold more salient ministerial posts.

Furthermore, we proposed that the political context affects the probability of adverse

selection as well as the capacity of politicians to respond to agency loss. Thus, we have

argued that in cases where competing principals control the selection of potential cabinet

members, even extensive screening of potential cabinet members does not benefit the PM

and might still confront her/him with the risk of agency loss. Thus, a PM constrained in

selecting cabinet ministers is more likely to be confronted with agency loss in the form of

policy disagreement and performance failures and might face the need to sanction agency

loss committed by cabinet members who appear to have been carefully screened.

We evaluated these ideas by analyzing a unique comparative dataset on ministerial

appointments in Swedish and German post-war cabinets that includes information on

ministers’ background as well as on exit reasons. We have chosen to compare reshuffles in

these two countries because Swedish PMs face much lower informal constraints, in

particular when it comes to selecting ministers, than their German counterparts.

Our descriptive results suggests that Swedish PMs face different needs to reshuffle due

to their higher control of ministerial selection than German Chancellors. Notwithstanding a

similar level of discretionary reshuffles in both countries, there are substantial differences in

the reasons for dismissal or exit from the ministerial posts. Thus, whereas Swedish PMs

seem to ‘re-match’ ministers and portfolios, German Chancellors are more likely to respond

to policy disagreement, performance failures and departmental errors. This result may partly

be explained by the fact that German Chancellors to some extent have to appoint cabinet

members who are disloyal and incompetent, or prone to ministerial drift.

Our multivariate analyses for Sweden supports the idea that extensive ex ante screening

makes agency loss less likely. Therefore, ministers with parliamentary experience and

ministers in charge of influential or salient portfolios are less likely to be dismissed by the

PM for ‘discretionary’ reasons. In the German case, we found no evidence that screening

mechanisms leave an impact on dismissals (i.e. no important background or portfolio

features seemed to increase ministerial survival), which supports the idea that the lower

control of the Chancellor over ministerial selection has the effect that competing principals

but not the Chancellor benefit from the screening mechanisms.

18

Our multivariate analyses also confirmed the counterintuitive finding from previous

research that having ministerial experience increases ministerial hazard rates in both

Sweden and Germany (cf. Berlinski et al. 2007; 2012 for the UK case). This result allows

for different interpretations. First, as Indridason and Kam (2008) have argued, dismissal or

reshuffling of experienced ministers might serve the goal of avoiding that ministers become

to aligned with a specific portfolio. Second, case analysis suggests that German Chancellors

use complex reshuffling schemes where loyal ministers are promoted, incapable ones

dismissed and new ministers are ‘tested’ by assigning them to less complex portfolios. Thus,

‘job rotation’ appears as the Chancellor’s way to reward good performance and sanction

agency loss within the complex constraints s/he faces.

Thus, to conclude, our empirical results for Sweden and Germany suggest that in case

the PM exerts control over ministerial selection, s/he can rely on ex ante screening as

efficient control mechanism to avoid agency loss. If competing principals exert influence

over ministerial selection as in the German case, the PM cannot rely on ex ante screening.

Moreover, our paper allows drawing some suggestions for future research. While we

have employed a unique comparative data set that includes more background information

than commonly used in previous comparative research on ministerial tenure, our analyses

relies nevertheless on a very limited number of cases. Thus, in order to draw more general

conclusions, and to investigate the role of various institutional features, we need to increase

the number of countries and the variance in institutional settings examined. Furthermore, we

have relied on highly stylized accounts of the informal constraints Swedish PMs and

German Chancellors face when selecting and dismissing ministers. Our reasoning suggests

that we should more carefully distinguish between constraints on selection and on de-

selection and develop variables that measure these two types of constraints in a more fine-

grained manner. In addition, it might be useful for future analyses to include indicators for,

e.g., a PM’s standing and authority in its own party and vis-à-vis coalition partners and the

public in order to measure informal constraints on selection and de-selection. Our account

also makes evident that for analyzing reshuffles it seems necessary to distinguish more

clearly between the promotion and the demotion of ministers.

Finally, future research should also aim for developing more direct measures of

‘ministerial drift’. For example, the game theoretic account presented by Indridason and

Kam (2008) models ministerial drift as extensive departmental spending. This idea resonates

quite well with the economic literature that has characterized departmental spending as a

typical common-pool problem where the government’s total budget represents the shared

limited resource. Overconsumption of the government’s budget by departments exclusively

pursuing their sectoral policy aims might ultimately cause government failure. Another

option to assess ministerial drift would be to examine ‘resignation calls’ in more detail (see

e.g., Berlinski, Dewan and Dowding 2010; Dowding and Kerby 2011). Taking into account

who is making resignation calls, who is supporting such demands for ministerial resignation,

and how the PM and competing principals respond to such calls, would enable scholars not

only to assess extent and nature of ministerial drift in more detail, but also whether PMs and

competing principals employ alternative measures than reshuffles to deal with agency loss.

19

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Tables and figures

Table 1. Exit reasons for Swedish and German ministers during the post-war period

SWEDEN GERMANY

Discretionary exit reasons

Departmental error 0.79 (1) 7.69 (7)

Personal error 2.38 (3) 0.00 (0)

Performance 7.14 (9) 13.19 (12)

Cabinet reshuffle (‘rotation’/‘re-matching’) 38.89 (49) 21.98 (20)

Policy disagreement 2.38 (3) 25.27 (23)

Other controversy 1.59 (2) 4.40 (4)

Non-discretionary exit reasons

Retirement or outside appointment 39.68 (50) 21.98 (20)

Personality clash 2.38 (3) 0.00 (0)

Financial scandal 3.97 (5) 5.49 (5)

Total (N) 100 (126) 100 (91)

Note: Entries are column percentages with frequencies in parentheses. The time period covered for

Sweden is 1951–2006, and the time period covered for Germany is 1949–2006.

Table 2. Cox proportional hazards models: cabinet reshuffles in Germany and Sweden during the post-war period

SWEDEN GERMANY

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Pooled Discretionary Non-discretionary Pooled Discretionary Non-discretionary

Main explanatory features

High party position 1.234 1.708* 1.010 1.335 1.299 1.410

(0.275) (0.542) (0.318) (0.325) (0.382) (0.614)

Parliamentary background 0.623** 0.548* 0.639 0.653 0.649 0.685

(0.135) (0.169) (0.196) (0.298) (0.353) (0.581)

Ministerial experience 2.157*** 2.022** 2.472** 2.262*** 2.080** 2.748**

(0.534) (0.684) (0.911) (0.622) (0.680) (1.401)

Portfolio saliency 0.992** 0.986** 0.996 1.001 1.003 0.997

(0.004) (0.006) (0.005) (0.004) (0.004) (0.007)

Control variables

Belongs to PM’s party 1.410 2.940 0.723 0.846 0.810 0.925

(0.601) (2.023) (0.429) (0.198) (0.228) (0.394)

Coalition government 0.864 1.083 0.661 – – –

(0.264) (0.433) (0.319)

High education 1.278 1.045 1.510 1.396 1.650 1.030

(0.285) (0.320) (0.493) (0.440) (0.672) (0.519)

Age 1.020 0.971 1.063*** 0.999 0.998 1.001

(0.013) (0.018) (0.018) (0.015) (0.018) (0.027)

Gender (male = 1) 0.838 0.597 1.117 2.005 2.234 1.675

(0.191) (0.202) (0.350) (0.939) (1.341) (1.259)

N (observations) 1615 1615 1615 1434 1434 1434

N (appointments) 571 571 571 466 466 466

N (failures) 123 60 63 88 60 28

Log likelihood -669.694 -321.456 -336.278 -488.244 -336.343 -151.055

Note: Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, *** the 0.01 level. Entries are hazard ratios with standard errors in parentheses.

24

Figure 1. Survivor functions for different types of ministers in Sweden and Germany

Note: The portfolio saliency variable has here been dichotomized (values >1 are coded as “salient”).

0.0

00

.25

0.5

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.75

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Not MP MP

Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Sweden, parliamentary background

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Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Germany, parliamentary background

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Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Sweden, party position

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Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Germany, party position

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Not minister Previous minister

Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Sweden, ministerial experience

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Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Germany, ministerial experience

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Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Sweden, portfolio saliency

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Kaplan-Meier survival estimates: Germany, portfolio saliency