Governing cabinets are composed of ministers who come and go even as governments march on. They work for the chief executive, the prime minister or the president, for their parties and for the constituent groups from which they come. They are chosen for their role and dismissed from it for all sorts of reasons that vary across time and country. This book examines the process of selection, shuffling and removal of ministers in national cabinets around the world. Drawing on original data over several decades, it offers a series of case studies of countries from around the world with differing institutional and cultural structures including presidential and semi-presidential systems, and parliamentary, unitary and federal systems, some of which have experienced periods under authoritarian regimes. Featuring 14 case studies on North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, this book complements the earlier volume The Selection of Ministers in Europe (Routledge, 2009). This volume will be an important reference for students and scholars of political science, government, executives, comparative politics and political parties.

Foreign ministers are prominent actors in foreign affairs, often second only to heads of government in their influence. Yet, despite the growing awareness of the importance of key actors, and their backgrounds, in the study of international relations, foreign ministers remain understudied. In this Element, we make an important empirical contribution by presenting an original dataset on the personal and professional background of foreign ministers, spanning thirteen countries and more than 200 years. We use these data to answer three questions: who are the foreign ministers, why are foreign ministers with particular features appointed, and why do some foreign ministers have longer tenure than others? We find that foreign ministers tend to be men of politics who are appointed both on the basis of their affinity to, and to complement the experiences of, the head of government. We also find that foreign ministers stay longer in office when they perform well or are expected to do so, but that they are more likely to lose their posts when conditions make heads of government more prone to 'pin blame' on them to deflect criticism from foreign policy failures.

This Handbook provides definitive reference work on political executives and their key role in political systems. It records the current theoretical and methodological debates and sets the agenda for future research in this prominent and extremely wide-ranging field of research.

In an ideal democracy, representatives would entirely reflect citizens’ views, preferences and wishes in their legislative work. However, real-life democracies do not meet this ideal and citizens’ policy preferences and priorities are mirrored only inadequately. This book provides new insights on political representation. It is guided by three questions: what roles should representatives play? Who is actually or should be represented? How are the representatives (or how should they be) connected with the represented? Containing contributions from the perspectives of political theory and philosophy, as well as quantitative empirical studies, the volume demonstrates the need to adapt these established questions to new political realities. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of political representation and parties, political theory, democratic theory, political philosophy and comparative politics.

Membership of political parties is diverse. Not everyone participates and those who do, do not participate in the same way. This book engages with the debate over the significance and future of political parties as membership organisations and presents the first broad comparative analysis of party membership and activism. It is based on membership surveys which have been administered, gathered and collated by a group of prominent party scholars from across Europe, Canada and Israel. Utilizing this rich data source together with the insights of party scholars, the book investigates what party membership means in advanced industrial democracies. In doing so, it provides a clearer picture of who joins political parties, why they do it, the character of their political activism, how they engage with their parties, and what opinions they hold. This text will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, particularly to those interested in representation, participation, political parties and elections.

What do Beppe Grillo, Silvio Berlusconi, Emmanuel Macron (and also Donald Trump) have in common? They are prime examples of the personalization of politics and the decline of political parties. This volume systematically examines these two prominent developments in contemporary democratic politics and the relationship between them. It presents a cross-national comparative comparison that covers around 50 years in 26 democracies through the use of more than 20 indicators. It offers the most comprehensive comparative cross-national estimation of the variance in the levels and patterns of party change and political personalization among countries to date, using existing works as well injecting fresh cross-national comparative data. In the case of party change, it offers an analysis that extends beyond the dichotomous debate of party decline versus party adaptation. In the matter of political personalization, the emphasis on variance helps in bridging between the high theoretical expectations and disappointing empirical findings. As for the theoretically sound linkage between the two phenomena, not only is this the first study to comprise a comprehensive cross-national examination, but it also proposes a more nuanced understanding of this relationship. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Emilie van Haute, Professor of Political Science, Université libre de Bruxelles; Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University; and Susan Scarrow, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Political Science, University of Houston.

The global financial, economic and sovereign debt crisis since 2008 has led to increases in political disaffection among citizens, a loss of legitimacy of political institutions, the discredit of mainstream parties and the rise of extremist or anti-system political alternatives. This comparative volume sheds greater light on this critical juncture in the recent history of the European Union (EU) by focusing on the evolution of attitudes of national political elites. It examines whether the crisis has affected the legitimacy of the EU integration project as perceived by national political elites and, consequently, if the elite consensus that constituted one of the most solid fundamentals supporting that project has been eroded. Analysing these changes across the different dimensions in which support for the EU is organized and its relationship with the evolution of support towards European integration among citizens in member states, the book addresses a basic question: How have these events affected the perceptions of the EU of national political elites? Ultimately, it sheds light on the evolution of the relationship between the perception of the EU and the national contexts, as well as the likely evolution of the project of European integration in the near future. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, EU politics, European integration, political parties, and more broadly to comparative politics, European studies and sociology.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice provides a comprehensive overview of the research in economics, political science, law, and sociology that has generated considerable insight into the politics of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as the influence of different institutional frameworks on incentives and outcomes. The result is an improved understanding of public policy, public finance, industrial organization, and macroeconomics as the combination of political and economic analysis shed light on how various interests compete both within a given rules of the games and, at times, to change the rules. These volumes include analytical surveys, syntheses, and general overviews of the many subfields of public choice focusing on interesting, important, and at times contentious issues. Throughout the focus is on enhancing understanding how political and economic systems act and interact, and how they might be improved. Both volumes combine methodological analysis with substantive overviews of key topics. This second volume examines constitutional political economy and also various applications, including public policy, international relations, and the study of history, as well as methodological and measurement issues. Throughout both volumes important analytical concepts and tools are discussed, including their application to substantive topics. Readers will gain increased understanding of rational choice and its implications for collective action; various explanations of voting, including economic and expressive; the role of taxation and finance in government dynamics; how trust and persuasion influence political outcomes; and how revolution, coups, and authoritarianism can be explained by the same set of analytical tools as enhance understanding of the various forms of democracy.

This global encyclopedic work serves as a comprehensive collection of global scholarship regarding the vast fields of public administration, public policy, governance, and management. Written and edited by leading international scholars and practitioners, this exhaustive resource covers all areas of the above fields and their numerous subfields of study. In keeping with the multidisciplinary spirit of these fields and subfields, the entries make use of various theoretical, empirical, analytical, practical, and methodological bases of knowledge. Expanded and updated, the second edition includes over a thousand of new entries representing the most current research in public administration, public policy, governance, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, and management covering such important sub-areas as: 1. organization theory, behavior, change and development; 2. administrative theory and practice; 3. Bureaucracy; 4. public budgeting and financial management; 5. public economy and public management 6. public personnel administration and labor-management relations; 7. crisis and emergency management; 8. institutional theory and public administration; 9. law and regulations; 10. ethics and accountability; 11. public governance and private governance; 12. Nonprofit management and nongovernmental organizations; 13. Social, health, and environmental policy areas; 14. pandemic and crisis management; 15. administrative and governance reforms; 16. comparative public administration and governance; 17. globalization and international issues; 18. performance management; 19. geographical areas of the world with country-focused entries like Japan, China, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Eastern Europe, North America; and 20. a lot more. Relevant to professionals, experts, scholars, general readers, researchers, policy makers and manger, and students worldwide, this work will serve as the most viable global reference source for those looking for an introduction and advance knowledge to the field.

Historically, men have been more likely to be appointed to governing cabinets, but gendered patterns of appointment vary cross-nationally, and women's inclusion in cabinets has grown significantly over time. This book breaks new theoretical ground by conceiving of cabinet formation as a gendered, iterative process governed by rules that empower and constrain presidents and prime ministers in the criteria they use to make appointments. Political actors use their agency to interpret and exploit ambiguity in rules to deviate from past practices of appointing mostly men. When they do so, they create different opportunities for men and women to be selected, explaining why some democracies have appointed more women to cabinet than others. Importantly, this dynamic produces new rules about women's inclusion and, as this book explains, the emergence of a concrete floor, defined as a minimum number of women who must be appointed to a cabinet to ensure its legitimacy. Drawing on in-depth analyses of seven countries (Australia, Canada, Chile, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and elite interviews, media data, and autobiographies of cabinet members, Cabinets, Ministers, and Gender offers a cross-time, cross-national study of the gendered process of cabinet formation.