Fleming, TG;
(2021)
Why Change a Winning Team? Explaining Post-Election Cabinet Reshuffles in Four Westminster Democracies.
Political Studies
10.1177/00323217211049293.
(In press).
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Abstract
Incumbent prime ministers who win re-election often reshuffle their cabinet ministers. These post-election cabinet reshuffles have important implications for policymaking and present a puzzle: why would prime ministers alter the ‘winning team’ that has just received an electoral mandate? Existing literature has largely overlooked post-election reshuffles, so offers few compelling answers. At most, a plausible but under-theorised and untested conventional wisdom suggests that electoral success increases prime ministers’ authority over their ministers. This article thus provides the first systematic study of post-election cabinet reshuffles in single-party governments. It argues that re-elected prime ministers use a temporary increase in their authority to pre-empt future leadership challenges by moving or sacking cabinet rivals. Larger election victories should thus produce larger reshuffles. However, analysis of post-election cabinet reshuffles in four ‘Westminster’ democracies since 1945 shows no support for this expectation, suggesting that further work is needed to understand these important political events.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | Why Change a Winning Team? Explaining Post-Election Cabinet Reshuffles in Four Westminster Democracies |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.1177/00323217211049293 |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177%2F00323217211049293 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | © 2021 by Political Studies Association. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | cabinet reshuffles, executive politics, ministerial appointments, post-election reshuffles |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10136699 |
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