Cabinet Payoffs in Coalition Governments: A Time-Varying Measure of Portfolio Importance

Abstract

Understanding how coalition parties in multiparty governments divide office and policy payoffs is one of the greatest challenges in political science. The challenge is not only to determine whether government parties receive their fair share of cabinet payoffs once the importance of individual ministerial posts is taken into consideration, but also to develop a measure of portfolio importance that takes time and context into account. This article proposes a new method of measuring portfolio salience using official records of cabinet appointments in the Fifth French Republic that list ministerial posts hierarchically. The result is a more nuanced measure of portfolio importance, which is context sensitive and varies with time.

Cristina Bucur

Political Science Researcher