Cabinet Reshuffles and Prime-Ministerial Performance in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Prime ministers (PMs) significantly contribute to making parliamentary democracy work, but cabinet reshuffles can undermine the PM's ability to perform successfully. New ministers may have less policy expertise, intensify intra-cabinet struggles and hamper the control of government bureaucracy. This article explores the relationship between cabinet reshuffles and prime-ministerial performance in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Building on a data set covering 131 cabinets in 11 CEE countries between 1990 and 2018, we find that frequent cabinet reshuffles decrease prime-ministerial performance. In particular, the reshuffling of ministers belonging to other coalition parties than the PM's unfolds a strong negative effect on prime-ministerial performance, while reshuffles in core portfolios and turnover of ministers from the PM party have less negative consequences. These results have important implications for understanding executive politics and government stability in the dynamic environments of CEE democracies and beyond.

How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

“…5An extended appendix with detailed results of the tests, and the documentation of the survey including detailed information on the translation and pre-testing process are available at the GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences: https://dx.doi.org/10.7802/1998 (Grotz, Müller-Rommel, Berz, Kukec, et al, 2021). …”

The Comparative Politics of Cabinet Reshuffles

“…Florian Grotz, Corinna Kroeber and Marko Kucek's contribution to this collection stands in this tradition and offers a comparative assessment of the effects that cabinet reshuffles have on prime-ministerial performance across 11 countries of Central-Eastern Europe from 1990 through 2018. They find that frequent cabinet reshuffles tend to decrease prime-ministerial performance, especially if ministers being affected by a reshuffle belong to another party than that of the prime minister (Grotz et al 2022).…”