Promises of an impossible compromise: conceded constitutions in Europe, 1814–1906

The enactment of a constitution through the method of ‘concession’, as it was used in Europe between the Napoleonic wars and World War I, indicates that a hitherto absolute ruler understood the need for a higher level of institutionalization and collective exercise of state power, but mistrusted institutionalized and collective processes, which would define the level needed. In other word, a ‘concession’ comprehended an imminent contradiction. Drafting an enduring constitution is a complex and difficult task, which requires consensus- building on a wide scale through collective procedures. However, a ruler who ‘concedes’ implicitly denies any kind of collective constitution-making, which could get out of the ruler’s control. Instead rulers preferred a non-inclusive approach, using court advisors and/or ministers appointed by the ruler, to draft the constitutional text. The European experience analyzed in this article shows that popular involvement through representative procedures (such as the election of a constituent assembly) in the making of a constitution can improve its chances for endurance through time and create a political environment more favourable for the constitution to achieve normative quality, instead of remaining essentially a false promise.     

Post-Cabinet Careers of Regional Ministers in Germany, 1990–2011

The study of ministerial careers in Germany is rather new. So far it has been mainly restricted to the federal level and to the career pathways up until cabinet exit. This article, by contrast, concentrates on the post-cabinet careers of regional ministers. Drawing from the scarce literature we first sketch out career patterns of regional ministers prior to and during their time in the regional cabinet. The main focus, though, is on the post-cabinet biographies of all regional ministers in the sixteen German Länder since unification. Our empirical analysis reveals the regional cabinet as the career apex for most ministers. Looking at those ministers who do move up the political ladder after leaving the cabinet shows a clear preference for the national over the European level and the executive office over the legislative mandate. Variation in post-cabinet careers seems not only to be influenced by party, Land and ministerial office (Prime Minister vs normal minister) but also by the causes and circumstances of exit from the cabinet (exit type). These empirical results represent a first step into a new research field – lying waste since Blondel's early attempt in 1991 – and will hopefully provide a starting point for more comprehensive and comparative analysis.     

'Moves on a Chess Board': A Spatial Model of British Prime Ministers' Powers over Cabinet Formation

We use an institutional rational choice approach to help us understand how prime ministers in the UK make cabinet appointments and the implications for prime ministerial power. Assuming that prime ministers attempt to form a cabinet so as to get an overall package of policies as close as possible to their ideal, we show why the trade-offs they face are so complex, why apparently common-sense rules for making appointments might not always work well and why apparently strange choices made by prime ministers might actually be rational. Acknowledging the power prime ministers derive from their ability to appoint, we argue that the literature commonly fails to distinguish between power and luck, where lucky prime ministers get their way because they happen to agree with colleagues.     

Democracy,Authoritarianism, and Ministerial Selection in Russia: How Presidential Preferences Shape Technocratic Cabinets

Abstract: In Russia, politicians routinely select technical, non-party cabinets whose political outlook is difficult to decipher. The article asks how variation in politicians' preferences along the democratic-authoritarian dimension shapes political skills sought in cabinets and how ministers sharing politicians' aims are selected. The account of ministerial selection is tested in a controlled, comparative analysis of ministerial appointments in Russia, using an original dataset covering all full ministers appointed by presidents Boris Yel'tsin and Vladimir Putin, 1992–2008. The results clarify several important debates about the political implications of changes to cabinet composition in Russia and contribute to a more nuanced general understanding of the politics of technical cabinets.     

“Cocksparrow Diplomacy”: Percy Spender,The Colombo Plan And Commonwealth Relations

Percy Spender, the Australian Foreign Minister in 1950, played a critical role in the establishment of the Colombo Plan. The programme was proposed by Commonwealth ministers in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in January 1950. In May, Spender hosted the first meeting of the Consultative Committee to work out the modalities for the aid programme. Using Canadian and British sources, the article re‐examines Spender's diplomacy at the Sydney conference. It demonstrates why his conduct elicited such strong condemnation from his fellow ministers and almost precipitated a crisis in Commonwealth relations. It argues that Spender antagonised Commonwealth ministers unnecessarily with his tactics without achieving the objectives he had set for himself. His diplomacy did not advance his vision of the aid programme; instead, the British vision of the Colombo Plan prevailed in Sydney.     

The British Parliament and ministerial responsibility c. 1740–60*

This article deals with certain matters concerning the issue of the political accountability of ministers to parliament during the last twenty years of the reign of King George II. It emphasizes the fact that there was no constitutional convention during this period that would have allowed parliament or the House of Commons alone to force the dismissal or resignation of ministers (as the ultimate sanction of political accountability). At that time, the king was the real master of his ministers. On the other hand, and as a matter of fact, only those ministers who could best manage the king's business in parliament were kept in office by the king. These propositions are demonstrated by examining the practice of the various administrations between 1740–60. It was also especially important for the leading ministers, such as Robert Walpole, Henry Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle and William Pitt to secure both the favour of the king and the confidence of parliament to remain in office. The Pitt-Newcastle administration (from 1757) additionally confirmed the general principle in times of war that administrations can only have firm parliamentary majorities to hold onto power as long as they would lead a war successfully.     

Regulation vs Symbolic Policy-Making: Genetically Modified Organisms in the German States

Germany’s federal states can enforce stricter regulations on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) than does the national government. Empirically, the study analyses two outcomes at the state level: the symbolic accession to the GMO-free network, in which regional units mobilise against the EU’s regulatory approach, and hard GMO policies/regulations. Besides focussing on political parties and environmental interest groups, the article provides various additional theoretical explanations for the variation in outcomes. The research questions are the following: what conditions a state’s accession to the GMO-free network? What conditions a state’s adoption of GMO regulations? To assess these questions, the study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. One finding is that the inclusion of the Green Party in government is not a predominant condition for the adoption of regulations, but ministers affiliated with the Greens are dominant drivers of symbolic policy-making. The study reveals differing regulatory action by CDU/CSU ministers in the western and eastern states, which can be explained by the differing interests of farmers. Other findings reveal that SPD ministers regulated GMOs to much the same extent as CDU/CSU or Green ministers. Environmental interest groups were also found to have positively conditioned symbolic policy-making, having no effect, however, on the adoption of concrete regulations.     

Parliamentary Experience in Australian Ministerial Careers 1996–2007

The study contributes the first detailed exploration of parliamentary experience in Australian ministerial careers. It examines how a dimension of parliamentary experience — holding the office of parliamentary committee chair — features in the careers of a single cohort of ministers and parliamentary secretaries appointed during the Coalition government 1996–2007. The study maps parliamentary experience on two dimensions and finds a typology of five different career paths, depending on positions held and the speed of movement between positions. Taking the analysis further, the second part of the study tracks the appointment of the five subgroups of ministers over time. This reveals patterns in the Prime Minister's ministry‐making over the life of the government. At different times particular types of ministers were selected, in response to varying political needs and the demands of career management that John Howard faced over the government's lifecycle. The study considers the argument that elite grooming processes, where aspiring leaders are tested and trained, are weakening in Australia. It does not find evidence for this proposition based on the patterns of parliamentary experience of ministers at this time.     

Newspaper Reporting and Changing Perceptions of Ministerial Accountability in Australia

Throughout the developed world, there is a general perception that politicians are more corrupt than they used to be. In Australia these claims appear to be supported in recent decades by far more calls for ministers to resign. In this article we argue that the perception of declining quality in our federal government ministers is the result of much greater media attention, the rise of new controversial cross‐cutting issues and changing cultural attitudes rather than declining parliamentary and ministerial standards. We argue that the belief that politicians are more corrupt or less trustworthy than they used to be has arisen because they are now much more comprehensively reported upon; and we suggest that ministerial accountability might have been enhanced by more extensive media coverage.     

Parlament und Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit in der österreichischen Monarchie

SUMMARY

In this article Maria Sofia Corciulo discusses the dissolution of the recently elected ‘Chambre introuvable’ by Louis XVIII, following his second restoration in 1815. The king had been completely surprised by the outcome of the elections, which returned an ultra-royalist majority. This put severe pressure on the king and his ministers who were committed to moderate, conciliationist policies, in which they were supported and pressured by the representatives of the Allied powers. The Ultras found themselves in confrontation with the ministers and policies of the king. This created a paradox, in that the Ultras, who wished to reinstate features of the ancien régime, could only do so by imposing parliamentarianism on the king, and use their majority to force him to change his ministers and adopt policies that they knew he opposed. On the other hand, the king felt he could only save the liberal constitutional values, which he and the ministers considered necessary if civil war was to be avoided, by a dissolution of the Chamber, for which there was no clear constitutional justification. The article discusses whether Louis XVIII, by his dissolution, which his critics claimed was a coup d'état, in fact secured the future of liberal constitutional government in France.     

Commission Newsletter: 1995

SUMMARY

In this article, M. Manolova examines the provisions in the Bulgarian Constitution of 1879 which concern the responsibility of government ministers. It is shown how these provisions were unusually explicit in establishing that ministers were both individually and collectively responsible for their actions in government and in insisting that the power to institute proceedings lay exclusively with the parliament. The article compares the Bulgarian provisions with those in similar liberal constitutions of the period and notes the several instances down to 1919 when the provisions were implemented, in order to suggest that the principal of ministerial responsibility had a special importance in Bulgarian constitutional theory and practice.     

The Afterlives of Post-War Japanese Prime Ministers

Despite growing interest over the last 20 years in the position and power of the Japanese prime minister, what he does after resigning from this position has been overlooked in the extant literatures in both English and Japanese. This is unfortunate because, to paraphrase former US President Bill Clinton, as an ex-leader “you lose your power but not your influence.” This article represents the first attempt to explore what post-war Japanese prime ministers have done after stepping down and what influence they have continued to exert. It does so by providing an empirical overview of the afterlives of Japan’s 33 post-war ex-prime ministers before then discussing the benefits and shortcomings of applying the comparative, conceptual literature on the role of former leaders in Western democracies to the specific case of Japan. After providing the necessary justification, it then focuses on three detailed and illuminating case studies of Nakasone Yasuhiro, Murayama Tomiichi and Fukuda Yasuo. It argues that Japanese prime ministers continue to exert influence in several informal ways.     

The Genre of Prime Ministerial Anzac Day Addresses, 1973–2016

The last quarter of a century has seen an explosion in prime ministerial engagement with Anzac, and in particular, the marking of Anzac Day with a national address. Correspondingly, there has also been enormous interest in Anzac from members of the academy, but there has been little systematic analysis of the breadth and depth of prime ministerial Anzac Day addresses. This paper seeks to correct this omission by conducting a critical discourse analysis of prime ministerial Anzac Day addresses from 1973 to 2016 in order to sketch their imprecise, but increasingly institutionalised and consistent, genre boundaries. The paper delineates the various thematic and characteristic features of these addresses, including where and when the addresses have been delivered; the fixity and hybridisation of the prime ministerial Anzac speech genre; the thematic and tonal representations of Anzac; the wars and battles prime ministers associate Anzac with; and who Anzac's agents are. As will be shown, whilst Australian prime ministers may closely adhere to the traditions of Anzac with their addresses, they also subtly renovate understandings of Anzac in alignment with their policy agendas.     

The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case

Research on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial instability is relevant for explaining a government's broken promises, and that its importance increases at the junior minister level and among the most salient ministries. Relying on data on the fulfilment of electoral promises and ministerial instability in Portugal between 1995 and 2019, backed by interviews with former ministers and junior ministers, we provide evidence that the fulfilment of electoral promises is significantly influenced by portfolio volatility, particularly at the junior ministerial level and in the most important ministries.     

Individual Ministerial Responsibility During the Howard Years: 1996–2007

Upon winning the 1996 election, John Howard became the first Australian prime minister to codify his understanding of individual ministerial responsibility by publishing A Guide on Key Elements of Ministerial Responsibility. This article examines how this ministerial code of conduct was applied to significant allegations of ministerial impropriety that occurred during the 1996–2007 Howard era, and highlights the relationship between the media, the Prime Minister's response and the ultimate outcome. It finds that Howard's early rigorous application of the Guide to allegations of conflicts of interest involved political pain and instigated its decline. Howard retreated, redefined ministerial responsibility as requiring deliberate wrongdoing and raised the threshold required for a minister's dismissal. His inability to firmly apply the Guide to instances of ministerial misconduct betrays the traditional view that ministers are responsible for their own actions. The contemporary practice is that ministers do not resign for departmental failures for which they are not personally responsible, irrespective of the gravity of that wrongdoing.     

Presidentas Rise: Consequences for Women in Cabinets?

Since 1999, women have democratically won the presidency eight times in Latin America and have named hundreds of ministers. This study argues that under certain conditions, presidentas are more likely than male presidents to improve women's cabinet representation. Two mechanisms, presidenta mandates and gendered networks, appear to drive the relationship. Furthermore, because the pool of ministerial candidates is shallower for women than for men, presidentas are most likely to advance women's representation in cabinets at the beginning of their term and for “feminine” ministries. A case study of Michelle Bachelet's 2006 ministerial appointments reveals initial evidence for the argument. Empirical implications are then tested with an original dataset of 1,908 ministers of all democratically elected Latin American presidents since 1999. Model results are consistent with the theory that presidentas are most likely to “make a difference” when they are least constrained by the supply of female ministerial candidates.     

New Public Management and Public Sector Reform in Victoria and New Zealand: Policy Transfer,Elite Networks and Legislative Copying*

In the early 1990s, Victoria reformed its state sector along New Public Management (NPM) lines. Drawing on interviews with key policy‐makers of the time, including chief executives, ministers and key officials from both jurisdictions, and using archival material and secondary sources, this article shows that New Zealand developments were a key source for Victoria's reforms — even down to seemingly copying passages of legislation. Policy transfer took place within a supporting framework of an Anglo‐American diffusion of NPM rhetoric and neoliberal ideas. But New Zealand's experiences gave content, form and legitimation to Victoria's reforms, while providing a platform and experience for learning and divergence, and a group of transferable experts. We underline the importance of the Australia‐New Zealand relationship and trans‐Tasman elite networks in understanding the governance of both countries.     

The “Thin Dividing Line”: Prime Ministers and the Problem of Australian Nationalism, 1972–1996

This paper is concerned with the way in which Australian prime ministers gave expression to an idea of “national community” in the post–1972 era. With the declining relevance of the British connection, the departure of “great and powerful” friends from the region, the imperative of engagement with Asia and the emerging concept of Australia as a “multicultural” society, one of the central challenges for these leaders has been whether or not they could offer an alternative myth of community which would preserve social cohesion in the new times. This raises an important historical question concerning Australian political culture at this time — what happened to the need for nationalism? By examining the speeches of Prime Ministers Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating, it can be seen that far from asserting an old–style, exclusive Australian nationalism, in most cases these leaders expressed great caution and hesitation towards the idea of nationalism itself.     

The Sri Lankan Transitional Justice Process: Too Little,Too Late?

ABSTRACT

Three years after Sri Lanka committed to a comprehensive transitional justice (TJ) process through the co-sponsoring of UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1, progress on the TJ front has not been satisfactory. In fact, delays in decision-making have hindered progress on transitional justice. First, the nation-wide consultations that were supposed to precede the establishment of the proposed TJ mechanisms lasted for nearly a year. This prevented swift progress at a time when political conditions for TJ were arguably most favourable. In addition, decisions were made to implement the 2015 reform agenda in a way that would not give priority to TJ as a whole and would further delay the implementation of its most controversial measures. These delays have been constructed or exploited by those—including within government—who do not support the TJ agenda. In fact, since 2015, the President as well as ministers have made statements that cast doubt on their commitment to TJ. The government’s lack of genuine interest in TJ was further evidenced by its failure to present a comprehensive plan for the implementation of UNHRC Resolution 30/1 and carry out a public outreach campaign based on such a plan.     

Singapore's National Day Rally speech: A site of ideological negotiation

This article analyses the inaugural National Day Rally speeches of three Singapore prime ministers. It locates these speeches in the continuous ideological work that the People's Action Party (PAP) government has to do in order to maintain consensus and forge new alliances among classes and social forces that are being transformed by globalisation. Increasingly, these speeches have had to deal with the contradictions between nation-building and the tensions between the liberal and reactionary tendencies of the global city. It is argued that such a situation has made it futile for the government to attempt a straightforward ideological mobilisation of the people into a relatively homogeneous national community. The PAP government's ideological struggle to forge consensus has been balanced by a strategy of divide-and-rule. Ironically, the rally speeches have been as much about dividing as they have been about uniting.