Ideologues, Partisans, and Loyalists

• Author: Despina Alexiadou
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414015574880
• Subject Matter: Articles

Comparative Political Studies

2015, Vol. 48(8) 1051 –1086

© The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414015574880

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Article

Ideologues, Partisans,

and Loyalists: Cabinet

Ministers and Social

Welfare Reform

in Parliamentary

Democracies

Despina Alexiadou1

Abstract

Under what conditions can cabinet ministers affect the government’s policy

agenda? Existing literature provides conflicting answers to this question.

In this article, I show that some politicians are more likely than others to

influence policy. Specifically, I consider three types of ministers: loyalists, who

are loyal to their party leader and prioritize office over policy; partisans, who

are party heavyweights and aspiring leaders; and ideologues, who have fixed

policy ideas and are unwilling to compromise over office perks. I argue that

ideologues and partisans will affect policy more than loyalists do. Using a

novel data set on ministerial backgrounds, and examining the area of social

welfare policy in 18 countries, I find support for my theoretical expectations.

Keywords

cabinets, social welfare programs, political economy

On August 25 of 2014, the French President Hollande and his Prime Minister

Valls reshuffled the cabinet, replacing the “firebrand left-wing industry

1University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Despina Alexiadou, University of Pittsburgh, 4600 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 South Bouquet

Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.

Email: dalexiad@pitt.edu

574880CPSXXX10.1177/0010414015574880Comparative Political StudiesAlexiadou

research-article2015

1052 Comparative Political Studies 48(8)

minister” Arnauld Montebourg with the former investment banker Emmanuel

Macron, for lashing out at the government’s economic policy (“Adieu, Cuba

à la française,” 2014). Nonetheless, Montebourg remained in office for more

than 2 years during which he adopted controversial policies such as the

“decret Montebourg” that extended France’s right of veto of foreign take-

overs of domestic firms. Why would a president or prime minister appoint a

minister such as Montebourg who holds strong, even dissenting, policy views

in the first place? When they occur, such appointments beg the question of

how much independent policy influence individual ministers have above and

beyond their party’s official platform. More generally, it is important to

explain ministerial appointments and specify the conditions under which

ministerial appointments affect policy in parliamentary democracies.

Surprisingly, the literature does not have a clear answer to these questions.

With the exception of recent cutting-edge work that links backgrounds and

economic policy (Adolph, 2013; Chwieroth, 2007), scholars of the welfare

state and political economists more broadly have historically bypassed the

role of individual politicians and have assumed that political parties are uni-

tary actors (Franzese, 2002; Hibbs, 1978; Iversen & Stephens, 2008). There

might be good reasons for that. Decision making is highly institutionalized in

parliamentary cabinets, limiting ministerial discretion (Hallerberg, Strauch,

& Hagen, 2009; Martin & Vanberg, 2011; Moury, 2013), and simply “the

assessment of the role of political actors is notoriously difficult” (Blondel,

1993).

Yet, understanding when and how individual ministers determine policy

outcomes is imperative if we want to understand the development of the wel-

fare state, and more generally, how parliamentary cabinets determine policy,

a consequential question for democratic governance. If individual ministers

vary in their willingness and ability to influence the policy agenda, then

black-boxing parliamentary cabinets and failing to differentiate among them

prevents us from understanding how decisions are made in parliamentary

democracies. Differentiating among cabinet ministers might help us resolve

long-standing debates in the literature regarding the role of partisan ideology

in the development of the welfare state1 and more broadly the role of parties

in cabinet formation and policy making (Austen-Smith & Banks, 1988; Laver

& Shepsle, 1996; Martin & Vanberg, 2014; Warwick, 2001).

Political insiders and commentators assign great importance to ministerial

appointments (Nelles, 2013; Powell, 2011), and scholars agree that cabinet

ministers have significant agenda power (Bergman, Muller, Strom, &

Blomgren, 2003; Laver & Shepsle, 1996). The complexity of policy issues

and the sheer volume of business governments need to conduct require a divi-

sion of labor within the cabinet and provide cabinet ministers with

Alexiadou 1053

informational advantages that give them considerable agenda power

(Bergman et al., 2003; Laver & Shepsle, 1996; Strom, 2000). Nonetheless,

scholars of parliamentary democracies have long identified that cabinet min-

isters have variable incentives and capacities in initiating policy as depart-

ment heads. According to Headey (1974), British ministers range from being

“policy-initiators” to being “minimalists.” Blondel (1993) identifies four

types of ministers, ranging from “activists,” when involved both in their

department’s and the government’s policy initiatives, to simple “spectators.”

In other words, there are ministers who let their civil servants run their depart-

ment, and there are ministers who are open to new ideas or who generate

ideas (R. Quinn, personal interview with Irish minister, January 6th 2011).

The challenge is how to identify a priori the cabinet ministers who can

push forward an ambitious policy agenda from those who delegate policy to

their civil servants. The goal of this article is to provide a theory that helps us

think systematically about ministers as policy makers. Having as a starting

point that some politicians are more policy oriented, while others are more

office oriented (Panebianco, 1988) and that not all politicians are equally

effective policy makers (Blondel, 1993; Galasso & Nannicini, 2011), I pro-

vide a typology of ministers on the basis of their motives and political weight.

The average cabinet minister is loyal to his or her party leader and does

not have an independent ambitious policy agenda. He or she values office

more than policy and assumes a managerial rather than a policy entrepreneur-

ial role, especially when confronted with powerful veto players. I call these

ministers loyalists. Yet, not all ministers are typical. There are two other types

of ministers, the partisans and the ideologues, who have both the ambition

and the ability to independently influence the policy agenda. Partisans are

party heavyweights and members of the party leadership. Being already in a

party leadership position, their personal political success is intimately linked

to their party’s electoral success, and they can even expect to have fruitful

careers even when the party is out of government. Thus, partisans have the

incentives and are positioned to devise policy above and beyond what is for-

mally stated in the government program. Finally, ideologues are unlike loyal-

ists or partisans in that they see holding office as the means to achieve policy

goals. Ideologues have fixed policy ideas and cannot be swayed by debates or

office perks.

With the aid of a formal bargaining model, I predict that ideologues and

partisans are more likely to change policy than loyalists. In particular, ideo-

logues have comparable negotiating power to partisans, even when they are

low-rank party members. However, under sufficiently strict fiscal rules or

when the finance minister is a party heavyweight, partisans are the only min-

isterial type that can independently affect the policy agenda.