Minding (Your Own and) Others’ Business: Assigning Co-Responsibility in Cabinet Decisions

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231152797
• Author: Ilana Shpaizman,Amnon Cavari
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(11) 1760–1789

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231152797

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Minding (Your Own and)

Others’Business:

Assigning Co-

Responsibility in Cabinet

Decisions

Ilana Shpaizman

1

and Amnon Cavari

2



Abstract

In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to

individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for

managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet de-

cisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what

conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We f‌ind that co-responsibility is assigned

strategically by cabinet members weighing the risk of a drift against the costs of

imposing co-responsibility. These f‌indings demonstrate an understudied mech-

anism through which coalition governments narrow ministerial autonomy and

informational advantage once policies reach the cabinet. In doing so, this research

contributes to a better understanding of policymaking in coalition governments.

Keywords

coalition government, cabinet, cabinet ministers

In coalition governments, the cabinet, which is collectively responsible to the

parliament for its policymaking, delegates its authority to individual cabinet

1

Bar-Ilan University Department of Political Studies, Israel

2

IDC, Herzliya, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Ilana Shpaizman, Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel.

Email: ilana.shpaizman@biu.ac.il

ministers. However, delegation imposes risks. Coalition governments are

composed of several parties with different and, in some cases, contradicting

preferences. When authority is delegated to them, cabinet ministers receive

signif‌icant autonomy and agenda setting power and gain an informational

advantage on the policies under the jurisdiction of their department (Laver &

Shepsle, 1994). Ministers are induced to use their autonomy and informational

advantage to advance the policy preferences of their parties and, hence, meet

their policy and electoral goals. In some cases, the actions of these ministers

might be at odds with the preferences of other members in the coalition or with

the coalition compromise. Coalition partners will, therefore, try to manage the

delegation costs by limiting the ministers’autonomy and informational ad-

vantage (Andeweg, 2000).

How delegation costs are managed is key for understanding policymaking

in coalition governments. A rich body of research addresses the use of various

ex-ante and ex-post mechanisms that limit the cabinet minister’s autonomy.

Such mechanisms can involve parliament (Carroll & Cox, 2012;Martin &

Vanberg, 2011) or can be intra-executive (Andeweg, 2000;Fernandes et al.,

2016;Lipsmeyer & Pierce, 2011;Thies, 2001). Most of these mechanisms,

however, have political opportunity and enforcement costs (Müller & Meyer,

2011). Consequently, coalition partners use these mechanisms strategically,

assessing the possible risk of a minister to drift from the coalition compromise

against the costs of overseeing her and preventing or minimizing the drift.

Contributing to the existing literature on policymaking in coalition govern-

ments and, particularly, to research on intra-executive mechanisms for

managing delegation costs (Fernandes et al., 2016;Klüser, 2022;Lipsmeyer

& Pierce, 2011), we explore an understudied intra-executive mechanism that

is based on institutional checks (Müller & Meyer., 2011): Assigning co-

responsibility in cabinet decisions.

Cabinet decisions are the main output of cabinet meetings. They include

decisions about bills, decrees, regulations, programs, nominations, and other

policy outputs. In many cases, the cabinet decides to assign more than one

minister as responsible for the implementation of a decision. This will be

termed co-responsibility. Co-responsibility provides the co-responsible

minister with an opportunity to gain information and affect the im-

plementation of a policy that is handled in a different ministry (we term this the

primary responsible minister). Because cabinet decisions are made frequently

and address various policy problems, co-responsibility makes it possible to

keep tabs on ministers on various issues and respond to changing political

interests. Along with these advantages, co-responsibility is also a direct in-

terference in ministerial autonomy. Therefore, cabinet ministers, in most

cases, object to having a co-responsible minister assigned. This might lead to a

conf‌lict between the coalition partners. Consequently, coalition partners

Shpaizman and Cavari 1761