IMPLEMENTATION

Strong party discipline and adherence to the Westminster doctrine of cabinet collective responsibility ensure that ministers have strong incentives to implement the government’s program, rather than follow their own self-interest. In addition, the increasingly predominant role of the prime minister in all parliamentary systems, and not least Australia’s, has increased this tendency.

In the Canadian system, and especially under the current government, the prime minister holds considerable power; indeed, some argue that the current prime minister holds quasi-absolute power over all ministers. A cabinet minister who is not perceived by the PMO as a team player will have a short career. Cabinet ministers are evaluated and hence promoted and demoted on the basis of their ability to deliver on the government’s agenda. The prime minister and his office (PMO) have an important role in appointing deputy ministers and chiefs of staff. Deputy ministers are appointed by the prime minister on the advice of the clerk of the Privy Council Office. Deputy ministers are promoted (or less often demoted) for a variety of reasons, including the attempt to match their talents to the requirements of the department, efforts to establish gender and linguistic balance, and so on.

Ministers in Korea do not have their own political base, and depend almost solely on support by the president. The president appoints and dismisses ministers, and cabinet reshuffles occur frequently. The average tenure of a minister in Korea is about one year, which allows ministers little independence.

The Swedish Cabinet acts in concert on all important policy matters; policy formulation and accountability are collective processes. In the political debate, individual ministers certainly pursue policies relevant to their portfolio but cabinets tend to be evaluated collectively. The fact that both the center-left and center-right blocs in Swedish politics are becoming increasingly coordinated on policy decisions and strategic policy goals strengthens this development of collective political action further.

Department heads serve at the discretion of the president, that is, the chief executive has full control over his appointments. The issue is not so much that ministers get out of line, but that they may get sidelined. Conflicts between the department heads and the White House occasionally emerge, but they are usually limited to a speech or remark that conflicts with presidential policy. Conflicts were expected to arise under the Obama administration between Secretary of State Clinton and the White House, and possibly between Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the head of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers. But none of these predictions came true. Department heads toed the White House line, and there was very little open inner-administrative conflict or warfare. There were, however, conflicts between Summers and Christina Romer, who resigned in frustration from her position as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. However, department heads have to be cognizant of the wishes of members of Congress, which has strong leverage over their budgets. In minor, administrative and regulatory matters, where there is no clear White House guidance, they may tilt towards pleasing legislative actors.

The president’s office performs annual evaluations of ministers’ policies. In a commission consisting of Segpres and the government’s budgetary units, ministers have to present their sectoral priorities, and if necessary, arrangements are made to ensure alignment with the overall government agenda.

Denmark has parliamentary rule. The government can be forced to retire any time if in the minority in parliament. The prime minister is the leader of the government, and he does not allow ministers to pursue private interests that are not compatible with the declared goals of the government. Close scrutiny by parliament, including its committees, and an attentive press, seldom lets rogue ministers behave this way for long. The prime minister can both fire and promote ministers, so there are incentives to do what the prime minister expects. Party members can of course revolt against a prime minister, but this happens rarely in Denmark. There is a high degree of party discipline.

Ministers are committed to the government’s program through several mechanisms. Government programs come about following negotiations between the political parties in government, and therefore its validity and steering capacity is supervised by coalition partners and line ministries. Cabinet agenda issues are in several cases prepared and coordinated in cabinet committees and informal groups and meetings. All items are preliminarily discussed weekly in the government’s evening session, or iltakoulu, meetings, which precede formal cabinet meetings. In other words, ministers are closely watched as well as expected to be integral parts of cooperative units. They would find it difficult as well as unrewarding to pursuit their own self-interests.

Compliance by ministers if assessed comparatively is rather good as a minister can be dismissed at any time and without explanation. In the French majority system and in the absence of real coalition governments, the ministers, nominated by the president, are largely assigned to him. Together with the effective hierarchical steering of governmental action, ministers have strong incentives to implement the government’s program, following the guidelines produced by the president and the prime minister. In addition, contrary to countries such as Italy or Germany where the smaller components of a government coalition might be tempted to blackmail the dominant party, no such bargaining capacity is available to the minority in France.
Compliance by the administration is a more complex matter. As underlined before, the belief that once approved a reform is implemented is constantly contradicted by the facts, namely by the lasting French tradition to fight reforms once they have been passed. For instance, a minister who or an administration that has been forced to swallow a certain reform measure can jeopardize its application by not accepting or even slowing down the implementation process or by publishing a circular which restricts the interpretation of the law. The Ministry of Finance is particularity good at playing this game to minimize the financial impact of policies pushed by line ministries.

Ministers usually follow party lines in the exercise of their duties and decisions, but individual ministers have considerable authority to make independent non-collective decisions. However, non-collective decisions are rare. In the present government, in office since 2009, some signs of disagreement have emerged having little to do specifically with ministerial actions. For example, when the Icelandic parliament voted in 2009 for the government resolution on Icelandic application for EU membership, one of the Left Green Movement officeholders, Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Jón Bjarnason, voted against the resolution.

There is a strong tradition of collective responsibility of the cabinet in New Zealand. Ministers are allowed to disagree about policy initiatives, even in public, but once a decision has been made in cabinet they have to follow the collective will. The cabinet manual is very explicit about this. The prime minister has the power to appoint and dismiss ministers (formally it is the governor-general who does this on the advice of the prime minister). Naturally, in coalition governments the prime minister’s power over the personnel of another party is restricted. Collective responsibility is strengthened by an extensive list of coalition management instruments based on a comprehensive coalition agreement with regard to the legislative agenda but also procedures to ensure coalition discipline. The current National-led minority government can build on the experiences of earlier minority governments of how to ensure ministerial compliance. In its Cabinet Office Circular CO (09) 07, the current government has specified the nature of its agreements with other parties and support to party ministers. These may disagree on policy other than what is outlined in the ministerial portfolio. On issues in their portfolio, they are bound by collective responsibility.

There is a strong tradition of cabinet government. The cabinet meets several times a week and government decisions need formally to be made in cabinet. The convention of close ministerial cooperation increases ministers’ identification with the government’s program and makes the government work as a “team.” As long as divisions between coalition partners are not seen as paramount, this system guarantees relatively strong cabinet cohesion, which has been the recent experience.

The organization of the parliamentary/cabinet system, as well as its internal power dynamics, assists the government in implementing its program. All ministers, and the government as a whole, depend on the good will and support of the prime minister. Moreover, the prime minister’s coordination and oversight power is being increased with the implementation of Decree-Law 202 of October 27, 2006. The ministers can only operate in ways that correspond with the prime minister’s priorities.

Ministerial compliance is directly dependent upon the type of government, either single party or coalition. A single-party government with a strong party leadership and high demand for ministerial positions among members provides strong incentives for the promotion of the government program. In the case of coalition government, ministers primarily seek to promote their own future electoral success. With strong leadership keeping cabinet members subordinate, it is difficult for even those ministers who are professionals in their field to come to the forefront.
The personal charisma of the incumbent prime minister and political parties’ tendencies to leave personnel decisions to party leaders prevent ministers from pursuing their own interests during their time in office. The AKP government has made it even more difficult for ministers to follow their own individual agendas. A number of key ministries today are under the leadership of ministers that hold substantial professional expertise but lack almost any support from the party apparatus, leaving them completely at the mercy of the prime minister. Among these ministers at the time of writing were Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, State Minister and EU chief negotiator Egemen Bağış, State Minister in Charge of Economy Ali Babacan, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek, State Minister Mehmet Aydın, Education Minister Nimet Çubukçu, Minister for Family and Youth Selma Aliye Kavaf, and Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay.

The British prime minister has sole power to appoint politicians to ministerial positions at the junior or cabinet levels, and thus has a great power of patronage. Unless the prime minister is considered politically weakened almost beyond recovery, trying to oppose him is politically very dangerous, as he or she can make or break political careers (“A good prime minister has to be a good butcher,” said Harold Macmillan).
Ministerial compliance thus largely depends on the political strength of the prime minister of the day. In the case of Gordon Brown, an initial period of strength in the second half of 2007 turned into weakness after he decided not to hold a general election in the autumn of 2007. As his poll ratings declined, there were several attempts by cabinet ministers to unseat him; however, none of these gained sufficient support in the cabinet or among MPs to be successful. At the same time, it must be considered a sign of the prime minister’s political weakness that he failed to retaliate effectively against the organizers of these attempted coups.

There is also an established doctrine of collective responsibility which means that once a position is agreed upon, ministers either have to agree with it, or if they wish to object publicly, resign. Such resignations of principle are rare, although one cabinet minister who did resign in the hope of precipitating a change of leadership was James Purnell (June 2009). In practice, selective leaks (“briefing”) to journalists, usually on the understanding that no attribution will be made, are the more typical means of expressing opposition to government policies.

In principle, line ministers are responsible for policies that fall into their jurisdiction. Therefore, they have at least some leeway to pursue their own or their party’s interest. This leeway is quite substantial in international comparison, because the coalition partners in both governments during the period under review here abstained from sending watchdogs in the form of state secretaries to ministries led by the other partner.
Nonetheless, the individual ministers’ room to maneuver is limited both by the “cabinet principle” and the “chancellor principle.” According to the cabinet principle, all important decisions have to be taken by the whole cabinet. The latter principle gives the chancellor the formal right to determine the guidelines of government policy, and to ask the federal president to appoint or dismiss ministers. It is true that most bills are essentially rubber-stamped by the cabinet without much discussion, that chancellors hardly ever have enough power to determine policy guidelines in coalition governments, and that a chancellor who dismisses a coalition partner’s minister risks the collapse of the coalition. However, these regulations at least prevent extreme cases of individual ministers pursuing their or their parties’ own interests.
In comparison to the other ministers, the federal minister of finance has a relatively strong position. With support of the chancellor, he or she is able to reject requests by other ministries, and therefore also has a governmental oversight role.
In addition, a number of informal mechanisms are used to coordinate government policy. Both government coalitions serving during the period under review worked out lengthy coalition agreements. These not only embodied compromises on the most important policy issues, but also contained procedures on how to deal with conflicts should they arise during the legislative period. Chief among these mechanisms has been the coalition committee, which is made up of the coalition parties’ most important actors, and was quite effective in hammering out policy compromises under the grand coalition. The rule preventing governing parties from voting against one another in important Bundestag ballots is also important. These mechanisms help ensure that ministers generally implement the government program.

Both the Gyurcsány and Bajnai governments largely succeeded in keeping ministries in line, though the Bajnai government proved more successful in this regard. This partly reflects the strong role played by the prime minister in the Hungarian political system. The tough requirements of crisis management also played a key role. There was almost no opposition by ministers to the drastic budget cuts imposed upon them through a series of reform packages. When ministers occasionally turned against Prime Minister Gyurcsány, they did so not in their role as ministers, but as party politicians fighting for the leadership and influence within the MSzP. Under the Bajnai government, the government’s stronger detachment from the parties further increased ministerial compliance.

Luxembourg’s electoral system, known as “panachage,” is a combination of the proportional representation of lists with the possibility for the voter to pick individual candidates by giving them preferential votes. Consequently, the voter, and not the party, decides the composition of parliament and even of the government, since those with the best results usually become ministers.
This system encourages politicians to take personal initiatives, but as they generally address small lobbies, they do not conflict with the government’s agenda.
A “go-it-alone” action of a CSV member of parliament and former minister has, however, caused a lot of attention, because it challenged one of the basic tenants of consensus within the political system, namely not to appeal to nationalism and xenophobia. This MP submitted a proposal for a law to change the Luxembourg national flag, without any prior consultation with the party establishment. Even if the purpose was folkloristic, a petition in favor of this initiative obtained a number of signatures corresponding to 12% of the electorate.
This personal initiative annoyed the CSV because it does not correspond to the modern image the party wants to convey. On the other hand, it contributed to attracting those in the electorate who fear being “swamped” by foreigners and being unable to compete with them on the labor market.

The president has “hire and fire” rights over his cabinet, and there is no separate body of officialdom. There is also a national plan which guides policy decisions. The so-called agency problem is not very great in Mexico because – except at the end of the presidential term, when people start to look ahead to the next presidency – the incumbent president has sufficient means to control the executive branch at the federal level. There is one significant exception, however. This is that the finance ministry is to a significant extent autonomous from the rest of the government. Mexico is very dependent on international financial markets, and departures from fiscal orthodoxy can exact a high price. Thus, the incumbent finance minister often has an independently strong position in government.

Dutch ministers’ hands are very much tied by such devices as party discipline, government/coalition agreements (which they have to sign in person during an inaugural meeting of the new cabinet ), ministerial responsibility to parliament, and the dense consultation and negotiation processes taking place within their own departments and with other departments in the interdepartmental administrative “front gates” and ministerial committees. As mentioned under GO Expertise, ministers have strong incentives to represent their ministerial interests, which do not necessarily reflect government coalition policy in a one-to-one fashion. In addition, outright party-political differences are occasionally voiced in the media. During the Balkenende IV cabinet, one minister was forced to resign because trust in her capacities to implement government policy on the politically hyper-sensitive issue of integration was publicly questioned.

Prime Minister Tusk and the Chancellery of the Prime Minister have enjoyed a strong position within government. Although many ministers have had a strong standing within their parties and/or have been widely respected as experts in their fields, Prime Minister Tusk has largely succeeded in keeping ministers in line.

In principle, both from a legal and a political point of view, the organization of the Spanish government provides very strong incentives for all ministers to implement the overall government program rather than seeking the sectoral interests of their individual departments. The prime minister’s powers over personnel is extraordinary; not only because of articles 99 and 100 of the constitution, which stipulate that parliamentary confidence rests personally with him and his comprehensive government program (all other members of the cabinet being appointed and dismissed by the king at the individual prime minister’s proposal), but also as a consequence of the fact that all Spanish prime ministers in the last 30 years have simultaneously been the strong leaders of very disciplined parties (and all have presided over single-party governments). Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is no exception, and has the capacity to impose his views in the cabinet and party meetings he chairs, and to dismiss those ministers he does not consider able or willing to implement the government’s program.
However, the fact that the Spanish government’s hierarchical organizational devices provide these potentially strong incentives does not necessarily ensure that ministers always subordinate their sectoral self-interest to the general interests of the government. In fact, perhaps with the exception of former Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Pedro Solbes (who was critical of some prime ministerial economic decisions), many recent dismissals were motivated neither by a lack of compliance nor by improper implementation of the government’s program. The reasons behind retaining a given cabinet member are not clearly connected to policy evaluation, and in fact, an amicable relationship with the sectoral network of interests around the line ministry is usually a very practical way to receive a positive judgment from the prime minister.

Government in Switzerland is not (primarily) party government. Ministers are expected to work together as a collegium and to abstain from any politics and policies that benefit their party or themselves as individual politicians. In general this worked quite well as long as all members of government felt bound by the rules of collegiality. In recent years, due to growing political polarization and the attack on consociational politics by the right-populist party and its (informal) leader, Christoph Blocher, there have been some deviations from this course. However, even in periods of polarized politics, the Swiss government and the implementation of its policies are much less driven by the interests of individual politicians or their parties than is the case for parliamentary governments. For the spring 2008 – spring 2010 period, the level of ministerial compliance might be even higher than in 2003 – 2007.

The parties participating in the governing coalition have different agendas and priorities. The allocation of ministries between these parties has a significant influence on the coherence of policies in various areas. Under the Irish system, individual ministries (departments) are to a significant degree independent fiefdoms that can be used by individual ministers to pursue their self interests, chief among which is boosting their chances of reelection, as distinct from any comprehensive government objective. The system also requires even senior ministers to spend considerable energy and time in local constituency work, because few are sufficiently free of the risk of losing their seat at the next election.
An example of conflict between ministerial objectives and government policy is the current controversy between the minister for the environment and the Dublin City Council regarding the construction of an incinerator in the minister’s electoral district. The proposed facility has received approval from the cabinet, the relevant planning authorities and the Environmental Protection Agency, but the minister continues to conduct a high-profile campaign against it. Failure to build the incinerator on the specified scale could result in Ireland failing to meet the EU’s landfill directive, with the subsequent imposition of large fines.
Individual ministries are constrained by the relevant policies included in the government’s program. The two ministries with overarching responsibility for coordinating this program are the Department of Finance and the Department of the Taoiseach. The taoiseach can use party mechanisms to control the ministers from his own party, and also exercises some control over ministers from the coalition parties. But he cannot choose civil servants in any ministry to help him implement governmental goals against ministerial self-interest. At the higher levels of the civil service, appointment is now in the hands of an independent commission. Ministers are also free to select their own advisors and consultants without interference from the taoiseach or cabinet, and these outside advisors exercise considerable influence. For the most part, however, individual ministers do implement government policy. If they do not, the taoiseach has full powers of dismissal.

The dominant role of the prime minister in the center-right coalition has undoubtedly increased the ability of the government to ensure that ministers will implement the government’s program. The existence of a fairly comprehensive coalition agreement and government program, which has received significant media coverage and is monitored by the government, is another significant instrument for ensuring ministerial compliance. However, departmental self-interests have obviously not disappeared, and often lead to inertia or contradictory pressures.
To be in power and governing Italy should be the greatest incentive for Berlusconi as well for his ministers to do their political work. However, Berlusconi governments have never been strong in implementing their stated electoral program or fulfilling promises given in electoral campaigns. There are no organizational devices providing incentives for ministers, aside from loyalty to government leader Berlusconi himself. This serves a significant role, as many actors in the coalition know that Berlusconi is the only one able to keep the often-warring coalition parties and persons together, and who retains support by the electorate.

The specific features of Austrian politics – namely coalition governments, a high degree of autonomy allotted each minister (including personnel decisions), the chancellor’s lack of a strong position – mean that there are no strong incentives for ministers to implement the government’s program.
Nonetheless, there are a number of informal mechanisms which help commit individual ministers to the government program. For example, the coalition partners of the current coalition have worked out a lengthy coalition agreement. Coalition partners have therefore reached compromises on the most important policy issues and agreed on procedures for dealing with conflicts should they arise during the legislative period. One important mechanism in this regard is the rule that governing parties will not vote against one another during important parliamentary votes and will not support referendums against government policy. However, in the run-up to the September 2008 elections, the social democrats (SPÖ) voted together with the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the Greens in support of abolishing tuition fees, while the Peoples’ Party (ÖVP) suggested organizing a referendum on the issue. In this case, the governing parties (ÖVP and SPÖ) obviously voted against each other on an important issue, and only days before the next election.

While the prime minister is in charge of managing the government, he does not have the power to exclude ministers from government. The main architects of government positions are indeed the coalition party presidents, who negotiate at the government formation stage which portfolios they control and then nominate people in their party to run that portfolio. The main incentive of any given minister is thus to push his own party’s views rather than the government’s potential views. This creates consistent tension before the government reaches a decision on salient issues. This being said, because ministers have to comply with their party president’s views (otherwise they could lose their position in the next legislature), they largely stick to the governmental agreement. But this compliance mechanism does not rest on the prime minister or on other formal (organizational) rules.
The performance of Prime Minister Yves Leterme to keep ministers in check has been poor, with some exceptions. The situation is however exceptional. In general the prime minister is much better able to keep the ministers in line.

In the Czech Republic, governments have tried to ensure ministerial compliance largely through the use of well-defined government programs and coalition agreements. Differences between individual ministers and the government then generally take the form of disagreements between parties and are played out by threats of resignation, potentially bringing down the whole government. During the period of the Topolánek government, there were reasons to remove ministers from both the Christian Democrat party and the Green Party (relating to issues of corruption or incompetence), but to do so would have threatened the existence of the whole government. These were therefore matters of difficult, and public, negotiation and conflict between coalition partners. Ministerial compliance in the Fischer government was reached through an agreement made with all of the main political parties. The problem was thus not so much ministerial compliance as it was securing a parliamentary majority at a time when parties were concerned with imminent elections.

Japan’s formal institutional political framework provides the prime minister with powerful tools to control ministers. Prime ministers can appoint and fire ministers at will. Moreover, prime ministers can also propose or veto specific sectoral policies themselves if they want to do so. In practice, however, prime ministerial options have been more limited, as most of them have lacked full control over their own parties. During the long reign of the LDP, which came to an end only in August 2009,
prime ministers were often not able to choose ministers as they wished, as they had to take into account the power and preferences of intraparty factions when allocating portfolios. On the other hand, the powerful entrenched national bureaucracy and a relatively high degree of cabinet discipline all effectively constrained ministers’ opportunities to put personal before national or party interests.

The new DPJ government has initiated institutional reforms aimed at centralizing policy-making within the core executive. It remains to be seen whether coalition agreements can really help to foster the cabinet’s collective responsibility, or keep ministers hailing from small coalition partners from simply pursuing their own party’s agenda. Certainly, the experience of the relatively short-lived DPJ-PNP-SDP coalition government showed how difficult it can be to balance the need for policy coherence with the need to satisfy individual party clienteles.

Under the Fico government, ministers were more bound to their parties and party leaders than to the government as such. Only occasionally did Prime Minister Fico make use of his right to dismiss ministers. In August 2009, he recalled Minister of the Environment Viliam Turský. Violating the coalition agreement, he even took away the SNS’ portfolio without any compensation.

There are very few, if any, incentives for Greek ministers to implement the government’s program. They abide by this program as along as the legislation they must pass in order to implement government policy does not tarnish their personal public image. Ministers are almost always members of parliament, and they make a point of avoiding legislation that might negatively affect their reelection chances. Also, if the press or large trade unions offer opposition to ministers’ efforts to implement the government’s program, the ministers will usually back down rather than putting up a fight. This trend in the political behavior is related to the very competitive and very costly election campaigns for parliamentary seats. The tendency of ministers to shy away from implementing the government’s program if such implementation is unpopular is particularly aggravated in large electoral districts, where each political party presents a long list of candidates from among whom voters choose one to four preferred candidates. In these cases, party supporters may use their preference vote in order to vote for the party of their choice, but also to “punish” a candidate who has made unpopular decisions in his or her capacity as minister.