Scandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinets
Empirical evidence suggests that a Prime Minister can benefit from firing ministers who are involved in political scandals. We explore a model in which a minister's exposure to scandals is positvely related to his policy activism, so that a Prime Minister may wish to protect him from resignatio...
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| Format: | Working paper |
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University of Oxford
2005
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| Summary: | Empirical evidence suggests that a Prime Minister can benefit from firing ministers who are involved in political scandals. We explore a model in which a minister's exposure to scandals is positvely related to his policy activism, so that a Prime Minister may wish to protect him from resignation calls. We find that protection can sometimes work against the objective of encouraging activism: it makes a minister's position more valuable to him and hence can encourage him to sit tight by moderating his activities. On the other hand, an exogenous increase in exposure to scandals may lead a minister to live for today by pursuing controversial policy innovations. The Prime Minister's ability to protect ministers from resignation calls is limited by her short-term incentive to fire. She may, however, enhance her credibility by building a collective reputation with the wider membership of her cabinet; we show that heterogeneity of cabinet membership can play an important role. |
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