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...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working paper |
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University of Oxford
2005
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| _version_ | 1826289828926324736 |
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| author | Myatt, D Dewan, T |
| author_facet | Myatt, D Dewan, T |
| author_sort | Myatt, D |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:34:52Z |
| format | Working paper |
| id | oxford-uuid:a8741384-4153-4172-a526-96947bdfd2f3 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:34:52Z |
| publishDate | 2005 |
| publisher | University of Oxford |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:a8741384-4153-4172-a526-96947bdfd2f32022-03-27T03:01:38ZScandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinetsWorking paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:a8741384-4153-4172-a526-96947bdfd2f3Bulk import via SwordSymplectic ElementsUniversity of Oxford2005Myatt, DDewan, TEmpirical 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. |
| spellingShingle | Myatt, D Dewan, T Scandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinets |
| title | Scandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinets |
| title_full | Scandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinets |
| title_fullStr | Scandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinets |
| title_full_unstemmed | Scandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinets |
| title_short | Scandal, protection, and recovery in political cabinets |
| title_sort | scandal protection and recovery in political cabinets |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT myattd scandalprotectionandrecoveryinpoliticalcabinets AT dewant scandalprotectionandrecoveryinpoliticalcabinets |