Who are the Junior Ministers of the Portuguese Democracy? What are their professional, educational and political background? And how can be described their government careers? This paper aims to answer these questions by analyzing the Junior Ministers cursus honorum and their junior ministerial career in Portugal between 1976 and 2012.
Despite being part of the governing elite, thus influencing the formulation and implementation of policy decisions, the study of Junior Ministers is underdeveloped since, unlike Ministers, scarce literature has analyzed Junior Ministers social and political profile and junior ministerial careers. This is due to the literature mostly using aggregate analysis of Ministers and Junior Ministers and also due to the conception of Junior Ministers as mere party payoffs in coalition cabinets. However, some literature has shown that the position of Junior Ministers has been important in the rise to the rank of cabinet minister and that technical skills have been increasingly valuable in Junior Minister's recruitment.
This paper entails an empirical research that aims to test this assumption in Portugal, by realizing who are these political actors, what are their credentials, social profile and political experience. Based on these attributes, skills and experiences we were able to identify different profiles - technical expert Junior Ministers and Political Junior Ministers - and relate these profiles with junior ministerial careers. In fact, we believe that the political actors background are significant in the performance in office and therefore a different profile (technical expert or political) can be related to different careers in government (including variables as duration, number and type of portfolios, government type, dismissal reasons).
Therefore, this paper will not only trace the evolution of technical expert and political Junior Ministers in Portugal since 1976 but also consider junior ministerial careers from that distinction, identifying similarities and differences with other countries.
