This study explores the existence and conditions under which policy dictatorship (i.e. the ability of an individual minister to ‘dictate’ policy decisions in his policy domain) occurs in Belgium. We assess policy dictatorship by examining to which extent individual ministers can seize control of their policy area and move beyond the government agreement. We do so by measuring the convergence in policy priorities between party programs, government agreements and ministerial council decisions between 1992 and 2006. A minister is considered a policy dictator when the convergence of the priorities between his party and the ministerial councils match better than those of the other majority parties or that of the initial government agreement. Once this measure of convergence established, we examine the impact of different individual and party variables on policy dictatorship.
