A decabinetization policy is an organizational change of the ministerial cabinet system that introduce more restrictions or constraints to the ministerial cabinet. As ministerial cabinet are direct resources of ministers, it is paradoxical that such measures are adopted by governing politicians. Despite this paradox, we have argued that there is a trend of decabinetization of ministerial cabinets going on in countries of Napoleonic administration tradition (Meert et al., 2023). The question is thus what special conditions lead to the adoption of those policies.
While the case of Belgium, France, and the European Commission have been addressed in the literature, little is known about this phenomenon in Portugal. This paper sheds light to the case of Portugal. Portuguese ministerial advisory system is generally understudied (Silva, 2017). Moreover it makes an interesting case for studying decabinetization policies because the reform not only applied to line Ministers, as it is generally the case when such policies are adopted (see for example Greece or France), but also to the Prime Minister.
The purpose of the paper is twofold. On one hand, we study the evolving pattern of decabinetization in the last 20 years in Portugal and describe the decabinetization policies that were adopted . On the other, we use process-tracing to explain the process that led to their adoption. We rely on elite interviews and document analysis to show how external coercive pressures for administrative policy change created a critical juncture that the Prime Minister used to adopt decabinetization policies that were in line with his ideological position.
