Do technocratic ministers enjoy longer cabinet careers? An analysis of 30 European countries

Research on ministerial selection in West European parliamentary countries has highlighted links between the voters, political parties, and cabinets (Strom, Müller and Bergman 2008), examined the nature of party government (Woldendorp, Keman, and Budge 2000), and studied the strategies that political parties use in distributing cabinet portfolios (Bäck, Debus and Dumont 2011). In European countries, a ministerial position is a primary political office for anyone with political ambitions. Ministers are the core decision-makers and the ones positioned to help set political agendas (Chabal 2003). Previous research has shown that predominantly, political parties prefer to nominate party-affiliated and politically experienced ministers (Keman and Müller-Rommel 2012; Dowding and Dumont 2009; Blondel, Müller-Rommel, and Malova 2007; Blondel and Thiébault 1991; Semenova 2018, 2020). However, European cabinets have seen an increase in the number of technocratic ministers. The presentation deals with the careers of these technocratic ministers by answering the question of whether these ministers are often replaced on the first occasion or actually survive longer than their party-experienced counterparts, as some country studies suggest (Semenova 2020). The paper employs a novel dataset on technocratic ministers in 30 European countries.