Why do cabinet ministers leave office in presidential democracies? To what extent do their exits actually depend on Presidents? To what extent do other actors like parties and other ministers take part in the process, as more commonly occurs in parliamentary regimes? What are the resulting impacts on individual careers, government survival and policy outcome? This paper faces these questions offering a framework for study under what circumstances, how and with what consequences ministers leave office under presidentialism. The paper is structured into two sections. The first one discusses the specificities of presidential ministerial turnover. It identifies dynamics introduced by features not adequately considered by existing literature such as the role of non-legislative support of Presidents; the extra-party affiliations of ministers; and the ministers’ non-political trajectories. The second section proposes an analytical framework by elaborating on three approaches, namely (i) the institutional attributes approach, that focuses on explanatory variables like the coalition and legislative status of the cabinet; (ii) the critical events approach, that focuses on random explanatory variables such as scandals and protests; and (iii) the individual backgrounds approach, that focuses on personal traits of individual ministers. Both sections of the paper are illustrated with systematic references to the Argentinean case for the period 1983-2012.
