How to Qualify for Cabinet

Chapter 7 shows that aspirant ministers can qualify for cabinet appointment by meeting representational criteria, defined as membership in a politically relevant political, territorial, or socio-demographic group deemed important for legitimizing the cabinet team. In all country cases, a subset of ministrables qualify for appointment to cabinet on the basis of representational criteria, and all countries in the book’s data set employ representational criteria in defining the ministerial eligibility pool, even as specific representational criteria vary in number and content across cases. The chapter shows that regional representation is a strong prescriptive criterion in five countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom), and that race and ethnicity are prescribed as representational categories in Canada and the United States. The chapter finds that gender is the only representational category that appears across all countries, yet the magnitude of women’s inclusion varies significantly.