A Rational Choice Perspective on Political Executives

Rational choice theory has shaped the study of executive politics in important ways. We contend most of the rational choice literature on executive politics can be seen as exploring the consequences of two related problems that all executives confront: credible commitment and delegation. The credible commitment problem arises because executives require political support. This support is forthcoming only to the extent that the executive can assure potential supporters that the executive will faithfully advance their interests. How, then, does an executive make a credible commitment to advance his or her supporters’ interests? The delegation problem arises because executives must rely on subordinates to carry out their agenda. Such delegation is efficient from executive’s perspective only to the extent that subordinates competently and faithfully execute their orders. How, then, does an executive choose and monitor his or her subordinates? We briefly review the key components of rational choice theory that distinguish it from other theoretical approaches. We then examine how the two different problems have different expressions in parliamentary and presidential systems.

Political Executives in Party-Based Dictatorships

The longevity of party-based dictatorships can be attributed to the durable institutional framework primarily provided by the ruling political parties. In contrast to an earlier research programme that investigated politics within the political executive, more recent comparative literature on authoritarian politics has largely ignored the role of the political executive in particular. The distinction between a party-based dictatorial regime and the political executive within such a regime allows us to address important questions related to the logic of collective leadership, executive selection and deselection, intra-elite bargaining, and the relationship between party and state executive bodies. Due to the existing methodological difficulties of examining opaque politics within authoritarian regimes, future scholarship may address important questions related to the political executive, drawing from advances in text analytics and expert surveys.

Inside the Coordination Paradigm

In this chapter, we examine the shift in presidentialism studies away from Linzian questions of conflict towards questions of coordination in executive-legislative relations. This change of focus has brought presidential studies into line with the research on parliamentary systems, generating a more unified literature on comparative executive politics. Focusing specifically on minority presidents and issues of coalition management, we explore how a conceptual vocabulary familiar to students of parliamentarism has shaped the emerging research agenda. We consider the phenomenon of ‘coalitional presidentialism’, which has become the modal form of minority presidential rule in modern democracies facing higher levels of party fragmentation. We discuss why coalitional presidentialism ‘matters’ for both empirical and theoretical reasons, and review the state of the literature on coalition management. Finally, we identify areas of future research in this field.

Cabinet Decision-making in Parliamentary Systems

This chapter deals with the internal decision-making process of political executives in parliamentary systems, that is, how executives take their own collective decisions. The focus is on the cabinet system as a whole, including both cabinet members and other involved party-political and bureaucratic actors. In particular, the chapter reviews literature’s debates about the nature of cabinet government, the role of prime ministers, and variations of decision-making. A special attention is payed to factors explaining intra-cabinet power distribution and the choice of different decision-making arenas. After introducing the topic, an overview of conceptual issues and main research questions is provided. Subsequently, the work discusses the way in which scholars have addressed these issues and the findings they have reached. The final part stresses existing deficits and seeks to set the agenda for future research.

Presidents and Cabinets

The relationship between presidents and cabinets has attracted less scholarly attention than the prime minister/cabinet relationship. The relationship is typically captured in the theoretical and conceptual terms of the principal-agent framework. In presidential systems, cabinet is the agent of the president, as it is the agent of parliament in parliamentary systems, but in semi-presidential systems, and especially in the president-presidentialism variety, cabinet has two principals. This has resulted in hypotheses for empirical research into the powers of the president over cabinet, and the level of conflict between president and cabinet. With regard to the dominance of the president, the proportion of non-partisan ministers in the cabinet has been shown to be an important indicator. However, the chapter ends with the suggestion to look beyond regime-level differences. The category of presidential systems in particular hides considerable variety, and the study of presidential systems, especially in Latin America, has important potential in this regard.

The Distribution of Ministerial Posts in Parliamentary Systems

The distribution of ministerial posts is an important step in the democratic process in parliamentary democracies, as ministers are likely to influence the policy outputs of governments. Several scholars have thus aimed to explain and predict portfolio allocation in parliamentary democracies. Some scholars have focused exclusively on predicting how many portfolios each party gets, whereas others have focused on predicting which party gets which post. There is also a growing field that focuses on understanding why certain individuals are selected to the cabinet, and why some individuals stay longer in their posts whereas others are shuffled out early. Few studies have connected these questions, fully aiming to explain the distribution of posts between and within political parties negotiating to enter government. We suggest that this is an important step for future research

Constructivist Approaches to the Study of Political Executives

Constructivism is a theoretical perspective that embraces the inherent uncertainties of human experience. In the study of political executives, this has manifested itself as seeking to understand and analyse how the ideas of actors are expressed through discourse, and how discourse in turn interacts with culture, context, data and perceived interests to shape projections of political reality. Constructivists examine both how political actors seek to frame the world that they see and how the wider citizenry frame their own perceptions in return in a constant iterative and recursive process of communication. This chapter outlines how constructivist approaches have been applied to the study of political executives to date, and suggests some potentially fruitful areas of future research for the decade ahead.

Performance and Evaluation of Political Executives

While not being a classic subject of executive politics research, there has been a wealth of scholarly activities more recently that have moved issues of performance, and evaluation, centre-stage. Understood as an independent variable, the performance of political executives has come to be acknowledged as a key factor shaping the political fate of both the government of the day (including more particular issues, such as the electoral costs of governing) and the regime more generally. Research on performance as a dependent variable has focused on such different aspects as the nature and timing of public policies that governments make, political communication, and the personality of different office-holders in the executive branch. As the agenda is expanding quickly, the growing realization of the various meanings of ‘performance’ and a new comparative ambition committed to reaching beyond a particular type of political regimes look set to become important catalysts for future innovations in the field.

Executive-Legislative Relations in Democratic Regimes

To make lasting policy executives must get the legislature to pass their proposals. How do executives form working relationships with the legislative branch, and when do they seek control over rather than negotiation with the legislature to achieve their preferred policy outcomes? Scholars of presidential, parliamentary, and semi-presidential systems have sought to answer this question from a variety of angles. We consider how executives use and manage coalitions to achieve their preferred outcomes; the constitutional or chamber rules that allow them to influence which bills become law; and the way changes in the external environment can lead to shifts in the executive’s strategy. We conclude by offering suggestions for extending the study of executive-legislative relations including advocating for more comparisons across different institutional structures and party systems and a recognition that increased diversity in the executive branch may impact executive-legislative relations.

Post-Executive Activities

This chapter will focus on political careers of executive members after the end of their term in office, with particular reference to political leaders. After reviewing literature on post-executive political career, it will focus on more recent research directions in this field: (a) the attempt to extend the number of empirical observations by assuming systematic and large-N comparative research; (b) the move from an empiricist-individualistic conception of career patterns to an institutional one; (c) the investigation on new politics-market linkages in democratic regimes coming from the new activism of former leaders. Jointly considering these lines, the final part of the chapter will be devoted to delineate some lines of future research agenda on post-executive patterns and raise crucial questions concerning representative regimes.