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Do Dutch Ministerial Appointments Respond to Individualization And Master Thesis Master COMPASS (Comparative Politics, Administration and Society) 2017-2018 Radboud University Nijmegen The government we deserve: do Dutch ministerial appointments respond to individualization and party-decline? A study into ministerial selection in Dutch government cabinets in 1977-2017 Floris van Bodegraven s4632370 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Monique Leyenaar 29-7-2019 Picture: Houses of Parliament, Hofvijver, The Hague Michiel Verbeek, BY-SA 4.0 https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Den_Haag,_het_Binnenhof_diverse_RM_met_de_Hofvijver_op_de_voorgrond_foto8_2015-08- 05_18.56.jpg 1 s4632370 Floris van Bodegraven Abstract This thesis performs a descriptive analysis of all ministerial appointments in Dutch cabinets between 1977-2017 in order to understand find out whether societal macro-developments such as individualization, party decline and party system fragmentation influence the preference of political parties and prime ministers for the type of experience of their ministers during government formation. Although it finds no support for this theorem, this thesis does contribute to the literature by expanding previous work into the type of ministers that take seat in Dutch government. As such, it finds that while political experience dominated up to 2002, it seems to be on its retour. This thesis attempted to find causal relationships between ministerial expertise and individualization and party decline. This analysis did not provide any usable results due to multicollinearity between the predictor-variables, but may provide some avenues for further research. Keywords: Ministerial selection, multiparty government, cabinet government, government formation, principal- agent approach, party decline, party system fragmentation. Wordcount: 20.818 2 s4632370 Floris van Bodegraven Acknowledgement & Foreword This thesis started as result of pure curiosity after the Dutch general parliamentary elections of 2017. As result of the new coalition-agreement, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food quality was reinstated, five years after it had been merged with the Ministry of Economic Affairs. This move struck me as odd, and as I embarked on a journey to find out more about this secretive process that is called ‘government formation’, I found out that relatively little had been written about how those taking office after government formation actually are selected. This curiosity is the same that once made me choose for the HBO-bachelor journalism: I wanted to study the world around me. But when I finished, I felt that I knew how to write, but still barely was able to scratch the surface of what makes our environment the way it is. The desire to get a better understanding of society and the mechanisms and philosophies behind it drove me to Nijmegen University. Five years of journalism-education taught me how to observe the mechanisms of power. Two years of education gave me the theoretical background to begin to understand the foundations of the ‘big world’, half a year of internship with the Netherlands Embassy in Georgia allowed me for to take a peek into the kitchen of politics. Now, basically one-and-half year after the topic sprouted from my mind, this thesis represents the result of my research, and the finale to this phase of my learning-curve. It proved to be almost as tedious as the process of coalition formation itself: you never really get what you want. Unfortunately, I was not able to find an answer to the questions underlying this thesis. Yet, I hope that this thesis will prove that I can do what is needed to get me what I want, and what motivated me to add another three years of education to my resumé: a master-degree in Political Science at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Writing this thesis taught me a lot, both about myself as well as the field of Political Science and I believe that my experiences during my time at Radboud University have been an indispensable contribution to my skillset. Finally, I want to use this place to thank those who have patiently and tirelessly supported me during writing this thesis: first and foremost my thesis-supervisor Monique Leyenaar, who encouraged me to think outside the box, but also quite often had to slow me down when I my plan went all over the place. This thesis would also not have been possible without the help of the Parlementair Documentatie Centrum attached to Leiden University, who provided me with biographic data of over 235 individual ministers, free of charge. I would also like to thank my parents, who supported me through the entire period, even though I suddenly left for Georgia for a half year; My former co- students, who were never unwilling to answer a question; And last but not least Afstudeerbegeleider.nl for helping me out on such a short notice when I was stuck. 3 s4632370 Floris van Bodegraven Table of Contents I. Abstract 2 II. Acknowledgement 3 III. List of figures and tables 5 1. Introduction 6 2. Theoretical Framework 8 2.1. Introduction 8 2.2. The ministerial office – an overview 8 2.2.1. Prime Minister 9 2.2.2. Junior Minister 10 2.2.3. Line-ministers 10 2.2.4. Minister without Portfolio 11 2.3. Ministers in the political universe 11 2.3.1. Other actors: bureaucracy and public 11 2.3.2. Principal-agent approach and ministerial selection 11 2.3.3. Who selects? Selection and dismissal 13 2.3.4. Agency problems 14 2.4. Changes in context 15 2.4.1. Individualization 15 2.4.2. Personalization 17 2.4.3. Changes in party system and governance 17 2.4.4. The media: facilitator and political actor 18 2.5. Hypotheses: consequences for candidate selection 19 3. Methodology Research approach 23 3.1. Research approach 23 3.2. Data 24 3.3. Operationalization 25 3.3.1. Dependent variable 26 3.3.2. Independent and context variables 26 3.3.3. Additional descriptive variables 28 3.3.4. Control variables 28 3.4. Research method 29 4. Data description: A closer look at the frequenters of the Trêveszaal 31 4.1. General overview 31 4.2. Into depth: reappointments and departments 32 4.3. Differences within parties; gender and reappointments 37 4.4. Context-variables and corrrelations 38 4.5. Testing hypotheses 40 5. Conclusion 42 5.1. Summary 42 5.2. Conclusion 43 5.3. Theoretical contribution 44 5.4. Limitations and implications for future research 44 6. Literature 46 7. Appendix 1A: Multinomial logit model 54 4 s4632370 Floris van Bodegraven II. List of figures and tables Figures Figure 2.1.: Simple chain of delegation Figure 4.1: Reappointments per cabinet Figure 4.2: Aggregated experience for both junior and senior ministers, per cabinet. Figure 4.2b: Political versus technical knowledge per cabinet Figure 4.3: Aggregated experience for senior ministers only, per cabinet. Figure 4.4: Aggregated experience for junior ministers only, per cabinet. Figure 4.5: Aggregated expertise for ministers, observed per portfolio. Figure 4.6. Ministerial expertise distributed over different portfolios, in percentages Figure 4.8.: Ministerial expertise at first appointment, for junior and senior ministers together, percentages. N = 195. Figure 4.9: Female ministers in cabinet, 1977-2012. Figure 4.10: Composition of cabinets by gender and type of minister. Figure 4.11: Individualization and party system fragmentation (range 0-1). Figure 4.12: Social embeddedness of political parties (in percentages of cast votes). Tables Table 2.1.: Who selects? Table 3.1: Hypotheses to be tested Table 3.2: Model for defining experience. Table 3.3: Values for variable Cabinet with corresponding data Table 4.1: Aggregated Experience: All cases, per time-period, percentages Table 4.2: Aggregated Experience: First appointments only, percentages Table 4.3: Aggregated Experience: Senior ministers only, percentages Table 4.4: Aggregated Experience: Junior-ministers only, percentages Table 4.5: Reappointments: Frequency and percentages. Table A 1.1: Correlations: SPSS output. Table A.1.2: Linear regression for all variables, including VIF-values. Table A.1.3: Linear regression for all except Cabinet, including VIF-values. Table A.1.4: Linear regression for standardized variables, including VIF-values. Table A.1.5: Output Multinomial: VarPartyDecline + control variables on Aggregate Experience Table A.1.6: Output Multinomial: Individualism + control varialbes on Aggregate Experience Table A.1.7: Output Multinomial: PopChallParty on Aggregate Experience 5 s4632370 Floris van Bodegraven 1. Introduction ‘The Profession of Government Minister in Western Europe’, the seminal work by Jean Blondel and Jean-Louis Thiebault, (1991) was one of the first integral studies into the background of government ministers in European cabinet governments. It found that most ministers in Europe were accomplished parliamentarians with a long track record in their own party. This finding also reaffirmed the classical characterization of one of the key functions of political parties as, amongst others, breeding grounds of the next political and executive elites (Blondel & Thiebault, 1991). As the second decade of the 21st century comes to a close, this role may not be as self-evident anymore. The position of political parties in society and politics has been the focal point of much scholarly work. Political parties have not been spared of the effects individualization had on the mass organizations in Western societies (Van Biezen, Mair & Potguntke, 2011). Party system fragmentation (Mair, 2002), Europe-wide declining party membership (Delwit, 2011) and macro-processes such as personalization (Rahat & Shaefer, 2007), mediatization (Strömbäck, 2008), the rise and institutionalization of populist challenger parties (Chairamonte & Emanuele, 2019), and the battle for voters’ attention with those parties (Meijers, 2017) are said to have altered the relevance of political parties in the relation between citizen and state (Gauja, 2013). Indeed, as institution, the political party has undergone a significant transformation and left scholars to ponder over the future of political parties (Van Biezen, Mair & Poguntke, 2011), or even posed the question whether the political party is losing relevance as institution on today’s political stage (Mair, 2005).
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