1st Edition

Ministerial Survival During Political and Cabinet Change Foreign Affairs, Diplomacy and War

By Alejandro Quiroz Flores Copyright 2017
    161 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    162 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Political leaders need ministers to help them rule and so conventional wisdom suggests that leaders appoint competent ministers to their cabinet.

    This book shows this is not necessarily the case. It examines the conditions that facilitate survival in ministerial office and how they are linked to ministerial competence, the political survival of heads of government and the nature of political institutions. Presenting a formal theory of political survival in the cabinet, it systematically analyses the tenure in office of more than 7,300 ministers of foreign affairs covering more than 180 countries spanning the years 1696-2004. In doing so, it sheds light not only on studies of ministerial change but also on diplomacy, the occurrence of war, and the democratic peace in international relations.

    This text will be of key interest to students of comparative executive government, comparative foreign policy, political elites, and more broadly to comparative politics, political economy, political history and international relations.

    1. Introduction

    2. The Study of Cabinet Change

    3. Political Survival and Cabinet Change

    4. Data on Foreign Ministers

    5. Foreign Affairs, Diplomacy, and War

    6. Evidence in Autocracies

    7. Global Evidence

    8. Conclusion

    Biography

    Alejandro Quiroz Flores is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, UK. His work has appeared at Political Science Research and Methods, the British Journal of Political Science, and International Studies Quarterly, among others. He is also the manager of the Comparative Political Economics Division at the Department of Government.