That UK list has 22 cabinet members ( including PM and deputy), but it you scroll down, many folks under each. I didn’t try counting.
We’ll see how long it this time, but while it’strue the senate can drag their feet, new US administrations often take a very long time to even nominate people. That’s been true for the last two transitions. I wasn’t paying as much attention before. Most appointees resign. So acting duties fall on long-term staff. Sounds like it’s less abrupt elsewhere based on @Northern_Piper ’s post above mine.
We’ve gotten a lot of answers regarding parliamentary systems, which are interesting, thank you very much. Does anyone know some answers to this question in non-parliamentary systems?
Germany: bicameral parliamentary system. Unlike in the Westminster system cabinet members do not need to be members of the Bundestag (but they are accountable to the Bundestag, have to answer questions in parliament, can be forced to appear by Bundestag vote, and the one unforgivable sin for Cabinet members is to lie outright to the Bundestag (which is why they chose their words carefully when speaking to the Bundestag)).
Cabinet members are appointed by the President on the nomination of the Chancellor. The Chancellor can also dismiss cabinet members (but that has happened only three times yet to my knowledge; the much more prevalent way is the Chancellor privately asking the cabinet member to resign.)
The parliament (both chambers) have no outright say in Cabinet appointments; the Bundestag can only fire the whole cabinet at one go by electing another Chancellor.
We don’t have that for individual ministers; only the whole Cabinet. That was apparently one of the weaknesses of the French 4th Republic, that individual ministers could be voted out easily, even if the government as a whole had confidence. Created instability.
Constitutional convention, which is more than just tradition.
The Minister has to be accountable to the House in QP, has to be able to appear before the committees when pushing legislation forward, and so on. There’s only so long, politically, that the Commons will accept an “acting” minister before starting to raise issues of confidence. It could also get to the point where the GovGen tactfully asks the PM when the Minister of Such-and-Such will be able to respond to the questions from the peoples’ representatives in the Commons.
Plus, if the PM can’t get their choice of minister elected, that’s a mark of lack of confidence in them, which will have a knock-on effect. As well, it could lead to troubles with caucus: if you have a strong caucus with good MPs, they will be pushing to be in Cabinet, and if the PM were to appoint someone who is not in Caucus, and hasn’t been elected by the voters, that undercuts the other MPs ambitions, and could lead to a caucus revolt.
The case study for it was General McNaughton during WWII. He didn’t have a seat in Parliament, but King appointed him as Minister of Defence to ward off the conscription crisis. He failed, and the Crisis grew. McNaughton stood for election in a by-election in early 1945 and was defeated; then he stood in the general election of 1945 and was again defeated. He resigned as Minister.
During Pierre Trudeau’s last term, he had to rely on appointing three Senators to Cabinet, from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia, because he didn’t have any seats west of Winnipeg. That was seen as further evidence that he had completely alienated the west, since it showed that the Liberals had lost three provinces completely, and only had two seats in Manitoba.
So, it’s not an automatic “impossible”, but it quickly leads to issues for a PM who has a Cabinet minister out of the House.
I believe in the UK there may be some legislation involved when the appointment of a cabinet minister involves rearranging policy responsibilities between departments and departments get re-named accordingly*. But since the cabinet has a working majority (otherwise it wouldn’t be there in the first place), that’s a formality.
*So, e.g., anything to do with trade/business development and regulation, likewise housing, transport, local government, children’s services - have all been in and out of different departments over the years.
As for the total numbers involved, I believe the total “payroll vote” (cabinet and junior ministers, whips and parliamentary bag-carriers and eyes and ears for ministers) is around 150 now (a bare majority in the House is 326)
I appreciate your cogent analysis and I’m coming around to agreeing with you and @Northern_Piper about the skills required (and not required) of a Cabinet minister. Ironically, I’ve long been an admirer of Lou Gerstner, the man who practically single-handedly turned around IBM when it was in a death spiral. When he was appointed as IBM’s CEO, there were titters of ridicule that a “breakfast cereal guy” was being brought in to save this iconic tech company (Gerstner had been the CEO of RJR Nabisco). But it was his business insights and management skills that allowed him to be successful, not knowledge of computer technology.
Indeed, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) never recovered from similar problems afflicting the entire industry because they put their faith in their historical technological excellence but failed to understand the broader implications of a radically changing market.
My wife is an excellent manager of people. She has been successful in every managerial position at every company where she’s ever worked. She does not need to understand the intimate details of what each and every person under her is doing, from a technical standpoint, because she is not doing their jobs, they are doing their jobs. She manages them, and she does well at this, because she understands people.
A political minister should have a similar skillset. They need to be intelligent enough to absorb the general picture of their remit, at a high level, and to be perceptive enough to distinguish good advice from bad. Beyond that, the technical details are the responsibility of the technical experts.
I may not be understanding the distinction the same as you are. You mentioned slow turnover of “deputy ministers”, which I assumed equivalent to undersecretaries or assistant secretaries, etc., here, which are all political appointees.
I don’t think it’s that black and white. The DM level have to be good managers, but they also have to be able to understand and carry out the government’s policy objectives. In some departments, the DM may be more of a political appointment than in others.
There is generally turnover in DMs when a new government comes in. Some may leave, some may be fired, but others may be shuffled to new positions, and some may be kept in their old positions.
What doesn’t happen is a wholesale termination of all DMs, Crown counsel, and so on.
Plus there’s a difference in numbers. Most federal ministries nowadays have about 30 to 35 Cabinet ministers and departments. That’s about 30 to 35 DMs who may be shuffled, fired, or voluntarily move on. That’s not like the estimated 1,000 or so in the article about the US system that I mentioned above.
And even if there are vacancies in the DM position, they get filled by an order-in-council passed by Cabinet. No confirmation is required by Parliament, so if there are transitions, they’re quick.
The difference between the Westminster system and the US system on this point is illustrated by an anecdote I’ve heard. I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not; I think I saw it in a journal article many years ago, with actual names attached.
It goes like this:
There’s a change in government in the UK. The new minister meets with their Permanant Under-Secretary (the equivalent to a DM in Canada) for their first briefing.
The Permanent Under-Secretary goes over a wide range of things with the new Minister, and then towards the end of the briefing says:
“Now, Minster, your predecessor was invited to speak next week to a conference put on by [some industry or trade union group]. Up to you whether you want to go, of course, but we would recommend it for continuity purposes. In case you plan on attending, we have prepared a speech that you may wish to give.”
The Minister takes the speech, very sceptical, and alert not to be bullied by the Permanent Under-Secretary, and starts to read it. The Minster reads it all the way through, then looks up.
“This isn’t the speech you prepared for my predecessor. It sets out our government’s positions on the key issues for this group, not the things that my predecessor would have said.”
“That’s right, Minister. We reviewed your party manifesto for the issues that are of interest to this group, and prepared the speech accordingly, to advance your party’s positions. Our job is to carry out the new government’s policies, just as we helped your predecessor carry out the old government’s policies.”
The Minister went to the conference and gave the speech.
Also, in the UK there’s usually a period in the run-up to a general election where a special civil service team will be working through the opposition parties’ manifestoes and talking with opposition shadow ministers to get briefed, so that if there’s a change of government they can hit the ground running when the new minister arrives in the office.
Those who watched Yes, Minister might be confused by some of the terminology, because the Minister’s nemesis in the civil service was referred to as the “Permanent Secretary”. This is the common nomenclature in most Westminster parliamentary systems, though sometimes referred to as “Permanent Under-Secretary of State” in the UK.
The point being, in any case, that every department has an unelected executive head who actually runs the place, but is accountable to the Minister. It really is a rather odd relationship but it’s common everywhere, including in private business where a new CEO can be parachuted in at any time, for better or for worse, and has to manage senior staffers who know the organization much better than he or she does.
This isn’t meant to be off topic, but even in the US there are some differences on the state vs federal level.
In my state, the executive can’t just pick any judge he wants. How it works is a 7 member commission which consists of 3 people appointed by the executive, 3 people picked by the legal community and the state supreme court justice will pick 3 potential candidates. Then the executive branch (the governor) picks which candidate they want. I don’t think the governor has to get approval from the state senate to appoint a judge (I’m not sure about that part), but this means the governor can’t just pick anyone they want to be a judge.
I think MrDibble was not quite correct. The constitutional powers of the SA Parliament allow it to pass a motion of no confidence in the President, in which case the whole cabinet is automatically out as well; or a motion of no confidence in the cabinet excluding the President, in which case the President stays but has to appoint a new cabinet. There isn’t a power for Parliament to vote out an individual minister.