Governing New European Democracies

Governing New European Democracies Jean Blondel, Ferdinand Müller-Rommel and Darina Malovà

Governing New European Democracies

Titles of other books by the authors: Also by Jean Blondel VOTERS, PARTIES AND LEADERS COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT COMPARATIVE LEGISLATURES POLITICAL PARTIES THE DISCIPLINE OF POLITICS WORLD LEADERS THE ORGANISATION OF GOVERNMENTS POLITICAL LEADERSHIP GOVERNING TOGETHER (with Ferdinand Müller-Rommel ) PARTY AND GOVERNMENT (with Maurizio Cotta) CABINETS IN WESTERN EUROPE (with Ferdinand Müller-Rommel ) PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT IN THE EUROPEAN UNION (with Richard Sinnott and Pale Svensson) THE NATURE OF PARTY GOVERNMENT (with Maurizio Cotta) CABINETS IN EASTERN EUROPE (with Ferdinand Müller-Rommel ) Also by Ferdinand Müller-Rommel NEW POLITICS IN WESTERN EUROPE SMALL PARTIES IN WESTERN EUROPE (with Geoffrey Pridham) CABINETS IN WESTERN EUROPE (with Jean Blondel ) GOVERNING TOGETHER (with Jean Blondel ) GREEN PARTIES IN NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS (with Thomas Poguntke) POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE NEW EUROPE (with Richard Luther) CABINETS IN EASTERN EUROPE (with Jean Blondel )

Governing New European Democracies Jean Blondel Professorial Fellow, European University Institute, Florence and University of Siena

Ferdinand Müller-Rommel Professor of Comparative Government University of Lüneburg, Germany and

Darina Malovà Professor of Political Science Comenius University, Slovakia With

Katja Fettelschoss Gabriela Ilonszki Dobrinka Kostova Matej Kovacic Alenka Krasovec Algis Krupavicius Zdenka Mansfeldova Andris Runcis and

Georg and Erik Sootla

© Jean Blondel, Ferdinand Müller-Rommel and Darina Malovà

2007

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author(s) has/have asserted his/her/their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–9404–2 hardback ISBN-10: 1–4039–9404–8 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blondel, Jean, 1929Governing new European democracies / Jean Blondel, Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, and Darina Malovà. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–9404–8 (cloth) 1. Cabinet system—Europe, Eastern. 2. Representative government and representation—Europe, Eastern. 3. Post-communism—Europe, Eastern. 4. Democracy—Europe, Eastern. 5. Europe, Eastern—Politics and government—1989-I. Müller-Rommel, Ferdinand. II. Malovà, Darina. III. Title. JN96.A58B58 2007 320.9437—dc22 2006049476 10 16

9 15

8 14

7 13

6 12

5 11

4 10

3 09

2 08

1 07

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Tables

vii

List of Figures

ix

Preface

x

Notes on the Contributors

xiii

Introduction 1

The Cabinet as the New Form of Government in Post-Communist Democracies

Part I: 2 3 4 5

Ministers and the Administrative Support of the Cabinet

How Ministers View the Role of Prime Ministers’ Offices Ministers and the Role of Civil Servants in Cabinet Decision-Making

Part IV: 10 11

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making Coalitions, Single-Party Governments and Cabinet Decision-Making

Part III: 8 9

The General Arrangements

The End of Communism and the New Party System The Anatomy of Central Eastern European Cabinets The Rules and the Operating Procedures in Cabinet An Overall Descriptive View: What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

Part II: 6 7

1

The Members of the Cabinet in the Views of the Ministers

Ministers and Cabinet Decision-Making Finance Ministers and Cabinet Decision-Making v

3 21 23 39 57 72

87 89 102

121 123 136

149 151 166

vi

12 13

Contents

Prime Ministers and Cabinet Decision-Making Conclusion

Appendixes 1 2 3

The number of ministerial interviews per country (1990–2003) Questionnaire on rules, agenda setting, cabinet meetings and committees Ministerial questionnaire and codebook

177 193 205 205 207 209

Notes

223

Bibliography

228

Index

235

List of Tables 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 5.1 6.1 7.1

8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 11.1 11.2

Number of effective parties in Central Eastern European countries 1989–2004 Voter turnout in the Central Eastern European countries (in percentages, 1989–2004) Regime transition and founding cabinets Duration of party cabinets (in years, 1990–2003) Duration of cabinet types (in years, 1990–2003) Duration of ministers (in years, 1990–2003) Duration of prime ministers (in years, 1990–2003) Types and durability of cabinet governments (in years, 1990–2003) The relation between different types of duration (Pearson’s) Ministerial views on cabinet decision-making (ranking of countries) Importance given to party and involvement of parties (in per cent) Proportions of ministers from coalitions and single-party cabinets and attitudes to cabinet system (percentages) Role of prime ministers’ offices (percentages) The changing role of prime ministers’ offices (percentages) Types of government and the role of prime ministers’ offices (percentages) Prime ministerial leadership and the role of prime ministers’ offices (percentages) Confidence in information, trust in quality of civil servants’ work and type of collaboration (percentage) Country and mode of relationship (percentages) Debates in cabinet (percentages) Types of ministerial behaviour (percentages) The most important minister in cabinet (percentages) Solving a conflict with the minister of finance (percentages) vii

27 35 44 45 48 52 53 54 55 81 100

107 128 129 130 131 142 143 155 161 172 174

viii

12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5

List of Tables

Prime ministers’ style and their relative strength, according to ministers (percentages) Prime ministers’ fields of involvement and their relative strength according to ministers (percentages) Type of government and prime ministers’ strength according to ministers (percentages) Strength of prime minister by party affiliation according to ministers (percentages) Strength of prime minister by country according to ministers (percentages)

185 185 187 187 188

List of Figures 2.1 8.1 8.2

Supply vs demand volatility in Central Eastern Europe Types of prime ministers’ offices Classification of prime ministers’ offices

ix

37 126 134

Preface The Preface of Governing Together, a volume on which this work has largely been modelled, opens in the following way: ‘By the closing years of the twentieth century, one can say without fear of contradiction that cabinet government has been a great success’ (Blondel and Müller-Rommel 1993: vii). Such a conclusion is even more appropriate somewhat over ten years later, not just because cabinet government continues to be a success in Western European countries, but because, as Governing Together was being written, cabinet government was emerging in the ‘new’ liberal democracies of East-Central Europe and of the Balkans: a few years later, by the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, one can also state that cabinet government has not just emerged in the countries of that region, but that it is unquestionably ‘a great success’. Yet one might have expected progress in this direction to be slow, tortuous, even marred by failures. For cabinet government is successful only if it is representative, but up to a point, if the party or parties supporting the government ‘intrude’ to an extent only in the life of the cabinet and if the ministers act, but moderately, in a collegial manner. These are all ‘virtues’ likely to be achieved after long experience of the perils of excessive representativeness, undue ‘partitocracy’, overinsistence on collegial discussions. In East-Central Europe and the Balkans, however, these ‘virtues’ seem to have been acquired almost instantaneously. It is probably true that the European Union has played a part in that success. The curious, almost paradoxical, point is that the EU is primarily, and in some ways almost exclusively, economic, but that its influence, both within its borders and beyond, has been a major one on political structures and political life. Although at no point did the EU declare that the ‘new’ democracies of East-Central Europe and the Balkans ‘had’ to adopt a parliamentary-cabinet system, rather than a presidential one for instance, or that they should have a meaningful party system enabling citizens to be confronted with reasonably clear choices at election time, these developments have occurred in the countries of the region, while, on the contrary, further East, forms of presidentialism have prevailed and party systems have at best been inchoate. The present volume is thus devoted to the analysis of that sudden and successful implantation of the cabinet system in ten countries which had been ruled by a communist regime for almost half a century after x

Preface

xi

having had little previous experience, if any at all, of such a system. These ten are all eight East-Central polities (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia) and two countries from the East Balkans (Romania and Bulgaria). In this book we summarize these countries under the notion of Central Eastern European countries. The volume naturally follows closely the pattern of the earlier Western European study; in particular, it is based entirely, as Governing Together was, on the results of interviews of a large number of ministers in the ten countries. The aim is not to explain why cabinet government has been a success, but to tell what the actors, namely the ministers, believe to be the character of the decision-making process in the cabinets to which they have belonged. Such an inquiry would not have been possible without the collaboration of over 300 ministers who agreed to participate in the interviews: to these we owe everything and we wish to express here our profound gratitude. The interviews were conducted by a group of scholars from the countries concerned to whom we also owe our thanks for having generously and enthusiastically given their time to ensure that the operation was a success. The interviews were conducted in autumn 2003 and in the first few months of 2004, on the basis of a codebook, based as closely as possible on the Western European one and finalized at meetings of the whole group (see Appendix 1). Most members of that group have contributed to single chapters of this volume, but special thanks must be extended to R. Markowski and A. Mungiu-Pippidi for their contribution to the preparation of the codebook and, above all, for the interviews conducted respectively in Poland and Romania. The principal authors of this study have adjusted all chapters and written five themselves, while four chapters have been co-authored with members of the group (Chapter 3 with K. Fettelschoss; Chapter 7 with D. Kostova; Chapter 11 with A. Runcis; and Chapter 12 with G. Ilonski). For four chapters, single members of the group hold primary responsibility (Chapter 2, A. Krupavicius; Chapter 8, G. and E. Sootla; Chapter 9, A. Krasovec and M. Kovacic; Chapter 10: Z. Mansfeldova). This group would not have been brought together were it not for the fact that a meeting of political scientists in East-Central Europe and the Balkans was organized, in November 2001, under the joint sponsorship of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and of the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS) at the European University Institute in Florence, where the meeting was held. That meeting took place as a result of the determination of Yves Mény, who at the time combined the positions of director of the Schuman Centre and of

xii

Preface

chairman of the ECPR, as well as of the wide network of contacts and active organization skills of Jan Zielonka, then at the Centre and currently at St Antony’s College, Oxford. It was during a lunch break at that meeting that a number of participants committed themselves to studying attitudes of ministers in the region by means of interviews. Thus Yves Mény and Jan Zielonka have provided the occasion required for the project to emerge. We owe both of them a special gratitude. A project such as this could not have materialized without significant financial support and continuous technical and administrative help. The data collection on cabinet types and cabinet duration has been financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the framework of a larger project on ‘Patterns of Democracy in Central Eastern Europe’(Mu 618/14). We were also most fortunate in attracting the interest of the Thyssen Stiftung, whose generous grant (30.05.0.071) made it possible to turn the idea into reality, while the University of Lüneburg rendered the project feasible in a whole manner of ways. We wish to record here our particular thanks to the Foundation and to the University of Lüneburg as well as to the European University Institute and to the Comenius University for the help they gave in the course of the development of the project. Most directly, however, we wish to thank the assistants and the administrative staff of the University of Lüneburg, in particular Katja Fettelschoss who helped so magnificently in creating the SPSS data file, and Dagmar Krech for her efficient administrative support. Without them, this work would not have been able to proceed smoothly and rapidly. To record our thanks here is thus the least that we can do. Last but not least, we wish to thank Alison Howson and her colleagues at Palgrave for their confidence in the participants and the continuous support which they gave to the enterprise. Working for this project was an exciting experience; for the two Western Europeans among the three of us, it was also a major educational experience. It is high time that political scientists from Western Europe and from Central Eastern Europe should come together more closely and indeed constitute a single profession. Whatever the intrinsic scholarly merits of this volume may be, one of its clear positive side effects has been, even if only in a modest manner, to hasten the time when such a single profession becomes a reality. JEAN BLONDEL, FERDINAND MÜLLER-ROMMEL AND DARINA MALOVÀ FLORENCE, LÜNEBURG AND BRATISLAVA MAY 2006

Notes on the Contributors Katja Fettelschoss is researcher at the Center for the Study of Democracy, University of Lüneburg, Germany. Gabriela Ilonszki is Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration, Budapest, Hungary. Dobrinka Kostova is Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Guest Professor at the University of Fribourg. Matej Kovacis is researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubjana, Slovenia. Alenka Krasovec is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubjana, Slovenia. Algis Krupavicius is Professor in the Policy and Public Administration Institute, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania. Zdenka Mansfeldova is member of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic. Andris Runcis is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Latvia. Erik Sootla is researcher at the Department of Government, Tallinn University of Educational Sciences, Estonia. Georg Sootla is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, Tallinn University of Educational Sciences, Estonia.

xiii

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

This page intentionally left blank

1 The Cabinet as the New Form of Government in Post-Communist Democracies

This book explores the ways in which ministers, prime ministers and, in some cases, presidents take decisions in ‘parliamentary cabinets’ or, more briefly, in ‘cabinets’, which are the type of government which replaced the communist systems in Central Eastern European countries.1 Substantial progress has been made since the 1980s in analyzing the characteristics of the life of such cabinets in Western Europe (Blondel and Thiebault, 1991; Blondel and Müller-Rommel, 1993; Laver and Shepsle, 1996; Luebbert, 1986; Strom, 1990; Woldentorp et al., 2000), but only a few studies have been conducted with respect to the cabinets which emerged after the fall of communism in the individual countries of Central Eastern Europe (Koroseny 1999; Schiemann 2004; Shleifer 1997; Stefan 2004, Vass 1993). This book constitutes an attempt to fill this gap, by analyzing the characteristics of cabinet decision-making in ten Central Eastern European democracies: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. A study of this kind not only helps to document the way in which cabinets of the region have taken their decisions, however: it also contributes to the elaboration of a framework for the general analysis of cabinet decision-making. It undertakes this examination of Central Eastern European cabinets in very special conditions, as the cabinet system of government was introduced suddenly around 1990 as communism fell: an enormous pressure was subsequently placed on these cabinets to take large numbers of major political, economic and social decisions at great speed. That new political order emerged in the context of a legacy of former regimes in which words such as ‘government’ and ‘cabinet’ were not in common use: ‘governments’ were then referred to as ‘councils of ministers’, as in the Soviet system, and prime ministers were merely their ‘chairmen’. These councils and their heads were fully subordinated to the Communist 3

4

Introduction

party politburo and normally played no active role in determining the country’s policies, the only exception being when the posts of council chairman and of the chief party secretary were occupied by the same person. The insignificance of ‘councils of ministers’ was due in part to the nomenklatura system, as the Communist party leadership exercised effective control over all key appointments, including political and administrative positions, as well as of ministers and of the chairmen of the councils of ministers. These ‘councils of ministers’ were not autonomous bodies; their heads and their members, the ministers, were not truly responsible for the key decisions: their tasks were primarily administrative and technical in character; the members of communist governments implemented the decisions taken by the Communist party leadership and, in the hierarchy of the former regime, the most powerful figure was the general secretary. Finally, the style of the communist leadership in most Central Eastern European countries was based on a high degree of secrecy. The cabinet system has developed remarkably since 1990 in the 16 countries of the area – eight in East-Central Europe and eight in Southeastern Europe. This has occurred despite the fact that there have been differences in the political evolution of these countries, especially between those of East-Central Europe and those of Southeastern Europe. In the countries in the first of these two groups, except to an extent Poland during the early period, a classical parliamentary system was adopted from the start; in Southeastern Europe, semi-presidentialism prevailed, with the exception of Bulgaria. In much of ex-Yugoslavia and also in Albania, semi-presidentialism even enabled nationalistic leaders to rule in an authoritarian manner throughout much of the 1990s, while a similar development occurred in Moldova, more worryingly perhaps, since it took place, not in the 1990s, but later, and seemingly partly as a result of the growing influence of Russia in the country. Yet, even in Moldova, the cabinet formula remained in place. This is in itself a success, for, if the interwar experience was to have been any guide, one would have predicted that the cabinet system would have prevailed only in exceptional circumstances, Czechoslovakia being in point of fact the single exception at the time. How the cabinet system of government spread so widely across East-Central Europe and Southeastern Europe needs therefore to be explored.

The tension between the two requirements of cabinet government – representativeness and efficiency The reason why the success of the cabinet system in the area must be regarded as remarkable is because that system can function satisfactorily

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

5

only if an equilibrium is found between two opposite requirements – those of representativeness and of efficiency. The requirement of representativeness means that, uniquely in cabinet government (except for the Swiss model which is partly reproduced in the European Union), decision-making is in the hands of the whole cabinet and not, as for instance in the presidential system, solely in the hands of the leader of the government. The cabinet has therefore to be, at least to some extent, ‘collective’ or at least ‘collegial’: decisions are taken ‘together’. This requirement of ‘togetherness’ is regarded as central to the cabinet system because such a mode of operation is felt to be a more liberal, more democratic and therefore superior form of decision-making as well as because it follows from the fact that the cabinet emanates from parliament and, to survive, has to be closely linked at least to the majority, if not to the whole of the parliament. Yet this representative-cum-collective principle runs directly against the requirement of efficiency, as efficiency entails that decisions be taken speedily despite the continuous increase in the number and complexity of these decisions. Since representativeness entails ‘togetherness’ in decisionmaking, decisions are likely to be taken only after substantial discussions. This may mean delays in elaborating compromises or even the abandonment of original proposals and, perhaps, in the worst cases, the fall of the cabinet. If the cabinet does fall, the question of the internal effectiveness of the cabinet then becomes to an extent superseded by what may be regarded as a more serious menace – more serious perhaps because it is more visible – namely, that the cabinet may be unable, if its majority is slim or is divided among a number of parties, not all of which are necessarily disciplined, to see its policies implemented. Worries about the capacity of the cabinet to be decisive become replaced by questions about the capacity of the cabinet to steer the ship of state at all. If the cabinet is frequently defeated in parliament and if, perhaps as a direct consequence, a series of cabinets follow each other in rapid succession, the legitimacy of the political system is brought seriously into question. The end-result may even be the collapse of the regime, as occurred not just in the Third World, but in Western Europe, both before the Second World War, as in Italy, Portugal, Spain, or Germany, and after the Second World War, as in France. Of course, the collapse of a regime is not due exclusively to the procrastination resulting from the collective character of the cabinet, but the collective character of the cabinet is always likely to render decisionmaking problematic and particularly inefficient if a major crisis occurs. Yet to abandon ‘togetherness’ in the cabinet would entail abandoning,

6

Introduction

not just the cabinet system, but also the parliamentary system, an outcome regarded as unacceptable since such a move would mean adopting (or perhaps returning to) practices which smack of authoritarianism as when the ministers depend hierarchically on the head of the government. The fact that the danger of the fall of the cabinet is often regarded as serious results in a feeling, prevalent in Western Europe before the Second World War although less widespread in the last few decades of the twentieth century, that the cabinet system is a fragile plant which needs to be carefully nurtured if there is not to be cabinet instability. In the process, instability is regarded as the danger par excellence and stability becomes the key test of the success of all cabinet systems and in particular of new ones, such as the systems established in Central Eastern Europe. Being so clear-cut and visible, cabinet stability has come to be seen as the number one indicator of the performance of cabinets.

The forms which ‘streamlining’ takes in cabinet decision-making In order to avoid instability and to try and ensure that the cabinet makes prompt decisions, some constraints had to be placed on the representative principle, limitations which inevitably entail ‘streamlining’ cabinet government by means of a number of constraints and thus moving at least some distance away from a fully ‘collective’ mode of ‘togetherness’ and towards a ‘softer’ ‘collegial’ relationship among cabinet members. In the Western European case these constraints have taken place on a number of different planes: one needs to see how far the same types of constraints have operated in an identical manner in Central and Eastern European cabinets. To ‘streamline’ processes of decision-making in cabinets without abandoning the principle that ministers are all to be involved jointly in these processes, the extent to which the government is collective must be reduced in a manner which is acceptable to these ministers. The key aims should be to limit the volume of business reaching the cabinet and to modify the way in which this business is handled. The reduction in volume must have, at one extreme, the effect of avoiding permitting the cabinet to discuss matters which are ideologically so controversial that long and potentially explosive debates are likely to take place and, at the other, the effect of ensuring that time is not wasted on a huge number of trivial issues. Items to be discussed must therefore be ‘intermediate’ between these two poles and relate primarily to important matters which cause relatively few conflicts of principle. These items must then be handled at

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

7

the meeting in such a way that ministers are not confronted with openended debating opportunities but with ‘well-prepared’ proposals, so that discussions in cabinet do not meander or become indecisive. Thus, both the nature of the inputs and the behaviour of ministers must be regulated. Admittedly, it is difficult to find an ‘ideal’ arrangement and the process of decision-making may turn out to be either ‘too’ ‘streamlined’ or not ‘guided’ enough. This is why one should endeavour to measure variations in the nature of the ‘streamlining’ which takes place and this is one of the reasons why the record of Central and Eastern European cabinets since the early 1990s can be most revealing. In Western Europe, the ‘streamlining’ of cabinet decision-making has occurred in four main ways: 1. Procedural arrangements have been introduced to regulate the number of meetings, the number and role of committees, the structure and effective power of the prime minister’s and president’s staff. 2. Parties supporting the government have tended to shape the agenda of the cabinet when it is formed and to exercise pressure on members of the cabinet when these are in office. 3. Prime ministers, as well as, in those cases in which they are directly involved, presidents, have typically used their authority and their personal influence to ensure that the cabinet is as efficient as possible. 4. Ministers often decide, for a variety of reasons, not to participate extensively in cabinet decision-making. These factors have to be related to the broader ‘societal’ environment and, in particular, to the part played by groups and social movements, by the media and by public servants, notably those close to the ministers. All of these attempt to influence decision-making and to bring to the attention of the members of the cabinet those questions which are of concern to them. Their role is indirect, however, as it tends to be exercised on the cabinet by putting pressure on the parties supporting the government or on the ministers. This book therefore investigates the manner in which ‘streamlining’ contributes to the limitation of the representative and collective decisionmaking process in Central Eastern European cabinets in a context in which there are likely to be substantial variations across the area. This is so partly because the cabinet system was adopted suddenly and partly because cabinets had to deal with an almost total restructuring of the social and economic fabric of their countries. This introductory chapter aims to provide a framework, first, by way of examining the manner in which

8

Introduction

‘streamlining’ has taken in Western Europe and, second, by identifying the main ways in which processes in Central Eastern European cabinets developed.

How ‘streamlining’ in cabinet decision-making was able to take place in Western Europe Let us begin by considering the procedural arrangements put in place in Western Europe to cope with the large increases in the amount of government business which had to be transacted. The key constraint was that meetings of the cabinet should not normally take place more than once a week and that they should last no longer than two or three hours. In some countries, such as the Netherlands and Finland, weekly meetings have been extended somewhat beyond, but, even there, ministers have had at most a few hours at their disposal to conduct the business of the state. This is a small amount, but must remain so because cabinet members, being heads of departments, often large and complex departments, can only spend a limited amount of their time on cabinet affairs. Two main developments have been particularly instrumental in ‘streamlining’ Western European cabinets. On the one hand, there has been a multiplication of cabinet committees, some ad hoc, others permanent (Mackie and Hogwood, 1985). Their main function has been to study the policy proposals emerging from the departments, to come to an agreement, at least in principle, on these proposals and thus to resolve potential conflicts in advance of the full cabinet meeting. Increasingly, it has become the practice for matters to reach the cabinet meeting only once they have been ‘managed’ in this way. Admittedly, these committees are ‘cabinet committees’: they include the ministers from the departments directly concerned with the policies under consideration; they are typically chaired by the prime minister or by a senior minister. To this extent, the cabinet is ‘partially’ involved, but the whole cabinet is not. As proposals reach the cabinet only when they are ‘ripe’, so to speak, the cabinet is likely to give its approval with little discussion. Indeed, if serious objections are made to a proposal during the cabinet meeting, that proposal will almost certainly be referred back to the committee for further consideration. The cabinet meeting therefore becomes a kind of ‘appeal’ body and is not primarily involved even in the final elaboration of the proposals it approves. Cabinet committees have become truly effective only because, on the other hand, a substantial cabinet secretariat has also been put in place almost everywhere in Western Europe in the course of the twentieth

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

9

century, with a view to ‘policing’ the activities of the government in general and to regulating the flow of business reaching the cabinet. The tasks of this secretariat are threefold. First, it prepares the agenda of cabinet meetings in agreement with the prime minister, drafts the minutes of the meetings and circulates them. Secondly, while preparing the agenda, it ensures that proposals have been agreed in a cabinet committee before being included in the list of items to be discussed. The amount of time ‘wasted’ in debating ‘ill-prepared’ proposals is thereby reduced automatically. Thirdly, the secretariat follows the implementation of cabinet decisions in the various departments: it asks for explanations when compliance is not forthcoming and, if noncompliance persists, reports the matter to the prime minister. Admittedly, the cabinet secretariat can fulfill these functions effectively only if it is large enough to supervise the activities of all the departments and if its head has enough authority with relation to senior civil servants and even to ministers. This is neither self-evident nor universally the case: but, in Western Europe at least, secretariats generally have enough prestige, clout, but also savoir-faire, to achieve the desired results, which consist in ‘streamlining’ markedly – and perhaps in some case too much – the process of decision-making in cabinets. Moreover, in Western Europe at least, both secretariat and cabinet committees are able to fulfill the functions for which they have been set up because, by and large, they enjoy the support of those who belong to the cabinet, the ministers and the prime minister. The key role of parties in providing support to ‘streamlining’ cabinet decision-making To be effective, the procedural arrangements need the support of a force which is deeply embedded in the structure of the political system: the only force which can have such an effect is that of the political parties. It is indeed not by accident that cabinet government has come, at least in Western Europe, to be labelled ‘party government’. The point in time at which this development occurred in Western Europe varied from country to country: but that it has occurred is abundantly clear, even if the precise definition of what constitutes party government is still controversial (Blondel and Cotta, 2000). What led to the strong involvement of parties in government was the fact that, electoral contests having become battles between parties, the notion that the government should reflect the outcome of these battles seemed to follow logically: cabinets had to be composed on the basis of party majorities in parliament. What enabled ‘supporting’ parties to become involved in ‘streamlining’ the cabinet, however, was that parties, or at least the most significant parties, became,

10

Introduction

almost throughout Western Europe, fairly stable, well-organized, and disciplined. Admittedly, the ‘streamlining’ of the operation of the cabinet has been an unintended effect of the emergence of party government. Yet, as soon as they are effective bodies, parties become engaged in a process of this nature by the very fact that they are involved in the activities of the governments which they support. They are involved in three ways: by playing a part in appointments to the cabinet, by having a role in the distribution of the patronage which the government has at its disposal and, above all, by being concerned with governmental policies. This last characteristic leads them directly to ‘streamline’ the cabinet, as their interest in policy-making makes them circumscribe both what the government shall do and what it shall not do and they do so both when the cabinet is constituted and once it is installed in office. Before the constitution of the cabinet, party involvement stems from the election program and from the elaboration of the governmental program, which can be a very long written document. During the life of the cabinet, the supporting party or parties may well intervene if a new problem arises which was not anticipated when the government was established or if a controversy occurs which the government cannot solve. If things go wrong, the supporting party or parties may also be responsible for the fall of the cabinet. While these parties thus act overtly as gatekeepers, their influence has also less visible aspects. Single-party and coalition governments differ in this respect. In single-party governments, this less visible effect is direct, as ministers are likely to share a common political outlook and will tend to agree broadly on the goals the government pursues. The number of issues about which there will be major conflict in cabinet will therefore be limited: they will tend to be restricted to the means by which policies can be implemented or to new and unforeseen circumstances, especially in relation to foreign affairs. This leaves scope for debate, but that scope is markedly smaller than if the entire ideological spectrum was represented in the cabinet. Admittedly, single-party governments are typically constituted when the party has a large electoral base and there will therefore probably be some division of opinion in that party and even organized factions. Yet the sharpness of conflicts is likely to be somewhat blunted as many ministers will have been together in the party for years; they will also have to fight the next election together. The election programme also acts as a major restraining element if some ministers disagree with governmental policy. The combination of relative ideological proximity and of practical party considerations thus results in a marked limitation in the amount of debate taking place in single-party cabinets.

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

11

Somewhat paradoxically, coalition cabinets are often even more restrained than single-party cabinets. Such a generalization is subject to exceptions, as there are many types of coalitions, from ‘minimum size’ to large and even ‘grand’. Truly ‘grand’ coalitions are rare; they usually occur when the country is in turmoil (Müller and Strom, 2000; De Swann, 1973). As most coalitions tend to be ‘minimum size’ or a little larger, they are likely to be composed of parties which are ideologically not very distant from each other: this constitutes a de facto constraint on the extent to which conflict will occur. Moreover, coalitions exist because a number of parties decide that it is in their interest to form and support a cabinet, partly because they see advantages for the party and especially the party elite and partly because they fear an alternative government composed of opposition parties. To prevent troubles within the cabinet, a governmental ‘coalition agreement’ is thus critical: this determines, sometimes in detail, what the government will do. Such an agreement may leave even less scope for debate among ministers than is the case in singleparty governments. The effect may be that the ministers from the parties belonging to the coalition become ‘delegates’ of the party. Potentially conflictual issues are either not raised at all (the coalition agreement being silent about them) or, if they come to be raised, they are dealt with by the parties who have to look for compromises if the government is to remain in being. Therefore, parties markedly limit the extent to which conflicts occur at all in cabinet (especially in single-party governments), reduce the sharpness of conflicts (again especially in single-party governments, as a result of the election programme) or ensure that matters are decided elsewhere and not in the cabinet (especially in coalition governments). Yet this occurs only if parties are strong enough to be able to impose on the cabinet the ‘streamlining’ of its activities. If they are weak, especially if they are based on personalities who have come together mainly for reasons of electoral convenience, they may simply lack the clout to force ministers to follow their lead. Western European parties have not only been in general strong enough to achieve the desired effect; in some cases, it has been argued that they were too strong, a development referred to as ‘partitocracy’. Yet it is far from axiomatic that parties will have the same strength everywhere. The success of prime ministers markedly depends on them running ‘efficient’ cabinets Meanwhile, Western European prime ministers, as leaders of the cabinet, as well as French presidents outside the periods of ‘cohabitation’, have a

12

Introduction

direct interest in ensuring that the ministers do not ‘fall out of line’. They are therefore likely to contribute markedly to the ‘streamlining’ of the decision-making process. Of course, the extent to which the prime minister acts in this fashion naturally varies appreciably, admittedly, depending upon a series of factors ranging from the overall conditions under which the government operates at a given point in time (if there is a major crisis, for instance), through the characteristics of the political system (practices of prime ministerial leadership may or may not be prevalent), including constitutional rules (for instance, the German Chancellor is elected alone by the Bundestag, before the government is constituted), to the standing of the prime minister in the sole or main party in government (having been the truly recognised leader or being a compromise choice). The psychological predispositions of the prime minister also play a part and, indeed, may well vary over time. The effect of these factors is to encourage prime ministers to be strongly involved in the progress of proposals at cabinet meetings. Some do so more than others, of course, but prime ministers who wish to exercise little influence, to ‘reign but not govern’, are both rare and unlikely to remain in office for very long. The key distinction to be drawn among prime ministers is that between ‘arbitrators’ and ‘activists’, not a straightforward dichotomy, to be sure, but one which helps to provide an indication as to the main goal of a given head of the government. Yet whether they are skilful ‘arbitrators’ or strong ‘activists’, or indeed whether they adopt a mixture of both ‘genres’, by their actions prime ministers reduce the extent of ‘togetherness’ in the cabinet. ‘Activist’ prime ministers give prominence to what they want to see achieved and therefore play down, indeed may stop, what is not to their liking, while the reputation of ‘arbitrators’ depends upon them being able to show that the business of the cabinet proceeds smoothly, without the ‘hiccups’ resulting from ‘too much discussion’. Those who let the cabinet behave in what would be regarded as a ‘disorderly’ or ‘directionless’ manner are likely to be heavily criticized: it is in their interest to prevent these impressions from being widespread by reducing ‘togetherness’ in decision-making and by fostering ‘efficiency’. This result can be achieved in a variety of ways. First, procedures can be used and, in particular, the key power of agenda setting. Indeed, even the location of an issue sufficiently low down on the agenda will result in it being raised at a time, towards the end of the meeting, when many ministers wish to leave and discussion will be shortened. Secondly, if conflict does occur over a proposal which had seemed to have been well ‘prepared’, the prime minister is likely to refer that proposal back to the committee for further deliberation. Thirdly, if one or a few ministers are

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

13

anxious to discuss a matter or propose a policy about which the prime minister has doubts, he or she is likely to talk individually to the ministers concerned, attempt to convince them, cajole them if possible, warn them if necessary. The sign of a good ‘arbitrating’ prime minister is that he or she succeeds in these efforts: the prime minister gains prestige in the process, while also ensuring that the business of the cabinet progresses speedily and harmoniously. Not all ministers may wish to be fully involved in cabinet decisions Finally, not all ministers may wish to participate extensively in debates within cabinet. The view that this body will act in a collegial manner is largely predicated on the assumption that ministers are ‘enlightened amateurs’ who are able and willing to make contributions on all matters in a meaningful manner. Such a conception, perhaps valid in the past, simply seems unrealistic in the present circumstances: ministers may have views, but cannot be expected to be equally knowledgeable about foreign affairs, defence, the economy, education, the social services and thus to participate fully in debates on all these subjects. There are indeed five broad factors likely to affect the extent to which ministers will participate. First, they may be psychologically more or less predisposed to discuss the issues being raised: they may be ‘spectators’ or view themselves as ‘ambassadors’ of their departments rather than truly active members (Headey, 1974). Secondly, they may be more or less involved because of their background: lawyers or teachers are more likely to want to participate than specialists such as doctors or engineers (Blondel and Thiebault, 1991). Thirdly, some ministers have a broader area of competence than others because of their past career, for instance if they have been in more than one post. Fourthly, ministers may or may not be well briefed in advance about the implications of the policies under discussion, for instance by their personal advisers. Finally, most ministers head a department; their main activity is in that department: they spend most of their time there and their reputation as ministers, both within the department and more widely, largely depends on their success in the department. It is therefore not particularly useful for them to engage at cabinet meetings in open battles with other government members over issues which do not concern their department directly. Thus, for all these reasons, ministers are far from automatically fostering collective decisionmaking: in many – perhaps most – cases, they may well prefer to refrain from taking an overt stand. In the name of efficiency, cabinet decision-making processes thus lose much of their ‘collegial’ character. The history of Western European cabinets

14

Introduction

in the course of the twentieth century has indeed been primarily one in which efforts were made to move away from ‘easy-going’, unstructured, indeed typically ‘unminuted’ meetings to situations in which much of what goes on becomes rather formal and even ritualized. Admittedly, occasionally, a major issue is being fully discussed, for instance as a result of an unexpected crisis. It is because such occasions may occur that the cabinet system is special and must retain that special character: such cases cannot easily be dealt with in ‘hierarchical’ governments. These occasions are rare, however: Indeed, they have to be rare if the system is to function adequately on a daily basis. Thus, ‘streamlining’ prevails, perhaps even too much ‘streamlining’, the extent of that ‘streamlining’ depending on the existence of a complex series of arrangements and of modes of behavior. These have taken years to emerge and ‘mature’ in Western Europe: did similar developments take place and, if so, how effective are they in the ‘new’ cabinet systems of Central Eastern Europe?

The ‘streamlining’ of cabinets in Central Eastern Europe The problems which cabinets faced in Central Eastern Europe after the end of communism were identical to those which Western European cabinets had faced, but in a more urgent manner and on the basis of very limited, if any, experience. As in Western Europe, cabinets in Central Eastern Europe were set up formally as representative bodies: their members were expected to take collective decisions. As in Western Europe, the representative character of the cabinet has had to be reduced by the need to take decisions speedily and efficiently. As in Western Europe, too, this reduction resulted from the factors which were identified in the previous section. Interviewing ministers as the most likely way of finding out what happens in cabinet Yet the impact of these factors is not likely to have been the same everywhere. While rules can be rather easily elaborated and while these can determine, for instance, what the powers of cabinet committees are to be or what functions cabinet secretariats should fulfill, the implementation of these rules is likely to pose serious problems, some of which may not be easily overcome. What has therefore to be determined is thus not only what the arrangements were expected to achieve, but what they did in fact achieve. To find out what has actually taken place in political life is notoriously difficult: it is particularly difficult in the case of ‘non-transparent’ bodies such as cabinets. One has therefore to rely on

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

15

second-hand information. Naturally, the closer to ‘reality’ the information one is able to gather, the more reliable it is likely to be. This is why, as in the volume devoted to cabinet decision-making in Western Europe published in 1993, Governing Together, it was essential to undertake the study of decision-making in Central Eastern European cabinets by interviewing a large proportion of those (in this case 320 of them) who were directly involved – the ministers. They are the actors who did – or did not – participate actively in cabinet decisions. Information given by ministers is not without limitations, admittedly, as cabinet members may not always remember the past or may embellish it; they are also likely to have a partial view of what happened. Yet interviews of ministers remain the means par excellence on the basis of which the reality of the processes of decision-making in cabinets can be discovered. Ultimately, even if the picture of what did occur is not fully comprehensive, an analysis based on ministerial interviews can give an impression of what is likely to have occurred, as was the case when a study of the same kind was undertaken in Western Europe (Appendixes 1, 2 and 3). The nature of procedural arrangements in Central Eastern European cabinets and the extent to which these are implemented Very quickly following the fall of communism and almost as soon as the cabinets themselves were established, procedural arrangements designed to ‘streamline’ the decision-making process were indeed introduced. The advice given by various western organizations, in particular by the OECD, was heeded. The two sets of procedural arrangements which were regarded as being most relevant in this context were the establishment of committees and of a cabinet secretariat. The process of establishment and implementation of these arrangements was also monitored by international organizations. Yet the question still arises as to whether, in the daily or weekly reality of cabinet meetings, these arrangements have come to have the ‘full’ effect which they were expected to have. First, one has to find out how far cabinet committees ensure that matters are truly ‘prepared’ before they arrive on the table of the cabinet meeting. Secondly, one has to determine how far the cabinet secretariat is in a position to determine the content of the agenda and in particular to prevent ‘unprepared’ matters from being discussed at the meeting as well as to assess the speed of the implementation process. Difficulties may have occurred in this respect as ministers may not always exercise restraint, as prime ministers may not always have had the required authority or the disposition to act and as parties may well be too weak to induce ministers and prime ministers to

16

Introduction

abide by the procedural arrangements designed to ‘streamline’ the decision process. Do ministers tend to accept ‘streamlining’ arrangements in Central Eastern European cabinets? Together with prime ministers and presidents, ministers are the actors engaged in the process of decision-making in cabinets. However strongly procedural arrangements may formally ‘streamline’ the process, the implementation of the rules does not depend solely on what happens in the committees, nor on what secretariats are able to do. Effective ‘streamlining’ depends also – and perhaps above all – on whether ministers are prepared to let decisions be taken even if they do not agree or even if they feel they could not participate sufficiently in the process. Meanwhile, the reasons which led Western European ministers to agree to a somewhat diminished ‘collegial’ character of the cabinet decisionmaking process may not all be equally valid in Central Eastern Europe. Cabinet behaviour in Western Europe has been largely based on a learning process which passed from one generation of ministers to the next. A culture has been acquired in this way on the basis of which cabinet members have become able to decide what they can realistically achieve and therefore what kind of behavior in cabinet is most appropriate. If the culture of cabinets is acquired by such a learning process from one set of ministers to another, members of Central Eastern European cabinets are unlikely to have come quickly to the conclusion that they should voluntarily limit their participation in the cabinet. Assuming that time is required for a ‘culture of restraint’ to emerge, one would therefore expect both attitudes and patterns of behaviour to have changed gradually over the course of the 1990s. This would mean that ministers would hold different attitudes and have different patterns of behaviour in the early years of the twenty-first century from those which characterized their predecessors a decade earlier. Alternatively, ministers in the earlier period might have been prepared not to participate fully in debates in the cabinets to which they belonged because they had been socialized, on the basis of what was probably the case in the ‘administrative’ governments which existed in Eastern Europe under communism, to see decisions being taken with little or no discussion except by the specialists in charge of the proposals which were submitted. This would suggest, in particular, that those ministers who had been associated, even if not closely, with the ex-communist parties or their allies would be much more likely to accept the ‘streamlining’ of the cabinet than ministers who had not had such a previous association. That effect would

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

17

be expected to taper off over time, however, as the number of ministers who had experienced political life under communism were declining. If both views were valid, that is to say if their communist background led ministers of the early period to practice self-censorship, while a ‘culture of restraint’ was gradually acquired by ministers of the second generation, ‘streamlining’ in the cabinet may well have been broadly accepted by cabinet members throughout the whole period. Yet these conclusions have to be tested and one might at least expect practices to have been different across the countries of the region. This is precisely the reason why ministerial interviews are crucial – they are the only way in which one might be able to discover the way in which cabinets have responded to the need to streamline the decision-making process. Do prime ministers and (occasionally) presidents tend to enforce ‘streamlining’ arrangements in Central Eastern European cabinets? However large the restraint which ministers impose on themselves because of their past or current ministerial experience, prime ministers and presidents can be expected to play a significant part in the ‘streamlining’ of cabinet decision-making. Yet this part may well have also varied markedly across the area. There is, indeed, a contrast between Central Eastern Europe – where cabinets were led by prime ministers and not by presidents, like for instance in Poland in the early period and to an extent in Lithuania – and Southeastern Europe – where the majority of countries had a working ‘semi-presidential’ system, with the president playing in the life of the government the kind of role which French presidents have played since 1958 – at least outside periods of ‘cohabitation’. Although that contrast is particularly sharp when the countries of the ‘West Balkans’ are being examined, the role of the president has tended to be large in Romania, while Bulgaria was rather exceptional in the Balkans for not having had ‘strong’ presidents. The role of the prime minister in the ‘dual’ arrangement which ‘semi-presidentialism’ fosters seems to have varied markedly, even if one excludes the cases of Croatia under Tudjman and of Serbia under Milosevic. Prime ministers in ‘semi-presidential’ systems did not always have merely an ‘administrative’ role, any more than they have in France when there is no ‘cohabitation’: there are thus marked variations in the authority of the prime ministers in Romania, for instance. In general, however, whatever difficulties follow from the existence of the dual leadership of president and prime minister, presidents did help to shape the new cabinet system by providing a degree of stability in the early post-communist years and thus enabling the ministers to become accustomed during the ‘transition’ period to the roles which they were having to fulfill.

18

Introduction

Meanwhile, in the countries of Central Eastern Europe, a sufficient number of prime ministers have been regarded as having been ‘strong’ to provide a basis for the conclusion that they have contributed significantly to the fact that the cabinet system as it has been known across most of Western Europe also took root in Central Eastern Europe. In the main, difficulties have emerged primarily, on the one hand, in Estonia and Latvia, where the multi-party system led to a degree of prime ministerial as well as of cabinet instability (in sharp contrast to Slovenia, where one of the longest-standing prime ministers became president of the Republic, in a manner resembling similar cases in Ireland before the Second World War and in Portugal in the 1990s) and, on the other hand, in Slovakia, where the way in which Meciar ruled the country has generally been regarded as going somewhat beyond the limits of ‘normal’ liberaldemocratic government, though he was perhaps not as authoritarian in running his cabinets as might have been expected. Are parties in Central Eastern Europe strong enough to ensure that ‘streamlining’ effectively takes place? Remarkably, the countries of Central Eastern Europe do not have just parties: they also working party systems. This is in contrast to several of the countries of the CIS; indeed, it is doubtful whether one can describe Russia, the Ukraine, let alone Belarus, as having had a ‘working party system’ to date. To this formal extent, the countries which are being examined here fulfill the necessary condition that parties have to exist if parliamentary cabinets are to operate meaningfully. Yet, for the ‘streamlining’ of cabinet decision-making to be truly effective, parties must be strong enough to be able to ensure that their ‘representatives’ in the cabinet follow the line which they have taken. As a matter of fact, on many issues weaker parties may be unable to adopt any consistent line. Moreover, one element of party strength is stability: party systems either should not be composed or should be composed only rarely of new parties emerging either alongside or as a replacement for some of the older ones. Not all Central Eastern party systems fulfill these last two sets of conditions. Indeed, the surprise is perhaps that several party systems did fulfill them.

What the answers given by ministers can help to ascertain When one considers the overall need for ‘streamlining’ cabinet decisionmaking, three questions arise, all of which entail that detailed empirical analyses based on ministerial interviews should be undertaken. The first

The Cabinet in Post-Communist Democracies

19

concerns the ways in which the ‘actors’ themselves are felt to be satisfied with the way in which the cabinets to which they have belonged made their decisions. By asking the ministers themselves how far they have wanted and have been able to be involved in the process of cabinet decision-making, one will begin to establish a concrete impression of the extent to which the cabinet does have a representative character; one will also discover how far the ministers feel that the current arrangements provide a combination of representativeness and of ‘streamlining’ which, in their opinion, leads to efficiency without unduly restricting discussion. The second question concerns the ways in which the forces which contribute to the ‘streamlining’ of cabinets combine with and relate to each other. By inquiring of the ministers how far the decision-making processes are affected by the parties represented in the cabinet, the prime ministers under whom they served, or the cabinet secretariat or the civil service in general one will also have a concrete impression of the mechanisms by which the ‘streamlining’ of decision-making processes has tended to take place and of the relative effectiveness of these mechanisms. The third question concerns the extent to which there are variations from country to country and whether these variations markedly affect either the extent of ‘togetherness’ or the degree of ‘streamlining’ in the cabinet. In Western Europe, the impression has prevailed, based on some, but only some evidence, that these variations were relatively small, although the feeling also prevails that some cabinets allow more debates than others – the Finnish or Dutch cabinets, for instance, rather than the British or French cabinets. There is as yet not even a general impression of this kind in the context of Central Eastern European cabinets. It seems at least possible that there should be more debates in, say, Estonian or Latvian cabinets than in Czech or Hungarian cabinets. Yet this has to be ascertained by also taking into account the extent to which these cabinets were able to handle the large amount of business which was coming before them.

The structure of the book Although this work is essentially devoted to the analysis of the replies of ministers from the ten countries of the study, the ‘stage’ has first to be presented: this means describing the main characteristics of party systems and the main trends in the composition and duration of cabinets as well as the constitutional and procedural arrangements that regulate cabinet life. This is the object of Chapters 2 to 4. Chapters 5 to 7 are then devoted to an examination of the views of ministers about the way in which the cabinets in which they served did operate, about the part

20

Introduction

played by parties, and about the relative merits of single-party and coalition governments. Chapters 8 and 9 consider the way in which ministers judge the activities of the members of prime ministers’ offices and of the civil servants in the departments of which they were the heads. Finally, Chapters 10 to 12 describe how ministers assess their own role and that of their colleagues, as well as the particular role played by ministers of finance and by prime ministers. In the conclusion, the general characteristics of cabinet government in Central Eastern Europe are outlined. Comparisons with Western European cabinets are drawn throughout the study. It is hoped that such an empirical analysis of decision-making in the cabinets of ten Central Eastern European countries will provide a concrete, comparative description of the ways in which cabinets have emerged and developed in the area in the course of the first decade since the end of communism. It is hoped that this inquiry will also begin to provide indications likely to lead gradually to more accurate generalizations about the ways in which cabinet government functions as well as about the way in which it can function efficiently and effectively. The end of communism led to the opening up of a whole new region to a political system which had so far existed primarily in Western Europe and in parts of the Commonwealth. The extension of the cabinet system to Central Eastern Europe thus provides an opportunity for a better understanding of the way in which a number of elements – the parties supporting the cabinet, the attitudes and behaviour of the members of the cabinet and the procedures structuring the life of the cabinet – combine to give cabinet government its special character: it is to an analysis of these elements that the following chapters are devoted.

Part I The General Arrangements

This page intentionally left blank

2 The End of Communism and the New Party System

As has been pointed out in the previous chapter, the parties which support the cabinet and indeed may have representatives in the cabinet are among the key mechanisms which help to shape policy-making; but this is markedly more likely to occur if these parties are strong, on the one hand, for instance by having extensive roots in the population and by showing unity of purpose, and, on the other, if they are both stable and are widely expected to be stable. These are conditions which tend to be met if time his allowed to elapse and thus parties and the party system become ‘institutionalized’, however: the least that can be said is that the way in which parties and party systems emerged in most countries of Central Eastern Europe was far from providing an ideal basis for such a gradual institutionalization process. Admittedly, in Hungary, to an extent in Slovenia, as well as in Poland through the part played by Solidarity, the final years of the communist regime saw moves taking place in the direction of ‘alternative’ groupings and organizations: but these were the only countries in which opportunities of this kind occurred. In the other countries of the region which are more specifically studied in this volume, the fall of the communist regime was so sudden and even unexpected that there was no ‘breathing space’ during which new political arrangements could be put in place. Moreover, neither the single-party system which prevailed under communism nor the system of forced coalitions dominated by the communist party which existed in some of these countries were good training grounds for the preparation of competitive party systems: this is indeed why the fact that competitive party systems did emerge at all constitutes is itself a success, but this is also why, unsurprisingly, substantial differences among the countries are to be found in the extent to which the new parties came to be strong ‘plants’ with roots in the society and the party system was to show stability. As a matter of fact, it should be remembered 23

24

The General Arrangements

that there are also important variations among Western European parties in terms of the strength of these parties and the stability of the party systems. This chapter needs therefore first to refer, however briefly, to the ways in which the competitive party system emerged in the context of what have been described as the ‘founding elections’ which led to the end of the communist regime. The chapter will then examine the evolution of party systems from the early 1990s to the first years of the twenty-first century, before considering how these party systems can be classified and the extent to which parties have come to divide along a Left–Right dimension. Finally, the stability of the parties will be examined in the light of the emergence of new parties sometimes backed by a substantial proportion of the electorate.

The emergence of a competitive party system through ‘founding elections’ The ‘founding’ or ‘constituent’ elections which took place after the fall of communism were obviously critical for the future development of parties and party systems; they were also exceptional in character. These elections were critical in that they introduced the new ‘rules of the game’: free elections meant that the major political players accepted political competition as the only meaningful way of establishing a sustainable democratic order; they also meant that these actors made ‘the convocation of elections an increasingly attractive means for conflict resolution’ (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1993: 40). It is interesting to note in this respect that these elections were marked by very little violence. They allowed the citizens to express their political views freely. They encouraged political participation, and, after years of political repression, they served to provide the emerging democratic governments with the seal of legitimacy (Garber and Bjornlund, 1992). It therefore makes good sense to describe these democratic elections as ‘founding’ or ‘constituent’ elections: ‘without elections the full array of institutions that constitute a new democratic political society – such as legislatures, constituent assemblies, and competitive political parties – simply cannot develop sufficient autonomy, legality, and legitimacy’ (Linz and Stepan, 1996: 71). Yet these elections were also exceptional in character. In particular, they differed substantially from subsequent elections by virtue of the important part played by broad, amorphous, umbrella organizations which tended to break up and recombine into smaller groups or factions once some of their members had been elected into office. At least four groups of elites played

The End of Communism and the New Party System

25

a major part in the transition to democracy – the hard-liners and the ‘softliners’ within the ruling elite, the radicals and the moderates within the opposition. These groups of elites were often seen as strategic or decisive groups. It is normally suggested that the best way for a competitive system to become institutionalized in such a context is for the two moderate groups to join forces and to elaborate a ‘pact’ designed to cover the period of transition towards democracy: such an elite-level negotiated transition was considered as the most favorable option for the future consolidation of the new regime since political parties on the Western European model simply did not exist in Eastern European polities. Would-be party systems in the region were more dependent upon coalescence within the initial democratic reform movement than upon splits within the surviving communist parties. As Olson and Norton (1996: 6) point out, flux, splits and coalitions of would-be party organizations in and outside of parliament, which tended to be more frequent as elections approached, widely characterized the early developmental stages of the democratic party systems in Central Eastern Europe. The general fluidity of the initial party systems notwithstanding, the political stage in the new democracies was reconfigured along multi-party lines well before the second round of democratic elections. The four groups of the new would-be political elite which were mentioned above – namely the hard-liners and ‘soft-liners’ within the ruling elite, the radicals and the moderates within the opposition – played a very large part in establishing the new party systems of East-Central and Southeastern Europe. Some (remaining) hard-liners from the old elite formed new communist parties, for instance in the case of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia in the Czech Republic and the Communist Party of Slovakia. ‘Soft-liners’ of the old elite in Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria created and joined new popular and influential left-wing political parties. The moderates from the former democratic opposition were among the founders of various liberal and centre-right parties such as the Estonian Coalition Party, Latvia’s Way, the Liberal Union in Lithuania and the Alliance of Free Democrats in Hungary. Finally, the radicals from the former opposition created a number of right-wing and nationalist parties, for instance, the Fatherland and Freedom/Latvian National Independence Movement, the Movement for Democratic Slovakia and the Homeland Union in Lithuania. It would be an oversimplification to state that only members of the former ruling elite and of the mainstream mass opposition movements were responsible for the foundation of new parties in Central Eastern Europe, however. In several countries, a number of so-called historical

26

The General Arrangements

parties which had existed during the pre-war period were re-established between 1988 and 1991. Among these parties were the Social Democrats in Hungary and Lithuania, the Christian Democrats in Slovenia and in Czechoslovakia as well as the Agrarian party in Hungary, together with some nationalist parties, as in Lithuania. In addition to these traditional parties, new ones, such as the Greens and some regionalist parties, were created. Finally, single-issue parties, often based on interest groups, were also set up during the period of transition to democracy in some countries, such as the Democratic Party of Pensioners in Slovenia or the Bulgarian Business Bloc.

Party development in Central Eastern Europe since the end of communism In the ten Central Eastern European countries under consideration here, 246 parties, or an average of 24.6 parties per country, gained at least one per cent of the votes in at least one election during the 1990s; 60 per cent of these parties (147 of them and an average of 14.7 per cent per country) were able to win at least two seats in the national parliament at some point during the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century (Rose and Munro 2003: 39): this is obviously a large number. If one concentrates on ‘relevant’ parties, however, that is to say on those which have been strong enough to affect the decision-making process in the legislature and to play a part in the building of cabinets, the numbers are much smaller. This has been the case from the start, indeed even more so at the ‘founding elections’: instead of there being as many as 14.7 parties per country, the number of these ‘relevant’ parties oscillated between 3.6 and 5 since the fall of communism, with an average of 4.4 parties over the 15-year period during which the ten countries are under consideration. This average number of parties is very similar to the one which is found in Western Europe, where there was an average of 4.3 parties in 1989 (Lane and Ersson 1994) (Table 2.1). Variations from country to country were substantial, however, as were the variations over time in at least many of the countries. The average number of relevant parties which were present at successive elections throughout the elections period was at its lowest in Hungary and Bulgaria (under three relevant parties), followed by Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic (under four relevant parties) and highest in Slovakia (6.5 relevant parties); in the other four countries, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia and Romania, the average number was between 4.5 and a little over five parties.

Table 2.1

Number of effective parties in Central Eastern European countries (1989–2004) Founding elections

Bulgaria Czech Republic Hungary Estonia Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia Average

First multi-party

Second multi-party

Third multi-party

Fourth multi-party

St. deviation*

Median of country**

2.42 2.22 3.78 2.89 1.97 1.98 — 2.14 4.98 10.33

2.40 4.80 2.89 5.70 5.05 2.98 11.05 4.74 3.18 6.58

2.72 4.14 3.44 4.14 7.58 3.40 3.87 4.27 6.51 5.51

2.97 3.70 2.48 5.49 5.48 4.20 2.95 3.69 6.51 4.85

3.06 3.80 — 4.67 5.01 5.40 3.59 4.86 — 4.89

0.30 0.50 0.48 0.73 1.22 1.06 3.81 0.53 1.92 0.81

2.85 3.97 2.89 5.08 5.27 3.80 3.73 4.51 6.51 5.20

3.63

4.94

4.56

4.23

4.41

0.30

4.48

Notes: *standard deviation calculated only since the first multi-party elections in each country. **median of country calculated only since the first multi-party elections in each country. Sources: BEC; W. Ismayr (2002); Election Database Eastern Europe; Studies on Parties and Elections; Wolfram Nordsieck calculations, 2000 (http://www.parties-and-elections.de)

27

28

The General Arrangements

Trends since 1990 in the number of relevant parties varied appreciably from country to country. There were three cases – those of Lithuania, Slovakia and Bulgaria – in which the average number of relevant parties increased. In a fourth country, Latvia, that number first increased, only to decrease subsequently. In two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, the number decreased: it had been particularly high at the ‘founding election’ in Slovenia, where no less than ten relevant parties emerged. Finally, in three countries – Estonia, Hungary and Romania – the number of relevant parties remained stable, while it is difficult to give a realistic figure of the number of relevant parties for Poland, as, in that country, on the Right, parties did on occasion combine without merging only subsequently to split. To summarize the developments of parties and party systems in Central Eastern Europe since the fall of communism, one can refer to three successive waves. The first wave coincided with the ‘founding elections’ and might be described as a phase of ‘limited pluralism’: the average number of relevant parties was relatively low (3.6 parties), with the exception of Slovenia; this was probably due to the fact that, during the initial phase of democratization, political competition was still restricted to an extent in practice. There were two or three political groups only in some countries, namely the non-communist opposition, the reform communists and the hard-line communists. The second wave started with the second election, at which the average number of relevant parties across the ten countries increased to 4.9. This phase might be described as that of ‘oversized pluralism’: interestingly, a similar development occurred in some Western European countries in the transition period to democracy. The next election brought about a further new trend and initiated a third wave of changes, which was marked by a reduction in the average number of effective parties to 4.4. This move can be described as being the first step in a phase of ‘stable pluralism’. The number of relevant parties may not necessarily remain stable in the future, but it has remained relatively stable through three elections: this does at least suggest that there is apparently no pressure for an increase in the average number of relevant parties across the ten countries, but there is no sign either that this average is likely to drop below four in the foreseeable future.

Types of party systems When only relevant parties are taken into account, Central Eastern European party systems can be classified into four types: two-party,

The End of Communism and the New Party System

29

two-and-a-half-party, multi-party with a dominant party and multiparty without a dominant party. The two-party system is the least widespread: only the Hungarian party system might be characterized after the election of 2002 as having a near-two-party configuration, because of the overwhelming dominance, on the one hand, of the left-wing Hungarian Socialist Party, which emerged from the Communist party after having reformed its structure and its policies, and, on the other, of the right-wing FIDESZ: this party in effect replaced the Hungarian Democratic Forum which had dominated the first few years of postcommunist politics in the country, but which collapsed, in large part after the death of its founder and leader, Antall. A minor partner in that quasi-two-party system is constituted by the Alliance of Young Democrats, which is associated with the Hungarian Socialist Party. The two-and-a-half-party system exists only in Bulgaria, where the left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party and the right-wing Union of Democratic Forces competed against each other between 1992 and 2001. The National Movement Simeon II, named after the Bulgarian King Simeon Saxe-Coburg, won a landslide victory at the parliamentary elections of 2001, but declined sharply at the subsequent election of 2005. The third position has been typically occupied by the Movement for Rights and Freedom which tends to represent particularly the Turkish minority. A multi-party system with a dominant party emerged in two countries – the Czech Republic and Poland – both of which had strong left-wing parties, at least, in the Polish case, up to 2005, the Left being essentially represented in Poland by the Democratic Left Alliance (DLA) and in the Czech Republic primarily by the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSDP). A unique feature of the Czech party system for the region is the fact that the Social Democratic Party did not emerge from a reconstituted Communist party, as was the case in Hungary or Poland, but was a genuinely distinct organization. Meanwhile, a separate and sizeable Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia remained in existence and has won more than 10 per cent of votes at parliamentary elections since 1990. At their 1995 Congress, the Czech Social Democratic Party passed a resolution of non-cooperation with the Communist Party as it was a political organization which still had its roots in the old repressive regime. This self-restraint of the CSDP meant that it refused to build a left-wing coalition with the communists after the 1998 and 2002 general elections. In 2002 the Czech Social Democrats made a coalition agreement with two centre-right parties, the Christian Democratic Union-Czechoslovak People’s Party and the Freedom Union-Democratic

30

The General Arrangements

Union. However, the strength of the Czech Social Democratic Party was illustrated by the fact that this party was not only able to form a singleparty (minority) government between 1998 and 2002, but also to win two consecutive parliamentary elections, an infrequent occurrence in East-Central and Southeastern Europe, where, on the contrary, a leftwing ruling party typically loses power at the subsequent election. Apart from the Czech Social Democratic Party, the only other examples of leftwing parties remaining in power for more than one term are constituted by the cases of the Romanian Social Democratic Party in alliance, together with the Conservative Party in 2000 and 2004, and the Slovenian Liberal Democratic Party in 1996 and 2000. Meanwhile, the Polish Democratic Left Alliance outperformed divided right-wing parties at both the 1993 and 2001 parliamentary elections, although it was unable to form a single-party government. The Polish Democratic Left Alliance ruled the country in coalition with the Polish Peasant Party from 1993 to 1997 and formed the government once again with that party as well as with the Labor Union in 2001, but it lost heavily to two centre-right parties, the Civic Platform and the conservative Law and Justice Party, receiving only 11 per cent of votes at the 2005 parliamentary election. The political Right in the Czech Republic and Poland has been divided into liberal, conservative, Christian Democratic and nationalist parties, although the Czech Civic Democratic Party was much stronger than the other Czech parties on the Right – the Christian Democratic UnionCzechoslovak People’s Party and the Freedom Union-Democratic Union. In Poland, an almost ‘heroic’ attempt was made to consolidate the political Right by establishing the Electoral Action Solidarity (AWS) in 1997: that ‘combination’ of parties did rule the country in a coalition with the liberal Freedom Union between 1997 and 2001, but it disintegrated while in office and gave rise to four political groupings in 2001, Electoral Action Solidarity, Law and Justice, the League of Polish Families and the Civic Platform. Meanwhile, multi-party systems without a dominant party are to be found in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, although there are substantial differences among these. Romania might even be classified as having a multi-party system with a dominant party: the Social Democratic Party of Romania has indeed been the leading political party in the country since 1992, but it was able to win the 2000 and 2004 parliamentary elections only in tandem with the Conservative Party. Moreover, the National Liberal Party, the conservative Democratic Party, the ethnic Democratic Alliance of Hungarians as well as the

The End of Communism and the New Party System

31

nationalist People’s Party of Great Romania successfully challenged the Social Democratic Party from the Right. Lithuania constitutes another complex case. Up to the 2000 election, it seemed possible to conclude that the Lithuanian party system is not characterized by the kind of fragmentation typical of Estonia and Latvia, the underlying structure of the Lithuanian party system being reminiscent of that of Poland. Party labels, at least those of mainstream parties, are familiar to students of West European politics: indeed, Lithuanian political parties have a tendency to imitate West European, and particularly Scandinavian, parties. This may result in programmatic and social profiles not conducive to converting existing divisions into lasting cleavages: yet the simple structure of the Lithuanian party system proved to be a major source of political stability. In the Lithuanian context of lowdensity civil society, political parties even served as vehicles of political modernization (Zeruolis 1998: 139). At the 2000 election, however, massive party fragmentation shook the ‘perfect and stable’ Lithuanian party system with two new political parties, the Liberals and the New Union (Social Liberals), suddenly entering the stage of parliamentary politics. The New Union (Social Liberals) obtained almost 20 per cent of the votes while another 20 per cent went to the Liberal Union. The second political earthquake of the Lithuanian party system occurred at the 2004 general election. The new challenger was the Labor Party (LP), led by Viktor Uspaskich, a Russian-born businessman and member of parliament since 2000, officially registered as the 38th political party in the country in November 2003. The Labor Party held its founding congress in October 2003 and, according to opinion polls, immediately became the most popular party in the country, at 16 per cent, compared to 13 per cent for the ruling Social Democrats. It was regarded as a populist organization with no clear ideological direction and identity. The 2004 European elections anticipated the success at the subsequent general election in the same year. Most of the support for the Labor Party came from rural and peripheral areas, especially from central Lithuania, as well as from lowincome and socially insecure voters. The party thus won 16 out of 48 seats at the second ballot and gained 31 per cent of the seats overall, while another protest party, ‘For Order and Justice’, formed by the former president Paksas after his impeachment, obtained 11 seats. Paksas was not able to stand himself because a decision of the Constitutional Court had banned him from holding any public position requiring the oath. Overall, new parties took 46 per cent of total vote in 2004. Thus, since the 2000 general election, the Lithuanian party system has to be defined as multiparty without a dominant party.

32

The General Arrangements

The party systems in Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Slovenia are more straightforward. In these countries, the share of votes for the largest parliamentary party has been higher than 30 per cent only four times since the introduction of multi-party elections. Meciar’s Movement for Democratic Slovakia crossed the 30 per cent barrier in 1992 by even receiving support from 37 per cent of the electorate; in 1993 Latvia’s Way gained 32 per cent of the total vote; the Estonian Coalition Party achieved a major victory in 1995 with 32 per cent; the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia obtained 36 of the votes at the 2000 parliamentary elections. Overall, multi-party systems without a dominant party emerged in these countries almost immediately after the transition to democracy occurred.

Is there a Left–Right polarization of the parties? The Left–Right continuum provides another means of classifying party systems in Central Eastern Europe, if ‘the structure of the party system is defined not only by how many parties compete in the elections but also by the number of dimensions on which parties compete’ (Rose and Munro 2003: 47). Yet it is also often the case that parties are spread on a space which is ‘fragmented along up to half a dozen different dimensions’ (Rose and Munro 2003: 50). Such an ideological structure is frequently characterized as being rather ‘fuzzy’. In such a context, voters usually lack the experience and knowledge required to differentiate among the parties in terms of dimensions or in terms of issues (Rose and Munro 2003: 50–2). In the early 1990s, in Central Eastern Europe the Left–Right ideology played little part in structuring party behaviour, but the political scene then changed rapidly: party competition and political mobilization gradually became based increasingly on ideological standpoints and a clear-cut programmatic identity became almost a precondition for a party’s survival and subsequent success. As in Western Europe, the Left–Right dimension thus became important for the ideological identification of parties within the party systems (Kitschelt et al. 1999). One finds at least four types of party systems in the region in terms of the Left–Right cleavage. These are: 1. Bipolar party systems with a small number of parties on the Left and Right, all of which are united and strong; 2. Systems with fairly united left-wing parties composed at most of two parties and a divided as well as relatively weak political Right; 3. Systems with fairly united right-wing parties and a divided as well as relatively weak political Left;

The End of Communism and the New Party System

33

4. Fragmented party systems or party systems without dominant parties of any ideological leaning. Hungary and Bulgaria fit best the first model. Poland until the 2005 parliamentary election, Romania and in part the Czech Republic are in the second group, with a unipolar Left and a divided as well as relatively weak political Right: in these countries the left-wing parties (Polish Democratic Left Alliance, Czech Social Democratic Party and Romanian Social Democratic Party) successfully mobilized no less than one-quarter of participating voters since the early 1990s. The third type can be found in Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia, but the saliency of the Left–Right division is rather low: in Estonia and Latvia, for instance, new non-ideological parties started winning parliamentary elections after 2000, although these parties did form governmental coalitions with established and more ideologically oriented parties. The fourth type, that of a multipolar fragmented party system or of a party system without dominant parties, these having no ideological leaning, emerged in Slovakia in 1998 after Meciar’s Movement for Democratic Slovakia lost power. Three parties on the Left (Social Democracy, the Party of the Democratic Left and the Communist Party of Slovakia), three Christian democratic parties (the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union, the Hungarian Coalition Party, the Christian Democratic Movement), the liberal Alliance of the New Citizen and two nationalists’ parties (the Slovak National Party and the Movement for Democratic Slovakia) competed against each other: at the 2002 general election, 26 political organizations presented candidates (Ucen 2003: 1071). The party system was thus very fragmented. It is difficult to classify Lithuanian parties on a Left–Right continuum. In two parliaments out of four, mainstream left- and right-wing parties secured stable parliamentary majorities, the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party in 1992 and the Homeland Union in 1996: from 1992 to 2000 Lithuania had all the characteristics of a bipolar party system, with few parties, all of which were united and strong, representing the Left and the Right: fluctuations from Left to Right were then a feature of Lithuanian party politics. After the 2000 election, parliament came to be dominated by the Centre–Left majority of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party and of the New Union, but only in mid-2001 did these two parties agree to form a government. After the 2004 election these two parties then agreed to form a coalition with the Labor Party and the Union of Peasants and New Democracy in a new four-party Centre–Left coalition. The fragmentation of the Lithuanian party system since 2000

34

The General Arrangements

led to the emergence of a multipolar party system without dominant left-wing or right-wing parties. Thus the extent to which there is identifiable Left–Right polarization in Central Eastern Europe varies markedly. It is rather high in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. It is much less marked in Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia. It was marked in Lithuania in the first period, but has become hazier since then. Finally, in Slovakia, the desire of many parties to prevent the return of Meciar’s party to power resulted in the construction of an alliance which largely ignored the Left–Right continuum.

How stable are parties in Central Eastern Europe? Two main factors have to be taken into account when describing the extent of stability of the party systems in Central Eastern Europe: these are the size of the turnout and the extent of electoral volatility. Large variations in voter turnout can be observed in the region not only from country to country, but over time in individual countries. After the ‘founding election’, where electoral participation was very high in most countries (typically about 80 per cent), turnout declined in the ten countries analyzed here to drop to 60 per cent at the last cycle of parliamentary elections: thus more than one-fifth of previously active voters ceased to come to the polls by the early 2000s. There are substantial variations, however: in Latvia, Slovakia and Bulgaria, for instance, turnout was on average over 70 per cent; it was much lower in Lithuania and Poland. A number of reasons account for that declining turnout, among them the raising of the electoral threshold, a deep distrust of political parties and the inability of governments to fulfill voter expectations, the oversupply of parties and weak party loyalties. Growing voter apathy seems thus to constitute an indication of potential rather than actual party system instability in Central Eastern Europe (Table 2.2). The second indicator, volatility, does not only help to measure the size of the movements from one party to another in successive elections: it also provides a means of assessing the relative strength and the mobilization capacity of political parties. It thus constitutes a key instrument to determine party system stability. While, in Western European democracies volatility is relatively low and does not, on average, exceed 21 points (Rose, Munro and Mackie 1998: 118), few Central Eastern European countries can compete with this level. This is the case of Slovakia at 20 points (1992, 1994), Romania, at 16 (1996), the Czech Republic also at 16 (1998) (Rose, Munro and Mackie 1998: 119). In the ten countries

Table 2.2

Voter turnout in the Central Eastern European countries (in percentages, 1989–2004) Bulgaria

Czech Republic

Hungary

Estonia

Latvia

Lithuania

Poland

Romania

Slovenia

Slovakia

Founding elections

1990 90.8

1990 96.7

1990 69.5

1990 78.0

1990 81.3

1990 71.7

1989 62.1

1990 86.2

1990 83.1

1990 83.0

First multi-party elections

1991 83.9

1992 85.1

1994 68.9

1992 66.8

1993 89.9

1992 75.3

1991 43.2

1992 76.1

1992 85.7

1992 84.2

Second multi-party elections

1994 75.2

1996 76.4

1998 56.3

1995 68.9

1995 71.9

1996 52.9

1993 52.1

1996 76.0

1996 73.7

1994 75.6

Third multi-party elections

1997 62.9

1998 74.0

2002 70.5

1999 57.4

1998 71.9

2000 58.6

1997 47.9

2000 56.5

2000 70.2

1998 84.2

Fourth multi-party elections

2001 66.7

2002 58.0

2003 58.2

2002 71.5

2004 45.9

2001 46.3

2004 58.5

2004 60.5

2002 70.0

Average

72.22

78.04

65.86

77.30

60.88

50.32

70.66

74.64

79.40

53.20

Sources: Rose, Munro, Mackie 1998; PARLINE Database, Inter-Parliamentary Union, http://www.ipu.org

35

36

The General Arrangements

analysed here taken together volatility did not decrease between 1991 to 2000 but remained constant at 26 points (Sikk 2005: 395); only the Czech Republic and Slovenia experienced a decrease, while there was a substantial increase in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia. Electoral behaviour theory suggests that volatility is high during the first few cycles of democratic elections: for instance, the volatility index was at 24 points in Austria, at 52 points in West Germany, and at 46 points in Italy during the first two postwar elections. It then decreased subsequently (Rose and Munro 2003: 80). In the ten countries analysed here, on the other hand, the volatility level did not fall (Rose and Munro 2003: 81) and the index is twice as high as it is in Western Europe, this being an indication that the party systems in the region are still unstable. Rose and Munro note that electoral volatility has two aspects, as it reflects the influence of both supply and demand. Supply-side volatility is structural and shows the extent to which the parties which offer themselves at election remain the same or tend to change as a result of the entry and exit of parties on the political stage. On the other hand, voters’ changes in party preferences result in demand-side volatility. Supply-side changes in parties, according to Rose and Munro, are the primary cause of electoral volatility in all Central Eastern European countries, except for Hungary (Rose and Munro 2003: 81–2) (Figure 2.1). The electoral success of new political parties also reflects the oversupply of parties in the region. New political parties can be defined as those political organizations which ‘are not successors to any previous parliamentary parties, have a novel name and structure and do not have any important figures from past democratic politics among their major members’ (Sikk 2005: 399). Between 1991 and 2000 genuinely new parties received 12 per cent of votes and gained 5 per cent of parliamentary seats (Sikk 2005: 401). These figures are comparable to the performance of new parties in Western Europe. Data about the performance of new parties in Central Eastern Europe are somewhat contradictory, however: they are therefore difficult to interpret. According to Rose and Munro (2003), the third set of democratic elections (1993–1998) showed that an average of 6.8 parties dropped out of competition while 3.5 new parties entered and won seats. In the fourth set of elections (1997–2002), the number of parties dropping out was 5.0 and was also greater than new parties winning votes (2.3), but in the fifth set (2001–2004) the number of new parties winning votes reached 3.0 and is greater than that of parties disappearing. The electoral influence of new parties in the region can hardly be wholly accounted for by institutional or electoral characteristics, such as

The End of Communism and the New Party System

Hungary

24 25

Bulgaria

47.5 30.5

15.5

Estonia

34.5 27

Slovenia

49

16.5

Czech Republic

59.5

12

Slovakia

64

14

Latvia

71.5

13

Lithuania

76

1

Romania 0

76.5 10

20

30

Supply volatility

Figure 2.1

45

25

Poland

37

40

50

60

70

80

90

Demand volatility

Supply vs demand volatility in Central Eastern Europe

Source: Rose and Munro 2003; The electoral volatility index recalculated on the basis of the Pedersen formula, that is to say on the total change of votes divided by two (see Pedersen 1979).

federalism, legislative–executive relations or district magnitude, as is possible in western democracies (Wiley 1998: 236–9). As a matter of fact, the strength of new parties in Central Eastern Europe is based on underdeveloped and changing party attachments mainly affected by short-term factors, such as social and economic conditions, and the inability of parties in government to deliver on voter expectations, the high dependence of parties on personal leadership, the high frequency of conflicts at the level of the party leadership, as well as the sheer ‘oversupply’ of parties. A threat to party system stability in Central Eastern Europe which has become more serious since the beginning of the twenty-first century is the substantial increase in importance and political weight of ‘populist’ parties in the region’s parliaments and governments. ‘Populist’ ideology is rather vague, but it includes the rejection of ‘established’ parties, the idea that governing should be grounded in the volonté générale, proposals to break down intermediary structures and to construct more direct links between the people and the leader (De Raadt, Hollanders et al. 2004: 5–11). In some countries ‘populist’ parties have entered ruling coalitions as in the case of the New Era Party in Latvia in 2002, of Res Publica in Estonia in 2003 and of the Labour Party in Lithuania in 2004.

38

The General Arrangements

Rose and Munro (2003: 71) argue that ‘the stable party system is completely institutionalized when there is a stable equilibrium between supply and demand, in which the same parties compete at successive elections and votes change only a few percentage points from one election to the next’. On the basis of such a definition, party systems in East-Central and Southeastern Europe are best described as being in ‘structural disequilibrium’, a situation in which there is marked competition between the parties, but the supply of parties changes substantially from one election to the next. Such a ‘structural disequilibrium’ will cease only when the supply of parties becomes stable in the region.

Conclusion Citizen satisfaction or dissatisfaction with parties as democratic political institutions becomes an increasingly important factor if one is to understand how well the new democracies of the region do function. High rates of electoral volatility might be potentially the single biggest danger for party system stability, as they show that even the major parties lack the ability to mobilize large numbers of supporters, without even considering whether they are able to attract undecided voters. Meanwhile, a substantial proportion of the voters moved away from the electoral process altogether and ceased to participate after having been markedly involved in the early post-communist period. Party systems in Central Eastern Europe differ from each other, as they do in Western Europe. No two party systems in the region are identical, but the predominant system is that of the multi-party system with no dominant party. Yet this development is combined, in most party systems, with the fact that centripetal forces leading towards stability are more powerful than centrifugal forces which might result in ineffectiveness and possible breakdown. Despite the challenges that these new party systems still face, competitiveness based on a lively multi-party system is not in danger of being abandoned: there is no prospect that citizens will favour an authoritarian solution in any of the countries in the foreseeable future. Indeed, it even seems that the major parties understand gradually better that they depend on permanent supporters, that a stable electorate requires well-defined ideological identities and that their organization must be well articulated.

3 The Anatomy of Central Eastern European Cabinets

Cabinet government has been typically described as ‘party government’: given that parties and party systems have, by and large, successfully developed in the ten countries of Eastern Europe studied in this volume, there is a prima facie case for concluding that the cabinets of these countries broadly operate in the way cabinets operate in other parts of the world and in Western Europe in particular. Of course, this does not mean that cabinets in the region all have the same characteristics, any more, as a matter of fact, than that Western European cabinets all share the same characteristics: it means only, but crucially, that parties are central to the structure – indeed to the very existence – of cabinet government. The three elements of the definition of a cabinet are: same parties, same legislature, and the same prime minister. It is unsurprising that parties should be central to the very existence of cabinet government: quite the contrary, parties are inherently central to cabinet government because parties are the only means by which cabinet government, as a collective institution, achieves the representative character which was discussed at some length in the introduction and which makes cabinet government unique. That representative character is in turn due to the fact that the cabinet is closely linked to the legislature, to parliament, as the cabinet cannot survive unless the legislature is willing to give it its ‘confidence’ or at least does not vote a ‘censure’ motion. It is because the cabinet as a body is in some manner representative of the legislature (or is at least ‘accepted’ by the legislature) and not merely because its members belong to parties that cabinet government is a unique system of government. Members of governments may belong to parties in other systems, for instance in presidential systems; but in presidential systems the fact that members of the government also belong to parties is ‘coincidental’, so to speak: it is not an intrinsic feature of the system. 39

40

The General Arrangements

Two key consequences for the definition of what constitutes a cabinet follow from the fact that the cabinet is, through the parties ‘belonging’ to that cabinet, linked to the legislature. The first consequence is that, because parties are the means by which cabinets have thus a ‘representative’ character, some parties, and not others, are part of the way a given cabinet is described. Presidential governments are centred on the president alone: it is up to him or her to appoint members of the cabinet, whatever parties they belong to. Not so in cabinet government: the parties which belong to a given cabinet are part of the definition of that cabinet. The second consequence stems from the fact that, through the parties, there is a tie between cabinet and legislature: a given cabinet exists only so long as the legislature which supports (or accepts) that cabinet also exists; conversely, the end of that legislature also means the end of that cabinet. No cabinet can survive beyond the life of the legislature under which it was set up. These two elements – same parties, same legislature – are thus two of the characteristics by which a given cabinet is defined. There is a third characteristic, moreover, namely that the head of the cabinet must also be the same. The definition which has just been drawn has two important implications for the examination of the ‘anatomy’ of cabinets, whether in Central Eastern Europe or elsewhere. The first implication relates to parties: it is essential to know which parties belong to a given cabinet, since the entry or departure of a party means that a new cabinet is being formed, even if the prime minister remains the same and the legislature remains the same. We need therefore to examine, if not necessarily the detailed party composition of each cabinet, at least the broad character of that composition and, to begin with, whether there is only one party or more than one party in a given cabinet. The second implication relates to the duration of cabinets. As was noted in the introduction, the question of the duration of cabinets has played a major part in the assessment of the worth of cabinet systems in general and of some cabinet systems in particular. Since efficiency is difficult to measure, the duration of the cabinet has been regarded as the indicator par excellence of the extent to which a given cabinet and, by extension, cabinet government in a given country can be regarded as successful. It is therefore no exaggeration to state that the fear of instability is embedded in reflections about cabinet government. Moreover, while instability is to some extent concealed in the case of presidential systems since the president remains in office, however many changes in the members of the government may be taking place, cabinet instability is for all to see as the fall of a cabinet is

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets

41

a major political event. Yet instability in cabinet government can and does occur at three levels: there is instability of cabinets, but also ministerial and prime ministerial instability. However, while a change in party composition results in a new cabinet, changes of individual ministers may not do so as long as the parties in the cabinet remain the same. The instability of cabinets therefore can be, and indeed often is, divorced from the instability of ministers within these cabinets. In this chapter, we will therefore consider the party composition of Central Eastern European cabinets and the possible relationship between party composition and the duration of cabinets. We will also look at the duration in office of the ministers who belong to these cabinets and of the prime ministers who head these cabinets: a realistic description of the ‘anatomy’ of cabinets entails that one examines in some detail ministerial and prime ministerial longevity in office alongside the party composition and the longevity of cabinets. Before doing so, however, in the context of the cabinets of the region, we need to consider, as in the previous chapter, how and when cabinet government was ‘founded’ in each country, for there have been ‘founding’ cabinets as well as there have been ‘founding’ elections in Central Eastern Europe; one must in particular determine at what point in time a ‘normal’ cabinet was established in the ten countries of the region. This chapter is therefore divided into three sections. The first is concerned with a general overview of the cabinets which have been in existence in the ten countries, beginning with the ‘founding’ cabinets. The second examines the party composition and duration of cabinets and the third analyses the duration in office of the members of these cabinets.

Cabinets in Central Eastern Europe from the end of communism to the early part of the twenty-first century The study which is undertaken in this volume is a study of decision-making processes in cabinets, that is to say of bodies which have the special characteristics which were discussed in general in the introductory chapter and in greater detail in the early pages of this chapter. This means that the study has to cover cabinets, but only cabinets. Since the governments of communist states did not have the characteristics of cabinets, it becomes necessary to determine with precision which governments in the ten countries analysed here can be regarded as ‘cabinets’. This poses the question of the starting point of the investigation; it also poses the question of the end point of the investigation, that is to say, of the last cabinets which are being studied. Furthermore, it poses the question of whether or not,

42

The General Arrangements

during the period of investigation, some governments may have to be excluded from the analysis on the grounds that they are not, strictly speaking, cabinets. ‘Founding cabinets’: Three conditions Just as there were ‘founding elections’ there were ‘founding cabinets’: but the determination of what was the ‘founding cabinet’ in a given country is not straightforward: indeed, three conditions have to be fulfilled for the government of a given country to be regarded as a cabinet. There had to have been a ‘founding’, that is to say a competitive election; there had to have been a new constitution or at any rate amendments to the pre-existing communist constitution; and there had also to have been state independence. Let us begin with the third of these conditions. This has to be raised as only four of the ten countries studied here – Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria – existed as independent states under communist rule. The other six countries were not ‘independent’: three of them were the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, since they were previously part of the Soviet Union; Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia; the Czech Republic and Slovakia were part of Czechoslovakia. In the Baltic States, the first free elections took place in 1990 and these were followed by the formation of the first non-communist cabinets; these first post-communist cabinets did not operate in independent states, but in sub-state units which only became politically independent from the Soviet Union in 1991 and adopted their constitutions in 1992–93 (Klingemann and Taylor 1995). The same holds true for Slovenia, where the first non-communist government was formed after the first free election in 1990, but before state independence in 1991. The Czech Republic and Slovakia separated formally on 1 January 1993. The other two conditions apply to all ten states. A ‘founding cabinet’ had naturally to emerge from a competitive election, but, because cabinet government has a special character, there could not be a ‘founding cabinet’ until parliament or a referendum had approved a new constitution or a set of amendments establishing the cabinet system of government. Thus, even if one leaves aside the question of state independence, a number of different paths were followed. In some cases an ‘intermediate’ government was set up which was no longer wholly communist, but had not as yet been legitimized by a ‘normal’ competitive election. The structure of some of these governments in that transitional phase was similar to the one which had prevailed under communist rule: there were a large number of ministries and a pyramidal arrangement in the cabinet, with a ‘presidium’ to which the prime minister and a number of deputy prime ministers

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets

43

belonged. These governments were not ‘cabinets’ in the strict sense of the word. Moreover, the sequence between constitutional change and the holding of a competitive election was not the same in every country. The simplest, most ‘logical’ and speediest set of arrangements was that adopted in Hungary. In that country, the former communists dissolved their party and created a new Hungarian Socialist Party, which approved an amended Constitution defining Hungary as an independent democratic state in October 1989. The first free general election took place in March and April 1990 and the first non-communist cabinet, which took office in May 1990, was therefore the ‘founding cabinet’. In Bulgaria and Romania, the process was more convoluted. An interim ‘Constituent Assembly’ and an interim government were at first responsible for drafting a new constitution. Only after the constitution was approved by parliament (or by referendum) did new elections take place; the interim democratic government resigned and was replaced by a fully responsible ‘cabinet’. In Poland, the first free election took place in 1991 before the ‘little constitution’ which introduced the cabinet system was passed by parliament in 1992; however, the 1991 cabinet was the ‘founding’ cabinet as it operated on the basis of a temporary Constitution based on the 1952 Polish Constitution (Table 3.1). Formally 68 cabinets are analysed in this study, but in reality only 61 once ‘caretaker’ cabinets are excluded. The starting point of the analysis conducted in this study is thus the moment when a cabinet was constituted after a fully competitive election had occurred and a new or revised constitution had been adopted; in the six countries which were not previously independent, formal independence had also to have taken place. Table 3.1 indicates the moment at which the ‘founding’ cabinet was constituted – a moment which varies from May 1990 in Hungary to January 1993 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The end point of the analysis is 31 December 2003: only cabinets which had ceased to rule by that date are part of the investigation; the analysis covers ministers and prime ministers in office during the same period as that of the cabinets which are considered. Yet seven of these ‘cabinets’ had still to be excluded as they were ‘caretaker’ in character. ‘Caretaker’ cabinets do not fit the ‘normal’ definition of cabinets, both substantively because they are not expected to engage in ‘new’ policies, but merely ‘administer’ the country, and formally because they do not proceed from parliament, typically since there was no longer a majority in parliament and an election was about to be held to resolve the majority problem. Consequently, such cabinets tend not to be composed of party representatives, precisely because parliament is deadlocked, but of ‘technicians’ appointed by the Head of State to overcome the difficulty.

44

The General Arrangements

Table 3.1

Regime transition and founding cabinets

Country

Date of independence

Date of adoption of constitution

— 01.01.1993

12.07.1991 16.12.1992

10.06.19901 07.12.1990 08.11.1991 08.06.19902 29.06.19903 01.01.19934

06.09.1991 — 06.09.1991 06.09.1991 — — 01.01.1993 25.06.1991

28.06.1992 18.10.1989 06.07.19935 25.10.1992 17.10.1992 08.12.1991 01.09.1992 23.12.1991

21.03.1990 25.03.1990 21.03.1990 24.02.1990 27.10.1991 20.05.19906 08.06.1990 08.04.1990

Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia

Free elections

First noncommunist cabinet

03.04.1990 23.05.1990 05.05.1990 17.03.1990 23.12.1991 01.10.1991 29.06.19907 16.05.1990

Founding cabinet

21.10.1992 23.05.1990 04.07.1993 02.12.1992 23.12.1991 13.11.1992 12.01.1993 12.01.1993

Notes: 1 Election to Constituent Assembly. 2 Czechoslovak Federal Assembly. 3 Czechoslovak federal government, inauguration of first Czech state government on 30.06.1990. 4 Government in office as Czech state government since 02.07.1992. 5 Reimplementation of the 1922 Constitution. 6 Election to Constituent Assembly. 7 Czechoslovak federal government, inauguration of first Slovak state government on 28.06.1990.

‘Caretaker’ cabinets last for a few months only and are expected to leave office when a ‘regular’ cabinet emerges from the election. The seven ‘caretaker’ cabinets which were constituted in the countries analysed here were spread over five countries – Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. There were therefore only 61 ‘normal’ cabinets for the ten- to 12-year period in the ten countries, an average of about six per country. These are the cabinets on which the analysis of the rest of this chapter is based (Table 3.2).

Cabinet party composition and duration in Central Eastern Europe The question of the party composition of cabinets has attracted considerable attention in Western Europe, in part because of the perception of a possible relationship between party composition and the duration of cabinets. A number of propositions have been empirically tested in this respect in that region: whether these propositions are also valid for the ‘new’ cabinet governments of Eastern Europe needs therefore to be examined.

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets Table 3.2

Duration of party cabinets (in years, 1990–2003)

Country

Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia

45

Cabinets

1 2 3 4 5 6 1.14 1.80 0.27 2.05 0.27 4.17 3.50 1.49 0.53 3.99 2.03 3.58 1.19 0.28 0.45 1.76 0.18 1.20

0.45 0.56 1.26 2.94 0.79 2.04 0.66 1.86

0.54 3.97 1.15 0.79 0.49 0.27 0.32 1.05

1.08 3.89 0.48 2.43 1.36 1.29 0.74 3.27

7

8

9

0.63 0.99 1.73 1.66 3.96 2.05

Mean all

2.29 3.00

1.62 2.38

1.31 3.00 0.93 1.38 1.32 1.34 1.62 1.65

1.31 3.00 0.93 1.22 1.23 1.01 1.62 1.65

10

0.28 2.04 2.83 1.19 0.67 0.45 0.92 0.04 3.88 0.48

Mean excluding Caretakers

0.19 0.44 0.80 2.51 0.68 2.6 1.36 1.36 0.02 1.02

Source: Müller-Rommel, Fettelschoss, Harfst 2004: 878–92.

The question of the party composition of cabinets has two aspects, analytically distinct but partly related in practice. One aspect concerns the number of parties represented in the cabinet: there may be single-party or coalition cabinets and coalitions may include a varying number of parties, sometimes as many as five or more. In the Western European case, a relationship has been shown to exist between the duration in office of cabinets and the number of parties which composed these cabinets. The second aspect of the party composition of cabinet touches on the size of the support enjoyed by the cabinet in the legislature: there are, thus, majority and minority cabinets. The range is indeed vast between cabinets which are composed of parties which represent a small minority in parliament and cabinets which include representatives of almost every party in parliament, a simplified distinction among majority cabinets being that between ‘minimum winning’ and ‘oversized’ cabinets. In the Western European case, a relationship has also been shown to exist between the duration in office of cabinets and their majority or minority character (Powell, 1982; Lijphart, 1999). The notion of coalition cabinets stems directly from the link between cabinet and parliament in cabinet government: unless a party has an absolute majority in parliament – or is at least very close to having such a majority – a coalition appears inevitable. As the probability seems relatively low that a party should obtain an absolute majority in parliament on its own, one would expect coalitions to be frequent in cabinet government. Admittedly, in Western Europe, single-party governments are not

46

The General Arrangements

exceptional, but they are in a relatively small minority. Only in Britain has there never been a need to build a coalition during the entire the postSecond World War period, largely as a result of the ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system. Yet single-party governments have been found to exist more than occasionally in a number of other Western European countries, especially in Spain, Portugal and Greece, and, but, especially before the 1980s, in Ireland, Sweden and Austria as well (Blondel and Thiebault, 1991). As the building of a coalition seems inherently more problematic than the building of a single-party government and as, consequently, the more parties are involved in a coalition, the more problems are likely to occur, it does not seem surprising that, at least in Western Europe, the duration of single-party cabinets should have been found to be longer than that of coalitions in general and that, the more parties there are in a coalition, the less durable the cabinet should be (Lijphart, 1999). Coalitions have therefore often been regarded as significantly contributing to instability in cabinet governments, especially in those coalitions which include more than two or three parties. While it seems natural that cabinet governments should differ as a result of the number of parties of which they are constituted, it seems less understandable that a distinction should also be drawn between minority and majority cabinets, except perhaps at the margin, when a party has obtained very nearly a majority in parliament and where only a very small number of ‘outside supporters’ are needed for such a party to be able to rule alone. Meanwhile, in theory at least, other types of minority cabinets would seem to be ruled out since, in order to survive, a cabinet needs the support of parliament: yet minority cabinets do occur in Western Europe. A number of explanations have been given to account for the occurrence of minority cabinets (Lijphart, 1999; Strom, 1990). For instance, some parties have found it in their interest to support a cabinet without joining it, as these parties then do not have to share (at least most of) the blame at the next election if the cabinet proves to be unsuccessful. Moreover, particularly in the case of some Scandinavian countries, the ties between cabinet and parliament are said to be sufficiently close for the cabinet to enjoy a working relationship with parliament even when that cabinet needs the support of parties not represented in the government. The distribution of single-party cabinets, coalitions, majority and minority cabinets in Central Eastern Europe In the ten countries studied here, as was to be expected, there is both a preponderance of coalitions and a preponderance of majority cabinets, but while four-fifths of the cabinets have been coalitions (49 out of 61), only

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets

47

two-thirds have been majority cabinets (39 out of 61). Minority cabinets are thus a rather frequent occurrence, although, as has just been pointed out, their existence seems somewhat inconsistent with the notion that cabinets should be based in principle on a parliamentary majority. Let us examine the distribution of the cabinets in somewhat greater detail and assess whether their duration is apparently affected by that distribution (Table 3.3). Four general points can be made about the distribution between singleparty and coalition governments and between majority and minority cabinets. First, coalition cabinets were found to have been formed in all ten of the countries analysed here, while single-party cabinets were found to have taken place in only six countries: Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Secondly, there is little difference in the distribution of majority and minority cabinets across the ten countries: majority cabinets were found everywhere and minority cabinets were found everywhere except in Hungary. Thirdly, there is a relationship between the distribution of single-party and coalition cabinets, on the one hand, and of majority and minority cabinets, on the other: only four of the 12 singleparty cabinets are majority in character, as against 35 of the 49 coalitions. Single-party majority cabinets are found only in Lithuania and Bulgaria, while single-party minority cabinets were found in five of the six countries which had single-party cabinets. Meanwhile, the 14 minority coalitions are found in only four countries: Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Bulgaria. Finally, the 35 coalitions which were majority in character were divided almost equally between ‘minimal winning’ (19) and ‘surplus’ (16): the proportion of surplus majority cabinets is large: there is therefore no support in Central Eastern European cabinets for the view, sometimes expressed earlier in the literature, that ‘minimum winning’ coalitions are somehow more ‘normal’ than ‘surplus’ coalitions, as parties would not wish to spread widely the advantages of governmental rule. Cabinet duration in Central Eastern Europe Average cabinet duration in the ten countries analysed here was 1.6 years, a longevity which is not markedly lower than that of Western European cabinets, which has been calculated at 1.8 years for the period between 1950 and 1983 (Budge and Keman, 1990: 161). As Table 3.3 shows, there are large variations across the ten countries. Two had comparatively stable cabinets, Hungary (an average of 3 years) and the Czech Republic (an average of 2.4 years): since legislatures normally last a maximum of four years and sometimes less because they are dissolved earlier, a cabinet duration of three or even two-and-a-half-years is rather high. Meanwhile,

48

Table 3.3

Duration of cabinet types (in years, 1990–2003) Cabinets N

Types of Cabinet Majority cabinet

Minority cabinet

Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia

6 (1) 4 (1) 8 4 10 7 (1) 9 (1) 8 (1) 6 6

3.11 3.50 1.39 3.00 1.00 1.52 1.59 1.32 2.08 2.09

1.47 2.74 1.17

Mean Average N Cabinets

6.80 68

2.06 39

1.17 22

0.82 0.68 0.87 1.36 0.70 0.77

Caretaker Singlecabinet party 0.27 0.27

0.28 0.49 0.03

0.27 7

Note: *Caretaker cabinets not included in duration measurement. Source: Müller-Rommel, Fettelschoss, Harfst, 2004: 878–92.

3.11

Single- Coalition party cabinet 1.14 3.99 1.16

1.86 1.36 1.02 0.66 2.49 4

1.17 8

1.80 2.50 1.35 3.00 0.93 1.14 1.31 1.50 1.82 1.65 1.70 49

Duration* Minimal Surplus winning cabinet

1.80 1.49

3.50 1.39 0.64

Multi-party

3.00 1.38 1.22

1.59 1.46 2.57

1.32 3.96 1.63

0.77

1.86 19

2.08 16

1.13 14

1.62 2.38 1.30 3.00 0.93 1.22 1.23 1.01 1.62 1.65

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets

49

the duration of cabinets is average in three countries – Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria, significantly below average, at about 1.3 years, in a further three – two of the Baltic States, Estonia and Lithuania, and Poland. It is really low only in two countries – Latvia and Romania – each averaging around one year. These are averages which conceal substantial variations from cabinet to cabinet, in particular in relation to five countries – Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria: in only one of these, Lithuania, have cabinets lasted less at the end of the period than at the beginning, while, in the other four, they have tended to have a longer duration as the years have passed. Thus, in the ten countries taken together, the average duration of the first (‘founding’) cabinet was under 1.4 years, but the average duration of the last cabinet being analysed was around 2.3 years. This suggests that there might have been a gradual strengthening of cabinets in the region. As in Western Europe, majority single-party cabinets lasted appreciably longer than majority coalition cabinets in the region (2.5 vs 1.7 years), but the evidence is limited since, as was noted earlier, there were only four single-party majority cabinets. Among coalitions, there was a substantial difference between majority cabinets (of which there were 35) and minority cabinets (of which there were 14), the former lasting on average about two years, while the latter lasted only a little over one year. There was little difference between ‘minimum size’ and ‘surplus’ coalitions in terms of their average duration. Although averages of under two years may appear low in an absolute sense, they are comparable to those observed in Western Europe and although cabinets tend to be unstable in Latvia and Romania, those of Hungary and of the Czech Republic are unquestionably stable and the cabinets of the other countries are also fairly close to the average. Moreover, it also seems, as we just saw, that the average duration of cabinets was appreciably shorter during the early post-communist years – a finding which might be related to the problems posed by the transition in the early years of the new governmental system. Finally, it must be remembered that a cabinet duration of two to three years is close to the maximum which can be achieved in view of the fact that no cabinet can last longer than the parliament in which it was set up. Thus, the overall conclusion must be that the cabinets of the countries of Central Eastern Europe compare rather well, in terms of their stability at least, with those of other countries which have adopted a system of cabinet government.

50

The General Arrangements

Cabinets, ministers and prime ministers in Central Eastern Europe The duration of ministers in office in a given country, calculated on a yearly basis, depends both upon the number of ministers who held office during the period under consideration in that country and upon the number of cabinet posts which existed every year in that country: this last number does vary a little, as some posts are created while others (more rarely) are abolished. Throughout the twentieth century, the number of cabinet posts has gradually increased across the world, cabinets being typically composed of around twenty ministers, in some cases a little less, in some cases somewhat more, at the beginning of the twenty-first. In the ten Central Eastern countries analysed here, the average number of cabinet posts has been 18, with a maximum of 21 in Poland and Romania and a minimum of 15 in Estonia (Müller-Rommel et al. 2004: 876). The total number of cabinet posts for the ten countries for the period covered in this analysis is 1,789. During the period of this study 901 cabinet ministers occupied one or more of these ministerial posts in the ten countries analysed here, giving an average of 90 ministers per country. The average tenure of ministers was exactly two years, not markedly more than the average duration of the cabinets to which these ministers belonged (1.6 years): this is in is, on average, contrast with Western Europe, where ministerial duration is, on average, twice as long as cabinet duration (Bakema, 1991: 74). The turnover of ministers was therefore high in most countries, particularly during the phase of transition following the demise of the communist system. If the duration in office is a measure of ministerial experience, and if a minimum of three years is needed for a politician to become effective (Rose, 1974), the majority of ministers in the ten countries analysed here did not have enough time to have substantial governmental expertise. Naturally, there were variations in both the number and the average duration of ministers across the ten countries. The minimum number of ministers during the period was about 70 in four of the countries – Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia; the maximum was 137 ministers in Poland. In the other five countries, that number ranged between 80 (Estonia) and 107 (Bulgaria). Smaller countries (the Baltic States and Slovenia) tend to have had fewer ministers in office, while Romania and, especially, Poland, the two largest states, had respectively the third largest and the largest number of cabinet ministers. Variations in the duration of ministers in office were substantial. Almost a third of the third ministers analysed here (29 per cent) stayed in office for less than a year, nearly half (47 per cent) between one and three years

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets

51

and about a quarter more than three years. There are also appreciable variations across countries. In Slovenia, for instance, ministers stayed in office nearly twice as long as ministers in Bulgaria. Overall, ministers can be classified into two groups in terms of their tenure: in one group, including Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, the percentage of ministers in office more than three years is relatively high; in the other, which includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, the average duration of ministers in office is substantially less than three years. Among the countries with comparatively short-lived ministers are Lithuania, Poland and Bulgaria, while in only three countries – the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia – have ten or more ministers remained in office for more than three years. Thus, if expertise in decision-making is the result of the existence of a group of senior ministers, then the majority of the cabinets examined here consisted of ‘non-professional’ ministers, while Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia are the countries where ministers have the greatest political experience (Table 3.4). The duration of prime ministers in office is also only a little longer than that of cabinets. As is well known, prime ministers are the most powerful members of cabinets; in principle, they can determine all policy issues in which they have a special interest. Yet a minimum of three years in office also appears to be required for a prime minister to become an effective decision-maker. Therefore, in this case duration also provides some indication of the potential political impact of the head of the government on both the cabinet and national policies. 48 persons served as prime ministers in the ten countries analysed here. Their average duration in office was 2.4 years in office: as in the case of ministers, this average is rather low and compares unfavourably with the average of Western European prime ministers. Variations around the average are substantial, however. One-third of all prime ministers (15 out of 48) held office for less than one year: This group includes one prime minister from each country, two from Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria and three out of six prime ministers from Lithuania. Around 40 per cent of the prime ministers remained in office for between one and three years and the last final 30 per cent (13 prime ministers) remained in office for more than three years. Among these, nine prime ministers stayed in office for more than four years: Klaus (Czech Republic) and Meciar (Slovakia) were each prime ministers for five years; Laar (Estonia), for 4.8 years; Vacaroiu (Romania) for 4.1 years; and Zeman (Czech Republic), Horn (Hungary), Buzek (Poland) and Dzurinda stayed in office four years each. The record for duration is held by Dronvsek of Slovenia, who stayed in office for 9.4 years before becoming president of his country.

52

Table 3.4

Duration of ministers (in years, 1990–2003) Number of ministers

Average duration

Up to 100 days

Up to 1 year

%

N

%

N

1–2 years

2–3 years

3–4 years

%

%

N

%

N

%

N

N

4 years and above

Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia

107 72 80 89 71 98 137 105 73 69

1.50 2.50 1.98 2.39 1.76 1.57 1.69 1.89 2.51 2.63

21.5 0.0 1.3 0.0 2.8 4.1 7.3 5.7 0.0 0.0

23 0 1 0 2 4 10 6 0 0

14.0 22.2 25.0 18.0 26.8 37.8 25.5 24.8 28.8 20.3

15 16 20 16 19 37 35 26 21 14

34.6 29.2 30.0 28.1 40.8 25.5 40.9 24.8 17.8 15.9

37 21 24 25 29 25 56 26 13 11

22.4 15.3 25.0 19.1 11.3 20.4 9.5 25.7 8.2 24.6

24 11 20 17 8 20 13 27 6 17

0.0 9.7 8.8 23.6 12.7 10.2 10.2 8.6 28.8 23.2

0 7 7 21 9 10 14 9 21 16

7.5 23.6 10.0 11.2 5.6 2.0 6.6 10.5 16.4 15.9

8 17 8 10 4 2 9 11 12 11

Total

901

2.00

4.3

46

24.3

219

28.8

267

18.2

163

13.6

114

10.9

92

Source: Own calculation on the basis of the CEE minister data bank, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Lüneburg.

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets Table 3.5 Country

Bulgaria Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia Total

53

Duration of prime ministers (in years, 1990–2003) Number Average of prime duration ministers of prime ministers

Up to one year %

Up to three years N

%

Three years and above N

%

N

6 3

1.62 3.31

33.3 33.3

2 1

50.0

3

16.7 66.7

1 2

5 4 6 6 7 6 3 2

2.09 3.00 1.55 1.43 1.58 1.35 3.25 5.16

20.0 25.0 16.7 50.0 28.6 33.3 33.3 50.0

1 1 1 3 2 2 1 1

60.0

3

20.0 75.0

1 3

83.3 33.3 57.1 50.0

5 2 4 3

16.7 14.3 16.7 66.7 50.0

1 1 1 2 1

48

2.43

32.4

15

33.4

20

34.3

13

Source: Own calculations on the basis of the CEE minister data bank, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Lüneburg.

Overall, two-thirds of the prime ministers in the ten countries seem not to have stayed in office long enough to exercise a major policy impact and only one-third (13) of prime ministers can be expected to have had enough time to develop and implement effective policies (Table 3.5). The duration of cabinets, ministers, and prime ministers combined Table 3.6 provides a combined overview of the duration of cabinets and of the tenure of ministers and prime ministers from the early 1990s to 2003. Two conclusions emerge. First, on average, as in Western Europe, the duration in office of ministers (two years) and of prime ministers (2.4 years) was higher than the duration of the cabinets (1.6 years) in the ten countries of Central Eastern Europe analysed here. That trend also characterized nine of the countries, the exception being Bulgaria, where the duration of cabinets and the tenure of prime ministers and ministers was about the same (1.4–1.6 years). Secondly, there is a close relationship between, cabinet, ministerial and prime ministerial duration. Countries with long-lasting cabinets, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, are also the ones where the ministerial and prime ministerial duration was longest; ministerial and prime ministerial duration is relatively

54

The General Arrangements

Table 3.6

Types and durability of cabinet governments (in years, 1990–2003)

Country

Average duration in years

Rank order Mean Scores

CAB (rank)

PM (rank)

MIN (rank)

Type I Slovenia Czech Republic Hungary Slovakia

1.65 (3) 2.38 (2) 3.00 (1) 1.62(4)

5.16 (1) 3.31 (2) 3.00 (4) 3.25 (3)

2.54 (1) 2.35 (4) 2.37 (3) 2.41(2)

1.30 2.60 2.60 3.00

Type II Estonia Poland Bulgaria

1.31 (8) 1.23 (6) 1.62 (5)

2.09 (5) 1.58 (7) 1.62 (6)

1.90 (6) 1.67 (7) 1.45 (10)

6.30 6.70 7.00

Type III Romania Lithuania Latvia

1.01 (9) 1.22 (7) 0.93 (10)

1.35 (10) 1.43 (9) 1.55 (8)

1.93 (5) 1.55 (9) 1.61 (8)

8.00 8.30 8.70

Total

1.6

2.43

1.98

Source: Own calculations on the basis of Tables 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5.

low in countries with short-lived cabinets, such as those of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania Poland and Romania. However, the direction of influence in that relationship does remain questionable (Table 3.6). Index of governmental stability As cabinet stability differs appreciably from country to country, an index of governmental stability was constructed, based on the average ranking of cabinet, prime ministerial and ministerial duration in each country, the highest duration being ranked as 1 and the shortest as 10. Hungary, for instance, has the highest average cabinet duration of the ten countries (three years). It therefore scores 1 while Latvia, with the lowest average of cabinet duration (0.9 years), scores 10. The mean of the three rankings is then calculated for each country: the lower that overall mean, the higher cabinet, ministerial and prime ministerial durability and stability. The scores given in Table 3.6 show that there are three distinct groups. The first group (stable governments) consists of four countries which have both the longest cabinet duration and the longest prime ministerial and ministerial tenure: Slovenia, which scores 1.3, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which score 2.6, and Slovakia, which scores 3.0, belong to that group. The overall stability score of these countries is accounted for in

The Anatomy of CEE Cabinets Table 3.7

55

The relation between different types of duration (Pearson’s) Duration

Cabinet duration Prime ministers’ duration Ministers’ duration

Cabinet

Prime ministers

Ministers

xxx .80 .58

xxx .71

xxx

particular by the long duration in office of prime ministers. The second group (moderately stable governments) includes Estonia, with a score of 6.3, Poland, with a score of 6.7, and Bulgaria, with a score of 7.0. The third group (unstable governments) is composed of Romania, with a score of 8.0, Lithuania, with a score of 8.3, and Latvia, with a score of 8.7. In this last group, the fact that the average duration of the prime ministers in office is even lower than the tenure of ministers appears to account for the instability of the government in these countries. Overall, the duration of prime ministers in office appears to play a greater part than the duration of ministers in accounting for the stability of governments, as Table 3.7 suggests. The strength of the association between prime ministerial duration and cabinet duration (.80) is higher than the relation between ministerial tenure and cabinet duration (.58), perhaps unsurprisingly since the same prime minister has to remain in office for the cabinet also to remain the same (Table 3.7).

Conclusion The overall examination of the development of cabinets in Central Eastern Europe from the end of communism to the first decade of the twenty-first century provides support for the view that these cabinets have been a marked success. There are relatively few single-party governments: coalitions therefore prevail, but a substantial majority of these coalitions are majority in character and these majority coalitions last slightly longer than the average cabinet (1.7 years) in the ten countries. The party system may not be truly entrenched in a number of countries, as we observed in the previous chapter, but the presence of parties, even in the context of coalitions, appears to lead to relatively stable cabinets; endemic instability, as is perhaps the case in Latvia, is exceptional. While the longevity of cabinets does not therefore seem to constitute a problem, the duration of ministers and prime ministers in office, at least in a substantial number of countries, appears to be less satisfactory. As a

56

The General Arrangements

general proposition, given the fact that cabinet government is often regarded as inefficient in part because of its representative character, a greater stability of ministers and prime ministers appears to constitute a way of compensating for what might be described as the inherent ‘handicap’ of the system. The size of that ‘compensation’ is unquestionably largerin Western Europe than it appears to be in Central Eastern Europe. Yet a period of little more than a decade makes it simply impossible for truly long ministerial and prime ministerial durations to have occurred. This is even more the case for Central Eastern Europe because the starting point of the analysis was also the starting point of what is in effect a wholly new system of government for the countries of the region: we did indeed notice that cabinets lasted somewhat longer, among several countries at least, in the latter part of the period under analysis. If this trend continues, ministers and prime ministers will gradually acquire greater experience and more professionalism, while the desire of leaders and ministers to exercise more influence within the European Union is likely to act as a deterrent against rapid governmental turnover.

4 The Rules and the Operating Procedures in Cabinet

As was noted in the introductory chapter, the speed with which most of the countries of Central Eastern Europe adopted the parliamentary system of government has been truly impressive. The reasons for this development are obviously many and it is not the object of this study to consider them in any detail: they are taken here as the point of departure of the analysis. It is sufficient to note that there was manifest eagerness, among the countries of the region, to become quickly associated with a Western Europe from which they had been separated for decades: In political terms, Western Europe meant the parliamentary system. The choice of the parliamentary system raises intriguing questions in terms of governmental structure and policy-making processes. The parliamentary system is a highly complex formula, more subtle than the presidential system if it is to operate effectively (Lijphart, 1992). The presidential system is expected to function more or less in the way the rules state that it should: this is not the case with the parliamentary system in general and with its executive element, the cabinet, in particular. To function effectively, the parliamentary system has to operate on the basis of arrangements, which, while taking a number of rules into account, either supersede or modify these rules markedly. As a result, the operation of that system of government is in reality far from being what it is supposed to be from a juridical (especially constitutional) standpoint. This is indeed one of the reasons why the effective implementation of the parliamentary system – or perhaps in this context strictly speaking of the ‘parliamentary-cabinet’ system – in Central Eastern Europe is little short of miraculous. It is not only because a ‘sovereign’ parliament tends to be so closely guided by the government that the ‘sovereignty’ of that parliament has to be regarded as a myth. Perhaps the most surprising matter is that a rather peculiar, indeed sophisticated system, 57

58

The General Arrangements

in which formal rules survive without being questioned, should have been accepted by the countries of East-Central and Southeastern Europe: these countries, in the same way and to the same extent as the countries of Continental Europe and of Scandinavia, have in practice internalized, so to speak, in their governmental ideology and their governmental behaviour, the complete evolution of the British governmental arrangements from the eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries. It is therefore both interesting in theory and very important in practice to examine the life of cabinets in the ten countries analysed here. In view of what has just been pointed out, we need to determine the rules, and, to begin with, the formal rules, only to consider how these rules have been modified, as if they were geological layers, by a series of arrangements which often rendered these rules inoperative. The formal ‘pillar’ on which cabinets are founded is, of course, the constitution, since this determines whether the overall system is parliamentary in the sense that the government needs the continued support of the legislature to be able to remain in office. All ten countries analysed here fall in this category. Yet constitutions do not go much beyond determining the ways in which the government comes to be constituted or loses power (Elster et al. 1998; Verheijen 1997a). There is naturally some reference in the constitution to the existence of the ‘government’, that is to say of a body including the prime minister, perhaps one or more deputy prime ministers and ministers: but little more is said about the way in which that ‘government’, which, in the course of this volume, is referred to as the ‘cabinet’, to follow the usual vocabulary, conducts its affairs. Since the constitution provides only the broad framework within which governments are established and remain in office, one must go beyond the constitution and examine the life of cabinets and, to begin with, the extent to which the cabinet is effectively truly at the top of the decisionmaking process. Parliamentary systems not only organize a relationship between government and parliament; they also organize a relationship between the government and the Head of State, that is to say, in the countries of Central Eastern Europe, the President of the Republic, since none of these states is a monarchy. That relationship is partly determined by the constitution, but practices can differ appreciably from one country to another, over and above what the constitution may stipulate. Indeed, the matter goes beyond the notion of ‘semi-presidential’ government, a notion which is in any case rather imprecise (Elgie 1999). The reality of the relationship between Head of State and government has to be considered and there are differences, among the ten countries analyzed here, in the way in which this relationship has developed.

The Rules and Operating Procedures in Cabinet

59

Yet the main purpose of this chapter is to describe, as precisely as possible, the life of cabinets in the ten countries. As one has to go well beyond what the constitution states, serious problems of information arise, both with respect to rules of conduct and about practices. A comprehensive study of both these rules of conduct and these practices was undertaken at the end of the twentieth century under the aegis of the OECD, in the context of the Sigma programme;1 but that inquiry has not been replicated in the early years of the twenty-first century, despite the fact that changes occurred since the study was completed. The description given in this chapter of the way in which cabinets operate is thus based in large part on information originating from the Sigma studies, but supplemented by answers given by the ministers themselves to the questionnaire which was administered to them and by data provided directly by the participants in this volume by means of a special survey.2 This chapter is thus divided into three sections. The general constitutional framework within which cabinets operate is described in the first section. The effective role of Heads of State is examined in the second. The third section analyses the characteristics of cabinet arrangements: it does this on the basis of the consideration of the three key ways in which decision-making processes are structured – that is to say, the number and duration of meetings, the nature and extent of the support given by the prime ministerial office and the type and functions of committees of the cabinet. Throughout the chapter, reference is made to the situation in Western Europe while the conclusion returns more specifically to that matter.

The cabinet in the constitutions of Central Eastern Europe Parliamentary constitutions are typically rather laconic about the conditions under which the government is expected to operate: constitutions from the ten countries analysed here do not differ in this respect. The few clauses which relate to governments only account for the formal way in which these are set up and cease to exist and describe their role in the most general manner. Little change has taken place in this respect as a result of constitutional amendments or as a result of a new constitution being introduced, as occurred in Poland and Slovakia, except with respect to the position of the President of the Republic, who lost powers in Poland and who came to be elected by universal suffrage, but with little change in powers, in Slovakia. In eight of the ten countries analysed here, the president of the republic is entrusted with the task of nominating the prime minister.

60

The General Arrangements

In Bulgaria, the president is constrained to choose the person nominated by the largest parliamentary group, with further sets of requirements in the constitution if the first candidate prime minister does not receive the confidence of parliament. In the other seven cases, the president is ostensibly free to choose, although the party system, the parliamentary situation and, when relevant, the electoral results limit the power which the president can exercise. In the last two countries, Estonia and Hungary, the prime minister is appointed by parliament and not by the president: whether this makes much difference in practice is arguable, in Hungary, because the electoral result has so far made it clear who the prime minister was to be and, in Estonia, because it seems that the president does play a substantial behind-the-scenes role in finding a suitable candidate. Meanwhile, perhaps to ensure that the process of selection of the government be not too long, the constitutions of Estonia, Poland and Romania stipulate that the prime minister must ask for the confidence of parliament within respectively, 14, 15 and 10 days. The end of governments tends not to be determined by means of special rules in the constitutions of the countries which are analysed here, despite the fact that, at least in the West, the fear of cabinet instability has given rise in a number of cases to the introduction of special procedures. Naturally enough, constitutions cannot prevent governments from resigning, irrespective of any formal move against them. Indeed, in Western Europe, resignations of this type have often tended to occur where governments have been relatively weak, largely because they lacked a solid party base. However, constitutions can merely attempt to reduce the likelihood of such resignations by making it relatively difficult for parliament to pass ‘no-confidence’ motions and moves of this kind have been embodied in some Western European constitutions – such as those of Germany, Spain and France. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, only in Hungary and, since 1992, as a result of the ‘little constitution’, in Poland, is the ‘no-confidence’ motion made stringent in this manner: a ‘constructive motion of confidence’, on the German model, has to be introduced and passed for the government to be formally obliged to resign. On the other hand, also in Hungary, the government can ask for a vote of confidence and this vote is subjected to the normal majority procedure. The strength and relatively small number of relevant Hungarian parties have indeed ensured that the stability of Hungarian governments has not been affected. In the other countries examined here, normal majority procedures apply with respect to both confidence and no-confidence motions. Moreover, and also by an ordinary majority vote, in Latvia, Poland and Slovakia, the

The Rules and Operating Procedures in Cabinet

61

parliament can vote a motion of ‘no-confidence’ in individual ministers, a procedure which is more characteristic of presidential than of parliamentary governments. Thus, by and large, the constitutional arrangements relating to the life and death of governments are the ‘classic’ ones which do not attempt to place special hurdles on the behaviour of the legislature. Those who drafted the constitutions of these countries did not seem unduly worried about the possible instability of the governments they were establishing. Constitutions do not enter at all into the characteristics of the life of governments. All they do typically is state that the government is composed of the prime minister and the ministers; in four cases – those of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia – deputy prime ministers are also mentioned, while the Romanian constitution declares that the government is composed of ‘the prime minister, ministers and others’ (art. 101). Whether this means that the governments of other countries could not include deputy prime ministers seems highly unlikely. The composition of the government is not a subject which seems to have been of particular concern to constitution drafters. Only in the Latvian constitution is it stated that the number of ministers is determined by law (art. 57). The silence of other constitutions on this subject suggests that governments are free to determine the number of ministers and the fields that their departments are to cover. Estonia is the only country which states that the State Secretary, who is the head of the State Chancellery, attends the meetings of the government and can speak at these meetings (art. 95): this does not mean that this official is not present at the meetings of the cabinet in the other countries. Various formulas are adopted by the constitutions to state that the government is concerned with the policy-making process, but it seems clear that the notion is broadly the same across the ten countries examined here. The government is regarded as being in charge of the affairs of the nation. On the other hand, nothing is said about the way in which that government comes to take its decisions, except for the fact that, in the cases of both the Czech Republic and in Poland, it is held to act ‘collectively’: how these ‘collective’ decisions are arrived at is not defined. No constitution stipulates for instance that votes are to be taken or that majority rule in cabinet is expected to prevail. Most remarkably, the constitutions of the ten states are surprisingly imprecise about the role of the prime minister in the life of the government, in contrast with many of the more modern Western European constitutions. Thus, the Estonian, Latvian, Hungarian, Slovak and Slovenian constitutions are silent on the subject of the role of the prime minister, except

62

The General Arrangements

for the fact that the Latvian and Hungarian constitutions state that the meetings of the council of ministers are chaired by the prime minister, a provision which probably means a contrario that that council is not chaired by the president (respectively art. 37 and 60). Yet, while the other constitutions are a little less laconic about the role of the prime minister, only in the Bulgarian document is there what might be regarded as a strong sentence – namely that the prime minister ‘leads and coordinates the overall policy of the government and bears responsibility for it’ (art. 108). In the Czech case it is said that the prime minister ‘organizes the government’ (art. 77) and in the Polish case that ‘the prime minister manages the work of the council of ministers’ (art. 148), a statement which is little different from that which is made in the Romanian constitution, while in the Lithuanian case the role of the prime minister is described only indirectly, by stating that ‘the prime minister presents his (sic) program to parliament’ (art. 92). One has therefore to turn to practices to have some idea of the real role of prime ministers in the political life of the countries examined here. This does not mean that the constitutions of the ten countries analysed here are of little importance with respect to the governmental system. These constitutions had a crucial role as they have determined the overall framework of the governmental system by stipulating, in all ten cases, that this governmental system is parliamentary and not presidential and even, in the context of the parliamentary system, that the part played by presidents during the lifetime of the government remains limited.

The President of the Republic and the cabinet In all ten countries, the President of the Republic, who is elected everywhere for five years and can only be re-elected once, tends to occupy, in the early years of the twenty-first century, a position of prestige rather than of power. This is so whether the president is elected by universal suffrage (six cases out of ten after the constitution was amended in this direction in Slovakia in 2001) or by parliament, as in Estonia, Latvia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. There have been some changes in terms of power, however: they suggest that one must distinguish between two periods, some presidents having been rather more influential in the early years of the post-communist regime than subsequently. The role of the president tends to fall into one of three types. One of these is that of the purely representative Head of State, on the German model. A second type, more akin to that of the president of Italy, at least under the ‘First Republic’, characterizes presidents who become involved,

The Rules and Operating Procedures in Cabinet

63

sometimes reluctantly, sometimes more eagerly, in the choice of the prime minister and the building-up of governmental coalitions, because the party system is rather complex and governmental majorities do not emerge directly from the polls. The presidents of these countries are thus associated in the conduct of affairs in their country, but only indirectly and rather spasmodically. Finally, the third type, which can be labelled ‘semi-presidential’, corresponds to cases in which presidents attempt to influence policy directly over and above any part they may play in the appointment of the prime minister and of some of the ministers. The parallel is that of the French Fifth Republic president outside periods of ‘cohabitation’. In the early 1990s, presidents of the purely ‘representative’ type were found in three countries – Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Only once in the Czech Republic, when Klaus’s government fell, did Havel actively seek to build a coalition; that effort was fairly unsuccessful, as a social democratic government emerged from the subsequent general election and that government agreed with Klaus and his party on policymaking arrangements (Wolchik 1997). In four countries – Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Bulgaria – the president has been involved periodically in the construction of coalitions because the outcome of elections was unclear or governments fell during the lifetime of a parliament. Finally, in the remaining three countries – Lithuania, Poland and Romania – presidents attempted, with a varying degree of success, to play a significant part in policy-making. Since the late 1990s, to begin with, there was a decline in the number of presidents who were actively involved in the building-up of coalitions. The first Bulgarian president, Jelev, was confronted in a number of cases with situations in which he did have to intervene; his successor did not have to do so up to 2005, as the government had then clear majorities. Since 2005, however, the Bulgarian president has become once more involved in the building of cabinets, as the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia. Meanwhile, the ‘semi-presidential’ category became even more depleted. Semi-presidentialism in Poland ended with the defeat of Walesa in 1995: his successor, Kwasnieski, decided not only to act differently (and less controversially), but specifically stressed that he was to act as a ‘representative’ Head of State (Jasiewicz 1997). The new constitution of 1997 formally embodied the change: Polish presidents can no longer play a significant part in policy-making, although the president elected in 2005 may have aspirations to play at least some part. There have been oscillations in Romania. During his first term, Iliescu was unquestionably

64

The General Arrangements

directly involved in policy-making. His successor, the conservative Constantinescu, seemed to be more than occasionally overtaken by events and the presidency lost considerable prestige in the process. The role of the president seemed to decline further when Iliescu returned to power in 2000, as he no longer desired to be markedly involved, perhaps because of his age. In 2004, however, with the election of Basescu, the idea of a ‘semi-presidential’ Romanian president has come to be once more in the news. As a result, by the early years of the twenty-first century, four out of ten presidents in Central Eastern Europe were of the ‘representative’ type: Hungary, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. Four presidents have played a significant part in the building of governmental coalitions – those of Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Bulgaria, Lithuania and Romania are the only two countries whose presidents appear, albeit not always, to belong to something approaching the ‘semi- presidential’ type.

Cabinet rules and practices Thus, except to a very limited extent, the constitution does not define the rules which govern the life of the cabinets of the ten countries which are analysed here (Blondel and Müller-Rommel 2001). This situation is no different from the one which prevails in Western Europe; moreover, as in Western Europe, the life of the cabinet in the ten countries analysed here has tended to be regulated by standing orders, although both legislation and a code of practice also played a substantial part. The survey, which was undertaken especially in relation to this study and for which replies were obtained for eight countries (there was no response from Latvia and Lithuania), indicates that, in six of these eight countries, legislation and standing orders played a part in the elaboration of cabinet rules, while no answer was given for the Czech Republic; the only country in which neither legislation nor standing orders were said to have played a part was Hungary. There was a sharper contrast among the eight countries with respect to the existence of a more informal code of practice: in three of the countries (Estonia, Slovenia and Romania), such a code of practice was said not to exist, while its existence was recognized alongside legislation and standing orders in four of the other five. The Hungarian cabinet stands alone in not having been regulated by legislation or by standing orders, but exclusively by a code of practice. Taken together, in all of the eight countries surveyed, these documents are said to cover jointly most of the rules under which cabinet decisionmaking takes place.

The Rules and Operating Procedures in Cabinet

65

Rules were adopted at markedly different points in time since the end of communism; they were already in force in 1991 or 1992 in Hungary and Romania, but were only adopted in 1998 and later in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. There appear to have been, moreover, variations over time from cabinet to cabinet in the procedures which are applied, the single exception being that of the Slovenian cabinet, for which it is said that these rules remained ‘mostly unchanged across cabinets’. This state of affairs may be due in part to the fact that, in Slovenia, the same prime minister remained in office for much of the period; moreover, in Slovenia as well, both the Law on Government of 1993 and the Standing Orders, also of 1993, are said to have been altered in a ‘minor manner’ five times between 1994 and 2001. Meanwhile, apart from Poland, for which there were ‘considerable variations’ in the rules over time, the survey indicates that, in the case of the other six countries for which information was obtained, ‘most procedures remain stable’ despite variations in some respects. Meetings of the cabinet Cabinet meetings are attended, apart from ministers, by a number of officials of the cabinet secretariat and by the cabinet secretary in particular. Typically, junior ministers do not attend, except to represent a minister who cannot be present and, even then, the junior minister does not have the right to vote. There are two rather special arrangements, however, which concern Estonia and Lithuania. In both these countries meetings are attended by substantial numbers of officials – for example, state controllers and representatives of the parliament in the Lithuanian case or county governors in the Estonian case. In Lithuania, therefore, some 60 to 70 persons normally attend the meeting. Though these outsiders are mere spectators, the nature of the cabinet meeting is obviously markedly altered as a result of this practice. In all of the countries surveyed here except Poland, for which information was lacking, the cabinet meets once a week, as is the case in Western Europe. Meetings take place either on Wednesdays (three countries) or on Thursdays (five countries), with the situation being unknown for Latvia and Poland.3 These meetings appear to last longer in most of the ten countries analysed here than in Western European cabinets, but there are substantial variations, from as short as an hour or an hour and a half in Estonia to as long as five hours or more in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania: indeed, the cabinet is said to have met occasionally for up to ten hours in the last two of these countries.4 The duration of cabinet meetings is intermediate in Slovenia and Bulgaria – between two and four hours.

66

The General Arrangements

Among at least half the countries there is a tendency for meetings to have become shorter over time. While the situation in this respect is unknown in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Two countries had no change in duration: these are Hungary (where meetings last five hours) and Slovenia (where meetings last between two and three hours). The reduction in the duration of meetings, which appears to affect a substantial number of countries, is an indication that cabinet meetings have come to be ‘routinized’. This is indeed what occurred in the Czech Republic, where, in order to reduce the duration of meetings which appear to have lasted up to ten hours occasionally, matters to be decided on have been divided into an A and a B group and points in the A group are adopted without debate. When asked whether there were instances of disagreement at cabinet meetings, ministers in our survey sample divided almost down the middle to state that such instances occurred very often or often (56 per cent), on the one hand, or seldom (41 per cent), on the other, with 3 per cent stating that disagreements never ever occurred (Appendix 2). Whether they occur frequently or not, however, disagreements appear to be resolved only rarely by means of voting. In four countries – Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania – this is said to be the practice, as in Western Europe. In Poland and Bulgaria, votes are said to be taken ‘sometimes’; on the other hand, they ‘never’ occur in Hungarian cabinets. There is one outstanding exception to this general trend, that of the Czech Republic, as votes are said to occur at every cabinet meeting in that country. Practices relating to cabinet meetings are thus not markedly different in the ten countries examined here from the practices observed in Western Europe. There is perhaps a slight tendency for cabinet meetings to last longer and, even more, to have lasted longer in the early years of the new parliamentary system, perhaps because ministers were new to the conditions under which cabinet decision-making can be expected to function; the burden of decision-making was probably also heavier at the time than is typically the case in the West. Overall, however, there are more similarities than there are differences, both among the ten countries examined here and between these and Western European countries. The agenda of the cabinet and the role of the cabinet secretariat The procedure on the basis of which items are discussed and decided on in cabinet has become tight everywhere. Indeed, the streamlining has been remarkable and remarkably rapid, thus rendering the practices of the cabinet in Central Eastern European countries similar to the practices

The Rules and Operating Procedures in Cabinet

67

of their Western European counterparts. This could not have been achieved without the existence of a cabinet secretariat playing a key part in steering and controlling the flow of business to the cabinet. Much of the power of the cabinet secretariat revolves around preparing the agenda. This is drafted everywhere by the secretariat, the secretary presenting that draft to the prime minister for approval, a few days before the scheduled meeting, after which the agenda is circulated, typically between two and six days before the meeting takes place; in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, although not in Hungary and Romania, the agenda is also published. While the prime minister does formally approve the agenda, the secretariat appears to play a truly crucial role, as, possibly more than the prime minister, at any rate on many issues, the secretariat decides whether a proposal is ready to be sent to the cabinet or not. The rules of procedure in Slovenia are particularly stringent: ‘Only those matters which the working bodies of the government have already debated and which have been prepared in accordance with the resolutions of the working bodies and the standard procedure defined in the Standing Order of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia may be included in the agenda.’ The practice does not seem to be different in the other countries examined here. What ‘preparation’ means can, however, obviously vary. The Lithuanian standing orders explain in some detail what must take place with respect to proposals coming from the various departments: ‘If there are different opinions on the items presented for discussion, these opinions must be heard. In case of need, opinions are also expressed by corresponding trade unions and public organizations.’ As was stated earlier, the Lithuanian cabinet meeting takes place with a large number of spectators being present, but the same kind of preoccupation appears to have been in the minds of the drafters of the Slovak rules of procedure. There is at least as much stress on legal aspects and therefore on the role of legal specialists or of officials of the ministry of justice as on the role of the ministry of finance. Only in Estonia is it explicitly stated that ‘preparation’ includes discussions among ministers ‘at meetings of the government coalition’. The cabinet secretariat is presumably everywhere charged with the task of ensuring that the ministries concerned have been involved and have made recommendations about proposals, but the point is made most explicitly in the Romanian rules of procedure. The cabinet meeting is thus well prepared. The procedures which are established are thus primarily formal; yet, at least in one country, Bulgaria, some stress is placed on informal arrangements. ‘[I]nformal meetings between members of the Council of Ministers

68

The General Arrangements

play an important role in the decision-making process. Their function is to prepare the meetings of the Council of Ministers and to resolve problems over proposed agenda items in advance of the Council of ministers. Informal meetings are usually held several times a week.’ During the meeting, members of the secretariat take the minutes, which are then circulated among the members of the cabinet. The rules of procedure also place a strong emphasis on implementation. In Estonia, ‘ministries are required to provide information regarding the performance of duties within their area of government to the State Chancellery who maintains a general record of the implementation of Rikikogu (parliament) and Government decisions’. Similar procedures are indicated for the other countries. In Hungary, the prime minister’s office has to prepare a monthly report on the state of implementation of tasks. In Romania a ‘Directorate for Evidence’ examines the cases in which deadlines are not met. Only in Slovakia is the application of decisions taken by the cabinet not checked by the secretariat but by the cabinet itself. A determined effort has thus been made in the countries examined here to ensure that the process of decision-making in the cabinet should be efficient and speedy, although the interests indirectly concerned by the proposals are also taken under consideration. Even if the standards described in the standing orders are not always met, the fact that the cabinets have approved this type of standing orders clearly suggests that those in charge of decision-making are aware of the problems which parliamentary government would face if the cabinet was allowed to take its decisions without stringent procedures. The implementation of these stringent procedures requires a powerful cabinet secretariat. This means not only that competent personnel must be appointed but that this personnel has the authority to obtain that ministers accept the decisions taken, whether about what is (or more likely is not) placed on the agenda or about the monitoring of the implementation process. This appears to be the case in the ten countries examined here, although there are inevitably differences in the size and structure of the secretariats. The extent to which these differences occur is discussed further in Chapter 8. The role of committees The study undertaken by Sigma at the end of the 1990s described the part played by a variety of ‘subordinate’ bodies of the cabinet in Central Eastern European countries. To meet the requirements resulting from the stringent procedures which have just been outlined, governments of the region had to set up bodies designed to examine the feasibility of

The Rules and Operating Procedures in Cabinet

69

proposals coming to the cabinet and the state of readiness of the documents supporting these proposals. This shows that Central Eastern European countries, in the spate of a few years, created institutional mechanisms able to satisfy the requirements of the modern parliamentary system of government. The bodies ‘subordinated to the cabinet’ are of various types: there are substantial variations from country to country not just in terms of their number, but also in terms of the functions they are expected to fulfill (Goetz and Wollmann 2001). As in Western Europe, these committees handle matters at various levels. Some are truly committees of the cabinet, being composed of the key ministers involved and chaired by the prime minister or a senior minister, for instance a deputy prime minister: these committees may even ‘pre-decide’ matters in the name of the cabinet. Other committees are composed principally of civil servants, tend to meet early on in the development of proposals and aim to iron out problems (mainly administrative) which might occur among the departments concerned; they may well be chaired by someone from the cabinet secretariat. Yet other committees are composed of outsiders expected to advise the government on policy and are thus more like ‘working parties’ than like cabinet committees. Even among those bodies which can be regarded as genuine ‘cabinet committees’, there are appreciable differences among the countries analysed here in terms of their role. They may either be highly specialized or cover a wide area of governmental activity. This has an effect on their numbers. Among the ten countries examined here, if one leaves aside the two cases of Latvia and Poland, where the number and character of cabinet committees could not be ascertained, one observes a sharp difference between two groups. On the one hand, in five countries – Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia and Romania – there are between three (Estonia, Romania) and six (Slovenia) such ‘cabinet committees’: at least in principle, these could be regarded as important for the process of cabinet decision-making. Each committee deals with a broad sector of governmental activity, such as the economy, social matters, defence or security. On the other hand, in the remaining three countries, committees are more numerous and are appreciably more specialized. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, there are respectively ten and eleven committees while, in Bulgaria, there are as many as twenty-seven. Committees of this kind can be expected to be less important in the decision-making process. As a matter of fact, there is some ambiguity with respect to the nature of the committees in the three countries. In Bulgaria, the Sigma study

70

The General Arrangements

had previously identified only ‘two commissions that support the Council of Ministers and can be considered as sub-councils of the Council of Ministers’: these might be regarded as constituting genuine ‘cabinet committees’, but they were not referred to again in the 2004 survey. In the Czech Republic, the 2004 survey notes the existence of a standing advisory ‘Council’ with responsibility for general issues alongside the 11 ‘commissions’ which deal with specialized matters and are also temporary. Yet, while these may not be regarded as being truly ‘cabinet committees’, it is also doubtful whether the single standing advisory ‘Council’ can be regarded as a cabinet committee: it may merely be a kind of substitute for the cabinet itself as, unlike the cabinet, it meets in private. In Slovakia, where there are 11 rather specialized committees, there were already nine ‘government advisory bodies’ when Sigma undertook its survey in the late 1990s. It was also noted that there was a special organ, the ‘Council for Economic and Social Consensus of Slovakia’: yet that body could not be regarded as a ‘cabinet committee’, as it included members nominated by the social partners and seemed therefore to play the part which an ‘Economic and Social Council’ is set up to fulfill in some Western European countries. The cabinet committee structure may therefore still be ‘in the making’ in at least a number of the countries studied here. While there are thus differences in the purview of cabinet committees, there are also differences in terms of their membership, of the method of appointment, of who decides on their powers and, indeed, of these powers. Such differences affect both the countries in which the number of cabinet committees is small and those where it is large. In general, except for the powers held by the committees, the variations which can be detected tend to be on a country-by-country basis. In Hungary, the prime minister decides who chairs the committees, who are the members and what powers they have; the same pattern is observed in Poland. In Estonia and, with respect to the last two of these three characteristics, in Romania, these decisions are taken on the contrary by the cabinet, at any rate formally; the cabinet also appears to be taking the decision in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia with respect to the committees which are set up in these two countries. In Slovenia and, with respect to the choice of the chair, in Romania, the situation varies from committee to committee. The formal powers of these committees also vary. In four countries – Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania – the committees are said to prepare the decisions but not to decide in the name of the cabinet; on the other hand, the case of the Czech Republic is ambiguous, since the

The Rules and Operating Procedures in Cabinet

71

very character of the committees is also ambiguous; in Estonia, although the number of cabinet committees is small and these could therefore be expected to be influential, they are in fact weak and tend to be forums where matters are debated rather than decided upon. In two countries – Poland and Bulgaria – the role of the committees varies: this suggests that, in some cases at least, these committees have powers to decide. The differences in the nature, organization and power of cabinet committees among the countries examined here suggest that there is uncertainty about what the relative role of cabinet and cabinet committees should be. Detailed analyses of series of decisions would have to be undertaken in each of the countries for precise answers to be given to the question of the effective role of cabinet committees, as modes of behaviour are not only likely to often modify formal arrangements, but are likely to do so slowly and almost imperceptibly. In the absence of these detailed studies, one can only conclude that, while the cabinet committee structure is still ‘in the making’, the cabinet is nonetheless helped to a substantial extent by these ‘subordinated bodies’.

Conclusion The rules and procedures of cabinets in the ten countries which are examined here are thus complex and highly elaborate. They confirm the impression that the procedures of these cabinets have, perhaps to an extent under Western European influence, become complex and sophisticated. Cabinets in the region have developed the kinds of codes of practice which are required if they are to achieve the levels of decision-making efficiency which the public at large is likely to expect of them. In the process, however, the scope of collective processes, which are ostensibly a key characteristic of parliamentary cabinets, is inevitably reduced, as it has been reduced in Western European cabinets: sub-groups of the cabinet rather than the whole cabinet become involved in detailed ‘preparation’ of many decisions. What has now to be examined is how the ministers evaluate the way these cabinets have been operating. The form that the parliamentary-cabinet system has taken in Central Eastern Europe had to be efficient in order to be generally acceptable in the countries concerned. It has also to be regarded as acceptable by the actors themselves if it is to become solidly entrenched and no questions are to be asked about its legitimacy.

5 An Overall Descriptive View: What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

As was pointed out in Chapter 1, the introduction of the parliamentarycabinet system in Central Eastern Europe after the fall of communism had a profound and direct impact on the way in which government was to be conducted. Neither the population nor the politicians had experienced that system in any part of the region for around half a century; in some countries, cabinet government in its fully developed form had not even been implanted before the Second World War. Given such a background, one might have expected that the abrupt introduction of cabinet government would have led to serious problems and, in particular, that the ministers and their immediate advisers would have felt themselves wholly unprepared to take decisions in the context of this entirely new system. Yet, it is clear on the basis of general impressions gleaned from the early life of these cabinets across the region that the transition to the new form of government does not seem to have raised difficulties: indeed, the contrary seems to have occurred. One must go beyond these impressions, however, and explore the reactions of those who were the actors – namely the ministers themselves. Those ministers who were interviewed were asked five questions designed specifically to determine whether they felt that the cabinet system was acceptable to them. One of these questions aimed to discover whether or not the ministers were satisfied ‘on the whole’ with the cabinet decision-making process. The other four touched on the extent to which the cabinet system was regarded as effective, whether major questions were ‘thoroughly’ debated in cabinet, whether there were many instances of ‘substantial’ disagreements in cabinet and whether decisions tended to be arrived at on the basis of consensus. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the answers to these questions and thus to obtain a more detailed picture of what ministers felt of cabinet government as it was developing before their eyes. The chapter is divided 72

What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

73

into two sections. In the first section, the pattern of reactions to the five questions is examined in general across the ten countries of the study; that pattern is then compared, as far as possible, to that which emerged from answers given to similar questions, over a decade earlier, by Western European ministers. The second section considers the extent to which patterns of answers vary across the ten countries of the study while also comparing these variations with those which had been found to exist among Western European countries.

Overall attitudes to cabinet decision-making processes The five questions which have been referred to belong to three types (see ministerial questionnaire in Appendix 3 at the end of this book). One aims to determine the general feelings of ministers about the cabinet decisionmaking process: it asks whether these are ‘satisfied on the whole’ with that process. A second question, also general, can be defined as descriptive, at any rate from a subjective standpoint, as it asks ministers whether they think that the cabinet is ‘effective’: presumably, satisfaction with the process is in large part dependent on the conclusion that they think that the system is effective. The last three questions are also descriptive, but are more specific: views about these more specific reactions can be regarded as helping to build a general impression about the ‘effectiveness’ of the system. They are concerned with the extent to which major issues are ‘thoroughly’ debated in cabinet, with the extent to which there are ‘substantial’ disagreements in cabinet and with the extent to which, among the ways in which solutions to disagreements are found, a collective cabinet decision-making system is achieved, in particular by means of consensus.1 Extent of satisfaction with cabinet decision-making processes Let us first examine the extent to which ministers feel ‘satisfied’ with the decision-making process in cabinet. Interviewees had the choice between two symmetrical sets of answers – namely ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’, on the one hand, and ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’, on the other. There was no ‘middle’ answer, although the answer ‘satisfied’ could have been regarded by some ministers as a ‘safe’ answer. The proportion of the ministers satisfied with the way in which the first or only cabinet to which they had belonged is very large: 60 per cent of the interviewees declared that they were ‘satisfied’ and a further 22 per cent that they were ‘very satisfied’. The ‘dissatisfied’ were 16 per cent and the ‘very dissatisfied’ two per cent. The great majority are therefore happy with the

74

The General Arrangements

process of decision-making: the new system of government does not appear to pose problems to most members of the cabinets, although a minority of about one-fifth of the ministers may feel differently. The effectiveness of cabinets On the ‘effectiveness’ of cabinet decision-making, ministers were asked whether they thought that the first or only cabinet to which they had belonged had been ‘effective on the whole’ in decision-making. One of four answers could be given: ‘very often’, ‘often’, ‘rarely’, ‘never’. Half the ministers (51 per cent) adopted the middle position and stated that that these cabinets had been ‘often effective’. The over half divided unevenly between a third (32 per cent) who stated that the cabinets had been ‘very often effective’, 16 per cent that they had been ‘rarely effective’ and one per cent that they had ‘never’ been effective. Only a small minority thus expressed outright discontent with the outcomes of the new system by stating that that system was ‘rarely effective’. In principle, views about effectiveness may be related to satisfaction, although the relationship may be a complex one. A relationship does exist since, among those who felt the cabinet was ‘very effective’, 55 per cent were ‘very satisfied’ and 4 per cent ‘dissatisfied’, while among those who felt that the cabinet was ‘not effective’, 6 per cent were ‘very satisfied’ and 51 per cent ‘dissatisfied’. Extent of debates, disagreements, role of consensus and effectiveness The last three questions can be regarded as possible components of ‘effectiveness’. One of these asked ministers whether they believed that cabinet meetings were occasions during which ‘major issues were thoroughly debated’. Here, too, one of four answers could be given: ‘very often’, ‘often’, ‘rarely’, ‘never’. Only 2 per cent of the ministers answered never: it was most unlikely that ministers would believe that such debates never occurred, let alone say so! Those who were somewhat unsure about how to reply would therefore probably plump for the middle answer (‘often’), while those who were truly positive would say ‘very often’ and those who were negative would say ‘rarely’. The middle answer was selected by one-third of the interviewees (35 per cent): the majority (about twothirds) did therefore want to express a genuine view. Of these two-thirds, nearly twice as many answered ‘very often’ (41 per cent) as answered ‘rarely’ (22 per cent). The second of these three questions goes somewhat further in exploring the nature of the ‘debates’ which, in the opinion of ministers, take place

What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

75

in cabinet: it asks about the extent to which there have been ‘substantial disagreements among cabinet members’ in the cabinets to which these ministers had belonged. 15 per cent of the respondents said that this was ‘very often’ the case in the first or only cabinet in which the ministers participated, 42 per cent that this was ‘often’ the case, 41 per cent that this was ‘rare’ and 3 per cent that it ‘never’ occurred. If, here too, almost no minister could be expected to say that disagreements ‘never’ occurred and if the middle answer (‘often’) could also be regarded as indicating that the minister concerned was rather uncertain, there was, in contrast to what was said about the extent to which there were ‘thorough’ debates, almost three times as many interviewees who stated that disagreements were ‘rare’ than stated that disagreements occurred ‘very often’. Since one would not expect disagreements in cabinets to be endemic without leading to a rapid dissolution of the cabinet itself, the fact that more than half of the ministers said that disagreements were not ‘rare’ may seem to be about right in the context of lively, but still workable bodies. Meanwhile, as disagreements are said to be fairly frequent, one can also note that, for a substantial majority of ministers, if not for all of them, the cabinet is not a mere ‘ratifying’ body. Moreover, there may be a tendency for the incidence of disagreements in cabinet to decline over the period: ministers who had belonged successively to two cabinets or more divided two to one in claiming that the second of these cabinets was less conflictual than the first. Finally, the third of the three questions is concerned with the way in which the disagreements tend to be resolved. The answers given here range from suggesting that a fully collective solution is found to suggesting that decisions are taken by a few, or even by the prime minister alone. The answer given most frequently, though not by a majority, admittedly, is that ‘consensual’ solutions are found: 31 per cent of the ministers stated that this was the case for the first or only cabinet to which ministers belonged. Another ‘collective’ solution mentioned by a little over onetenth of the interviewees was that ‘discussions among ministers’ was the chosen mechanism. While these answers give an idea of the extent to which parties and the prime minister play a part in cabinet decisionmaking, a point which shall be examined further in Chapters 6 and 12 respectively, there is widespread support for the view that cabinets act collectively. A clear relationship exists between the questions which have just been examined. Two-fifths of those who felt that ‘thorough’ debates occurred ‘very often’ about major issues also felt that that disagreements occurred ‘very often’, while this was only the case for 10 per cent of those who felt

76

The General Arrangements

that ‘thorough’ debates were ‘rare’. Conversely, 30 per cent of those who felt that ‘thorough’ debates occurred ‘very often’ felt that that disagreements were ‘rare’, while this was the case of almost half (48 per cent) among those who felt that ‘thorough’ debates occurred ‘rarely’. Moreover, those cabinets in which ‘thorough debates’ over major issues were said to have occurred ‘very often’ were also those in which solutions were said to tend more often to be found by means of consensus: consensus prevailed in 43 per cent of the cases, as against only a quarter where ‘thorough debates’ over major issues occurred ‘often’ or ‘rarely’; however, this is somewhat compensated by the fact that the other collective solution to disagreements, that which resulted from discussions among ministers, took place more frequently where ‘thorough debates’ over major issues were said to occur ‘often’ or ‘rarely’ rather than when they are said to occur ‘very often’ (respectively 18, 22 and 9 per cent). There is also a relationship between the sense that the cabinet decisionmaking process was effective and the three more specific ‘descriptive’ variables which were just analyzed. Ministers are more likely to consider the process to be ‘effective’ when there are ‘very often’ ‘thorough debates’ (61 per cent) than when these occur ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ (42 per cent); they are less likely to feel that the cabinet is ‘effective’ when disagreements occur ‘very often’: this seems to suggest that ministers want cabinets to discuss, but not to disagree too much. On the other hand, the extent of effectiveness is not regarded by ministers as being affected whether disagreements are solved by consensus or by other means: it is the existence of disagreements, whatever the outcome, which may be affecting effectiveness. Moreover, in all three cases, those who answered ‘often’ to the ‘effectiveness’ question also tended to answer ‘often’ to the questions about debates and about disagreements: this appears to support the view that the ‘often’ answer is adopted by ministers who are somewhat uncertain about what the characteristics of decision-making in cabinet have been. A direct relationship also exists between attitudes to satisfaction and the more specific ‘descriptive’ variables. Specifically, when there are ‘very often’ ‘thorough debates’, ministers are more likely to be ‘very satisfied’ (63 per cent) than ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’ (26 per cent), but there is no difference with respect to the extent of disagreements and relatively little whether disagreements are solved by consensus or by other means: the proportion of those who were ‘very satisfied’ with the decision-making process was 31 per cent among those who noted that consensus prevailed in order to solve disagreements, as against 22 per cent only among those who were ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’ with that process.

What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

77

The overall conclusion has, therefore, to be balanced. Satisfaction is very high, as we saw, but the ‘descriptive’ answers do not seem entirely to account for that satisfaction. Overall, two-fifths of the respondents did say that major issues were ‘thoroughly debated’ ‘very often’: this proportion is substantial, but not overwhelming. Given that cabinets were concerned with major questions before these were sent to parliament, the proportion of those who felt that ‘thorough debates’ took place on these issues might have been larger; equally surprising is the fact that as many as one-fifth of the ministers should have felt that ‘thorough debates’ on such issues should ‘rarely’ have taken place. Meanwhile, the majority of ministers recognize that major disagreements occurred in cabinet, although consensus presumably helped to overcome these disagreements in many cases at least. Cabinets are therefore seen by most as lively places, but a substantial minority distances itself to an extent from such a picture. Attitudes to cabinet decision-making in East and West compared In the questionnaire administered in 1991 to ministers from 12 Western European countries, the effectiveness question was not asked and, while questions about satisfaction, about debates on major issues, about disagreements in cabinet and about solutions to these disagreements were identical in their wording to those in the questionnaire given to Central and Eastern European ministers a decade later, the choices given were typically somewhat different. Thus, on instances of ‘thorough debates about major issues’, Western European ministers were given the choice of answering ‘yes always’, ‘yes sometimes’ or ‘no’; on instances of ‘substantial disagreements’, these ministers were given the choice of answering ‘frequent’, ‘occasional’, ‘rare’ or ‘none’. Finally, in selecting the most appropriate solutions to disagreements, Western European ministers had the opportunity to give multiple answers, while this was not the case in the case of ministers in Central Eastern Europe. There are, however, enough similarities to allow for broad comparisons. Patterns of distribution of answers in the two surveys tend to be similar, with only some variations. First, on whether major issues were ‘thoroughly debated’, somewhat more Western European ministers plumped for the middle answer (‘sometimes’) (52 per cent) than ministers in Central Eastern Europe (‘often’) (41 per cent), possibly because the only ‘superior’ alternative open to Western European ministers was to answer ‘always’ rather than, as in the case of Central Eastern Europe, ‘very often’; but more Central Eastern European ministers answered ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ than Western European ministers (24 compared to 14 per cent). This confirms the view that many ‘major issues’ may have been agreed to

78

The General Arrangements

‘on the nod’ in Central Eastern Europe, perhaps because these ‘major issues’ were so numerous. Secondly, regarding whether or not disagreements occurred in cabinet, Western European ministers also tended to choose more frequently the ‘middle’ answer (‘occasionally’) (58 per cent) than ministers in Central Eastern Europe did the ‘middle’ answer (‘often’) (42 per cent). In this case, too, more ministers in Central Eastern Europe than in Western Europe stated that disagreements occurred ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ (42 compared to 25 per cent). The ‘consensual’ solution was the one most frequently adopted in both cases, but a direct comparison is impossible since Western European ministers were permitted to give multiple answers. Western Europeans stated that consensus prevailed in over two-thirds of the cases (69 per cent) as against 30 per cent in the case of the Central Eastern European ministers, but there were three times as many answers among Western European ministers as they were ministers interviewed. Perhaps because of this general tendency to discuss rather less and to disagree rather less, ministers in Central Eastern Europe emerge as being somewhat more satisfied with the decision-making process in cabinet than their Western European counterparts, although the difference is not very large: among those who were asked the question and did reply, 60 per cent of the Central Eastern European ministers were ‘satisfied’ and 22 per cent ‘very satisfied’, while the corresponding proportions in Western Europe were 55 and 15 per cent; the proportion of ‘dissatisfied’ is naturally much larger: 30 per cent of the Western European ministers were ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’, as against 18 per cent among ministers in Central Eastern Europe. The comparison with Western Europe suggests that ministers in Central Eastern Europe did thus feel ‘at home’, so to speak, in the cabinet system to an extent which is indeed remarkable. Whether greater satisfaction among Central Eastern European cabinet members about these matters is related to other attitudes of ministers will be examined in Chapter 10.

Country variations Fluctuations from country to country can naturally be expected in the responses given by ministers to the questions analysed in this chapter. To simplify the analysis, this examination is conducted on the basis of the proportions of the ‘most positive’ answers which ministers gave in each country, that is to say the proportions of those who replied that ‘thorough debates’ occurred ‘very often’, of those who replied that ‘substantial disagreements’ occurred ‘very often’, of those who supported ‘consensus’

What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

79

solutions in cases of substantial disagreements, of those who stated that decision-making processes were ‘very often’ effective, and of those who were ‘very satisfied’ with these processes. The range of country fluctuations with respect to cabinet decision-making processes To begin with, there are large fluctuations from country to country in the distribution of answers given by ministers in Central Eastern Europe. The two largest sets of fluctuations concern the extent to which ministers think that ‘thorough debates’ about major issues occurred ‘very often’ in the cabinets to which they had belonged and the extent to which ministers mentioned consensus as the basis for the solution of disagreements. In the first case, fluctuations ranged between 5 and 100 per cent among the ministers of the ten countries, for an average of 41 per cent; in the second, they ranged between 6 and 100 per cent among the ministers of the ten countries, for an average of 30 per cent. The fluctuations which occur with respect to the other three questions are somewhat smaller, but still rather large. On whether cabinet processes were felt to be very often effective, the range was between 10 and 60 per cent, the average being 32 per cent. Among those who said that disagreements occurred ‘very often’, country fluctuations ranged between 0 and 36 per cent, the average being 15 per cent and among those who said they were ‘very satisfied’ with cabinet decision-making processes the range was between 4 and 38 per cent, the average being 22 per cent. There are thus somewhat smaller fluctuations from one country to another with respect to assessments of effectiveness and of feelings of satisfaction with the decision-making process than with respect to the occurrence of ‘thorough debates’ or of ‘substantial disagreements’. Something similar also occurs in Western Europe: variations are larger among the ‘most positive’ answers to the question concerned with ‘thorough debates’ on major issues. The mean was 32 per cent, but the range extended from 0 to 91 per cent; the range was much smaller with respect to the extent of satisfaction with cabinet decision-making processes (from 0 to 29 per cent) with a mean of 13 per cent. Range of fluctuations at the level of each country The range of fluctuations around the average thus varies from very large to moderate: yet the distribution of these fluctuations is not random, neither among the replies given for each country nor among all the countries. At the level of each country, first, one finds a widespread tendency for the ministers to react in a way which, to an extent, links the questions analysed

80

The General Arrangements

here. This was perhaps to be expected, since, on average, we found links between the answers given by ministers to these questions, for instance between the extent to which ‘thorough debates’ take place ‘very often’ and the extent to which cabinet processes are regarded as being ‘very often’ efficient. Thus, these relationships are not a freak consequence of the process of averaging. The existence of links between the replies at the level of each country means that those who state that there is a high proportion of ‘thorough debates’ on major issues in each country also tend to view the process of cabinet decision-making to be ‘very often’ effective and to feel that that process is ‘very satisfactory’; this also means that a high, intermediate or low incidence of ‘substantial disagreements’ and a strong, medium or low level of support for consensus solutions to these disagreements are also associated with a high, intermediate or low score on the three questions which have just been referred to. Three groups of countries There are not only links between the replies given by the ministers at the level of each country. There is also ‘country clustering’, so to speak: there are ‘groups’ of countries in which ministers give analogous, if not admittedly wholly identical, sets of answers to the questions analysed here – a tendency which is indeed also found in Western Europe, although the distinction between the groups is not as marked. To examine this point, countries have been ranked on the basis of the proportion of ‘most positive’ replies given to each of the five questions: the country which has the highest proportion of such positive replies for a given question is ranked first for the question, the country which has the second highest proportion of such positive replies for that question is ranked second for that question and so on successively up to ten (there are ten countries) for each of the questions. The overall score for each country is obtained by adding the rankings for the five questions (see Table 5.1). Three groups emerge in Central Eastern Europe when the positions of the countries with respect to all five questions analysed here are taken into account. The first group includes those countries which, on average, score highest on all the questions put to their ministers: this comprises Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. A second, intermediate, group is composed of Lithuania, Poland and Rumania. Finally, ministers are least likely to give a highly ‘positive’ answer to the five questions in Slovakia and Slovenia. There are, of course, variations with respect to individual questions. The Czech Republic, for instance, which scores third place overall, is ranked

What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government Table 5.1

81

Ministerial views on cabinet decision-making (ranking of countries) Issues1 Consensus2 Effectiveness3 Satisfaction4 Disagreement5

Total

Group I: Czech Rep. Latvia Bulgaria Estonia Hungary

1 6 2 5 3

1 2 4 2 8

1 3 2 5 4

6 4 3 2 1

4 1 8 6 4

13 16 19 20 20

Group II: Rumania Lithuania Poland

7 4 9

7 5 3

8 9 7

5 8 10

3 6 7

30 32 36

Group III: Slovenia Slovakia

8 10

9 10

10 6

7 9

8 8

42 43

Notes: 1 Importance of party and issues debated. 2 Consensus on disagreements. 3 Effectiveness of cabinet decision-making. 4 Satisfaction with cabinet decision-making. 5 Importance of disagreements.

first for three of the questions, those relating to ‘thorough debates’, to consensus and to effectiveness, but it ranks only fourth with respect to ‘substantial disagreements’: Latvian ministers are proportionately the most numerous of the ministers of all Central Eastern European countries to state that such disagreements occur. Moreover, while Czech ministers feel that the cabinets to which they belonged were ‘most often’ effective, they are far from being ‘very satisfied’ with the cabinet decision-making process: the Czech Republic ranks only sixth on that question. Thus, Czech ministers are among the least likely to see a close relationship between the effectiveness of the decision-making process and satisfaction with that process, despite the fact that, in general, a positive relationship exists between views about the effectiveness of cabinets and feelings of strong satisfaction about these cabinets. On the other hand, Hungarian ministers are the most satisfied of all of the ten countries in respect of the decision-making process in cabinet; they also score fairly highly overall on the ‘most positive’ answers to all five questions, but they score low (indeed appreciably lower than the average) on the extent to which consensus takes place in order to solve disagreements in cabinet (the country ranks eighth on that question). Bulgarian

82

The General Arrangements

ministers score rather high on the ‘most positive’ answers to four questions, but tend to believe that few disagreements occur in cabinet (the country is eighth on that question). Bulgarian ministers are therefore among those who contribute to the overall conclusion, stated above, that ‘substantial disagreements’ in cabinet may not always be regarded by ministers as contributing to the cabinet being assessed as effective and the cabinet decision-making process being felt very satisfactory. Slovak and Slovenian ministers also have broadly similar attitudes: they do not believe that ‘thorough debates’ take place in cabinet very often; they do not believe that there are very often substantial disagreements; they do not believe either that consensual solutions occur frequently to solve such disagreements that might occur; they tend to feel that the cabinet decision-making process is not particularly effective nor are they very satisfied with that process. Whether these views are due to the fact that, in both countries, though admittedly in a different manner, one strong prime minister emerged who was able to dominate the political scene can be an object of speculation only. Moreover, some differences also appear: Slovak ministers are proportionately a little more numerous than Slovenian ministers in stating that the process is ‘very often’ effective (the country ranks sixth on that question) while Slovenian ministers are proportionately more numerous than Slovak ministers in being ‘very satisfied’ with that process (the country ranks seventh on that question). Lithuania and the two largest countries analysed in this study – Poland and Rumania – form an intermediate group: they hold on average the sixth place among the ten countries. There are, however, some differences among them, with Polish ministers being the ‘least positive’ of the three sets of ministers and Rumanian ministers the ‘most positive’. In all three cases, ministers note the existence of numerous instances of substantial disagreements, these being, also in all three countries, solved relatively frequently by means of consensus, but the scores are not very high, however, even on these two questions – with the exceptions of Rumania on ‘disagreements’ and Poland on consensus. Moreover, views about the effectiveness of the cabinet and feelings of satisfaction are not very ‘positive’, except to a certain extent among Rumanian ministers (whose country ranks fifth on that question). Among the ministers of these three countries, Rumanian ministers are the most likely, or, more accurately, the least unlikely, to declare themselves ‘very satisfied’ with the process of decision-making. The existence of these three distinct groups and the fact that ministers describe the characteristics of the life of the cabinets to which they have belonged in a coherent manner constitute internal reliability checks on

What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

83

the method used in this study; but it also indicates that there are ‘styles’ of cabinet. One cannot go further and in particular determine why this appears to be the case. Some ministerial reactions may indeed be the consequence of a socialization process within the ‘political class’: the idea that a cabinet is ‘effective’ or that a given mode of behaviour is ‘satisfactory’ may be due to ‘prevailing feelings’ among politicians that the government has these characteristics. Yet such an interpretation seems more likely to be valid with respect to the feelings of satisfaction and to general assessments of effectiveness than to such detailed judgements as those which assess the incidence of ‘thorough debates’, of ‘substantial disagreements’ or of consensus. The fact that there is, in general, at least a moderate relationship among the directions of the replies to all five questions seems to suggest that the two overall assessments given by ministers are, to an extent, linked to the descriptions of the specific modes of behaviour; but the fact that the association is not always strong suggests that there is some leeway and that there is space for what might be ‘general’ socialization effects, as is shown, for instance, by the examples given above from the Czech Republic (where ministers are rather negative about satisfaction) or of Hungary (where ministers are, by contrast, very positive about satisfaction). However, even if assessments of effectiveness and feelings of satisfaction are considered separately, the same five countries remain ‘at the top’ and the patterns which have been identified continue to emerge even when are only taking into account those questions for which the range of variations from country to country is relatively small. The survey which is analysed here does not make it possible to conclude whether a general ‘ministerial’ socialization process has a significant influence: but it is at least permissible to raise the issue, especially since a similar pattern of clustering is found to exist in the answers given by Western European ministers. In Western Europe, too, there is indeed a tendency for the attitudes of ministers to the cabinet decision-making process to be clustered into at least two groups, and at most three, the division between the second and the third group not being as marked as it is in the case of Central Eastern European countries (Blondel and Müller-Rommel 1993: 179ff ). In Western Europe, four countries are ‘most positive’ with regard to the cabinet decision-making process: these are Austria, Finland, Ireland and Norway. Seven countries are divided to an extent between a group of three countries – composed of Belgium, Germany and Italy – in which ministers are rather more ‘positive’ about the cabinet decision-making process than are those of France, Britain, Denmark and Sweden. The case of the Netherlands is somewhat undetermined because of the absence of

84

The General Arrangements

data on consensus. Rather surprisingly, the Northern countries are sharply divided: ministers in Finland and Norway are ‘most positive’ towards their cabinets, while this is not the case of ministers from Denmark and Sweden, although Danish ministers, despite their very low scores on the other questions, are the most satisfied of all Western ministers about the decision-making process. The comparison between attitudes of ministers to the cabinet at the level of individual countries therefore provides evidence for the view that, in Central Eastern Europe, the patterns of these attitudes are analogous to the patterns found in the ‘established’ and ‘consolidated’ parliamentary cabinet systems of Western Europe. This is so both in terms of the size of the fluctuations across the countries and in terms of the extent to which these fluctuations tend to affect all the questions similarly in each country and indeed in groups of countries. Thus, while the distribution of attitudes of ministers in the cabinets of the ten countries which are studied here does vary, it is in a manner which appears entirely ‘normal’.

Conclusion Three broad conclusions can be drawn from this inquiry into the ways in which the ministers of the countries analysed here assessed the cabinets to which they had belonged. First, these ministers have had no difficulty in adapting to the cabinet system. We began this chapter, indeed this volume, by asking whether the generational traditions which had been built in the region would have rendered problematic, and perhaps even impeded, the acceptance of the cabinet system as the key decisionmaking organization by those who were to be its main protagonists. From our findings, the answer is loud and clear: there is no sign whatsoever suggesting that ministers find it difficult or inconvenient to work within the new system. The arrangement is ‘consolidated’ if consolidation means that there is no alternative on the mental horizon of the actors. Thus, ministers from Central Eastern Europe fare well in comparison with Western European ministers; indeed they may even be somewhat more supportive of the system than their Western European colleagues. Secondly, there is a broad link between the extent to which ministers feel satisfied with the cabinet decision-making system, the effectiveness of that system and the extent to which ‘thorough debates’ about major issues are presented to the cabinet. Ministers appreciate the fact that the cabinet is confronted with the problems of the nation and that it has substantial discussions about these problems. This does not necessarily mean, at any rate to the same extent, that ministers feel that there are

What Ministers Think of Cabinet Government

85

(perhaps even that there should be) ‘substantial’ disagreements, though there are many who both feel that debates occur very frequently and that disagreements also occur frequently. Moreover, many feel that these disagreements tend to be solved by consensus, although other solutions, mostly less ‘collegial’, are also said to take place. A direct comparison with the Western European situation cannot be made in this respect, yet there does seem to be a broad similarity between the characteristics of assessments in the two regions. Thirdly, substantial differences are naturally found from country to country with respect to these assessments, but these differences have two characteristics. On the one hand, the patterns of these differences respect in general, at the country level, the point which was made in the previous paragraph about the linkage between assessments of specific characteristics, as well as views on the effectiveness of the system and on levels of satisfaction with that system. The overall average does not create connections among the replies which would not exist at the level of each country. On the other hand, these differences lead to the emergence of three groups of countries from the point of view of the reactions of ministers to the cabinet system. In five countries – two of the Baltic States, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria – views are truly positive. In a further three – the two most populated countries, Poland and Romania, and Lithuania – assessments are somewhat less favourable, though they continue to be generally positive. In the last two – Slovakia and Slovenia – there is less recognition of the benefits of the system, possibly because, in these two countries, at least one strong prime minister may have rendered the collegial character of the cabinet less evident. Yet, even in that third group, there is substantial support for the cabinet system: it is not as if there should be a complete contrast between the three groups any more than there is a complete contrast between similar groups in Western Europe.

This page intentionally left blank

Part II Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

This page intentionally left blank

6 Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making

Cabinet government has often been described as ‘party government’, although what exactly party government consists of still remains rather unclear, despite attempts made in a number of studies which appeared since the 1980s to give a more precise contour to the concept (Rose 1974; Castles and Wildenmann 1986; Blondel and Cotta 1996, 2000; Luther and Müller-Rommel 2005). The most precise definition is that of Richard Katz (1987: 43) who lists three conditions for a government to be referred to as ‘party government’. These are that ‘all major governmental decisions must be taken by people chosen in elections conducted along party lines or by individuals appointed by and responsible to such people’, that ‘policy must be decided by the governing party when there is a monocolour government, or by negotiation among the parties when there is a coalition’ and that ‘the highest officials (for example cabinet ministers and especially the prime minister) must be selected within their parties and be responsible to the people through their parties’. The party or parties which are being considered are, of course, the ‘supporting’ parties and not the opposition, although, in some cases at least, which parties are ‘supporting’ is not entirely clear, in particular, but not exclusively, in the case of minority governments (Blondel and Cotta 1996, 2000). Moreover, the conditions listed by Richard Katz pose some problems. They are somewhat imprecise in the case of the first (‘all major governmental decisions. . .’), since what constitutes a ‘major’ governmental decision is obviously unclear, or too stringent in the case of the third (‘the highest officials (cabinet ministers and especially the prime minister) must be selected within their parties. . . .’), since there may be independents or ‘technicians’ among the ministers. Yet the definition provides a framework on the basis of which the subject can be circumscribed. 89

90

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

Although we are concerned here exclusively with the views of ministers on the role of party in government and not with more fundamental questions of a normative or empirical character, these matters need at least to be referred to at the outset. The most serious normative question concerns the extent to which one wishes to see the party or parties to be ‘running’ the government; the most serious empirical question relates to the intriguing problem of what or who can be said to ‘embody’ the party. The question of the relative ‘autonomy’, even ‘independence’, of the ministers vis-à-vis the party is at stake and this question has been a major source of friction in parliamentary systems in practice as well as an insoluble problem in theory. The question of who or what body can be said to ‘represent’ the party raises, for instance, the matter of the position of the national executive. Those party ‘members’ in the government are prone to claim that it is up to them to interpret what is in the ‘general interest’ of the country and that the government must be able to act in ways which ‘the party’ may not even be comfortable with. At the root of the problem is whether the party or parties supporting the government can impose a line to ministers as well as, and perhaps more importantly, whether it is indeed right that supporting parties should be entitled to do so (Blondel and Cotta 2000: 1–17). Yet these problems are crucial as it is universally agreed, if only by tacit accord, that the cabinet system cannot function effectively or perhaps even at all unless it is ‘party government’. What needs to be done here is nonetheless more limited. It consists in examining, as precisely as possible, the ways in which party becomes inserted in the life of the governments in Central Eastern Europe. This means investigating three main aspects. One aspect is biographical and is concerned with the manner in which ministers are individually involved in the life of the party to which they belong, both before they become ministers and when they are ministers. If party government plays any part at all in cabinet decision-making processes, it must be because the members of the cabinets are, to an extent, ‘party men and women’. The second aspect of this inquiry entails examining how far the parties supporting the government play a part in the cabinet decision-making process, not just in general, through the party programmes, but in the context of the elaboration of particular policies. Such an examination will reveal how wide is the involvement of the supporting parties in cabinet decision-making. Thirdly, we need to obtain an assessment of the extent to which ministers judge the parties to play an important part, as they could be widely involved and yet be regarded as less influential as other bodies. Of course, on these matters, and especially on the last two of these points, we have to rely on the views and judgements of the ministers.

Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making

91

However, as was pointed out in Chapter 1, only the recollections of participants can give a picture of what does actually occur in cabinet. The chapter therefore successively analyses these three aspects of party involvement in Central Eastern European cabinets. First, it considers how close the connection of ministers has been to the parties to which they have belonged both before they joined the government and once they were in government. Secondly, it reports, albeit in a necessarily rather succinct manner, on the ways these ministers describe the involvement of parties in the activities of cabinets. Thirdly, it examines how far this involvement of parties in the life of the cabinets is judged to be truly important in the decision-making process. As in the previous chapter, these matters are considered both overall at the level of all ten countries of the study and at the level of the individual countries, while, to the extent that it is possible, comparisons are drawn with analogous findings made earlier in the context of Western European governments.

How far are ministers ‘party men and women’? Ostensibly at least, governments in the countries studied here constitute examples of party government: 98 per cent of the ministers interviewed belonged to one form or another of the cabinets which had been set up around parties, the other 2 per cent having belonged to caretaker governments. Moreover, when asked about the party meetings which ministers attended, less than 4 per cent stated that the question was not relevant to their case. The impact of parties on ministers Such a large extent of ‘partyness’, to use Richard Katz’s expression, does not necessarily entail a great involvement in the life of the party, either before the person interviewed became a minister or even since he or she has become a minister. When asked ‘which personal experiences would you consider to have been particularly useful for your activity as minister?’, three-quarters of the answers referred to prior knowledge of the matter or to technical competence (exactly 75 per cent), 7 per cent referred to junior ministerial experience and 5 per cent gave no information: only 12 per cent referred, indeed not even to direct party experience but, indirectly, to experience acquired as an MP. This experience is not likely to have had a major influence, moreover, since an impact appears to have been recognized by 12 per cent of the interviewees only despite the fact that 58 per cent had been members of their parliament, admittedly perhaps in some cases for short periods only; meanwhile, only 15 per cent

92

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

had been junior ministers and yet half of these only noted that the experience had left some traces.1 Whatever happened before they joined the cabinet, most interviewees said that, once they were ministers, they had both close and good relationships with the parties to which they belonged. Only 8 per cent of the sample stated that they did not usually attend party meetings. Of the other 92 per cent, a third said that they attended some official meetings, 9 per cent some unofficial meetings (mainly in parliament) and nearly half (46 per cent) a mixture of both formal and informal meetings. That relationship was said to be close by over two-thirds of the ministers (69 per cent) and only in 6 per cent of the cases was it said that there was no cooperation. The collaboration was also said by the ministers to have been equally close with the parliamentary party (63 per cent). Yet this ‘close’ collaboration does not appear to have had very strong implications for the ministers’ behavior, since only 5 per cent among them stated that they briefed themselves on cabinet matters by means of the party. Thus there is ostensibly ‘party government’ in Central Eastern European cabinets in the sense that substantial collaboration is said to exist between ministers and the organs of the corresponding supporting parties; there is also evidence, however, that these ministers have not been actively seeking that collaboration nor have they been markedly affected by the party in the context of policy developments in cabinet. Yet this situation does not seem to be markedly different in Western Europe, where a substantial majority of the ministers interviewed said that they attended ‘some’ official party meetings (58 per cent), but many fewer than in Central Eastern Europe stated that they attended both informal and formal meetings (9 per cent as compared to 46 per cent). The collaboration with party was said by 49 per cent of the Western European ministers to have taken place, as against 69 per cent among the ministers of the countries studied here. Admittedly, many more Western European ministers stated that they had benefited from their experience as an MP (48 per cent against 12 per cent), but this was in a context in which 80 per cent had been MPs, in which tenure was longer and in which separate questions were asked about the forms of influence which might have affected ministers before joining the cabinet: nonetheless 21 per cent stated that they had not benefited from their experience as an MP (Blondel and Müller-Rommel 1993: 153ff). Party influence on ministers from country to country Large fluctuations from country to country are found in the extent to which ministers’ links with their party are substantial: they are as large as

Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making

93

the fluctuations found in the previous chapter with respect to the attitudes of ministers to the cabinet decision-making process. Thus, the proportion of those who stated that the experience they had as an MP was particularly useful varies between 0 and 37 per cent, with an average of 11 per cent; the proportion of those who said they attended some official party meetings varies from 6 to 80 per cent, for an average of 27 per cent; the proportion of those who said that they attended meetings of both an official and an unofficial character varied from 0 to 68 per cent, for an average of 47 per cent. One finds similar variations, ranging from 13 to 60 per cent among the ministers who said that there was little collaboration with the party, for an average of 29 per cent (and from 0 to 40 per cent among the ministers who said that there was little collaboration with the parliamentary party, for an average of 27 per cent). There are even country variations from 0 to 25 per cent among ministers who mention the party in reply to the question asking them how they briefed themselves on cabinet matters, the overall average being a mere five per cent. The patterns of these country fluctuations are markedly less structured in the context of the relationship between ministers and their party, however, than on attitudes to the cabinet decision-making process. There are here no clearly distinct ‘groups’ of countries where the relationship between the ministers and their party is large, intermediate or small. Fluctuations tend to vary apparently from question to question, except in the case of the Czech Republic, whose ministers state that they are surprisingly that they are most unlikely to have had a close relationship with their party either before or after joining the cabinet: none of them felt that their experience as an MP was particularly useful for their work as minister and none of them used the party to become briefed on cabinet matters (the average being 5 per cent); 20 per cent among them attended no party meetings (the average being 10 per cent), 60 per cent had had little collaboration with their party (the average being 29 per cent). There were even very limited links between Czech ministers and their parliamentary party: 60 per cent stated that they had no collaboration at all with that body (the average being 6 per cent). On the other hand, ministers from Hungary, Lithuania and Poland are less likely, and those from Slovakia are more likely, to have a close relationship with their party. In general, apart from ministers from the Czech Republic, the ministers from Lithuania and Poland are those who, overall, are least linked to their party. Fluctuations of the same order of magnitude characterized the answers of Western European ministers when they answered similar questions relating to their relationship with their party. Thus, their experience as

94

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

an MP was on average regarded as particularly valuable to 48 per cent of the ministers, but this percentage varied from between 16 and 73 per cent at the country level. No case of non-attendance of ministers to party meetings was registered for Denmark, but this was said to be the case for more than three-quarters of the ministers (78 per cent) in France. Instances of close cooperation with the party were said not to have taken place at all in France, but to have taken place in the case of all the Danish ministers who were interviewed. The party background of ministers does play a part in Central Eastern Europe as in Western Europe in building a bridge between party and government and thus constitutes an element which contributes to the emergence of ‘party government’: that part is relatively modest, however, more modest perhaps than it ‘should’ be, not seemingly because the parties and cabinets studied here are recent developments, however, as there is no strong evidence indicating that the situation is very different in Western Europe. Quite the contrary, in both regions, the part which party plays in shaping the life of ministers varies markedly and rather erratically from country to country although in one case, that of the Czech Republic, the part played by party in the life of ministers appears to be systematically very low.

Direct involvement of parties on cabinet decision-making: the ministers’ views Whatever background ministers may have had in the party, one can surely justifiably refer to the existence of ‘party government’ in the strong sense of the word only if the decisions taken by the cabinet are affected by what the supporting party or parties may have wanted. This is why one needs to examine the ways in which parties are involved in the process of cabinet decision-making. The direct involvement of parties in the cabinet decision-making process means in effect a kind of ‘intrusion’ of the parties in that process. It is ‘intrusion’ as members of cabinets are expected to take their decisions as a result and at the end of a deliberation taking place exclusively among themselves. If party – or, for that matter, any other body – becomes involved in the process, this must be either because, before cabinet deliberation occurs, that deliberation is constrained by preconditions imposed by an external organ or because the deliberative process is unable to reach a conclusion. Two questions were therefore put to the ministers to obtain an impression of the extent to which such situations occur. The first asked: ‘If you feel that matters were not fully discussed in cabinet, where in your experience did discussions

Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making

95

mostly took place?’ The second followed inquiries into disagreements in cabinet and asked: ‘How were these disagreements mostly solved?’ Ministers were also asked about the strategy they themselves adopted in bringing an issue to cabinet and how they dealt with the conflicts they might have individually with the finance ministers: in neither of these two cases, however, did the ministers mention the party as an organ which might have provided the solution. The role of parties in cabinet decision-making To the question ‘Where did discussions mostly take place over matters which were not fully discussed in cabinet?, 18 per cent of the ministers answered that such discussions took place within parties, a proportion which at first seems to be relatively small, but which is by far the largest, if one excludes the undefined category of ‘other’ (17 per cent), of the answers referring to ‘organs outside the cabinet’. Parliament is mentioned by under 5 per cent of the ministers, the president by slightly over 3 per cent, and the bureaucracy and interest groups by slightly over one per cent each. Altogether these ‘outside organs’ were mentioned by less than 11 per cent of the respondents. The three answers which received substantial mentions were informal ministerial bodies (14 per cent), cabinet committees (22 per cent) and prime minister and ministers (15 per cent). Thus, while the cabinet as such may not have been in many cases the place where real discussions occurred, these discussions tended to occur mainly, and one should add unsurprisingly, in what might be termed ‘partial cabinets’, including ‘subordinate bodies’, of the cabinet (exactly half the ministers mentioned these types of arrangements). On the other hand, nearly a fifth of the ministers volunteered to mention parties and parties were by far the outside bodies which were most widely mentioned. Comparisons with Western Europe cannot be made directly since, in that case, ministers were asked to reply successively, by ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘don’t know’, with respect to the role of different bodies, whether they were internal or outside organs. Yet what was referred to earlier as ‘partial cabinets’ also received the largest numbers of mentions – in all cases around 50 per cent stating that they were involved, while only about one-quarter said they were not; the relative position of parties by comparison with other outside organs, bureaucracy and interest groups, was less ‘favourable’ in Western Europe than in the countries analysed here, however. Parties received more mentions than other outside organs, bureaucracy and interest groups, but by a smaller margin – the bureaucracy being mentioned by 21 per cent (against 38 per cent who said that it was not) and interest groups by 13 per cent (against 39 per cent who said that they

96

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

were not) (‘others’ were mentioned by 17 per cent against 30 per cent who said they were not) (Blondel and Müller-Rommel, 1993). Parties seem therefore to occupy a more prominent position in the countries analysed here than in Western Europe, though perhaps because neither the bureaucracy nor interest groups have acquired the status which they have in Western Europe. As we saw in the previous chapter, cases of disagreement were eventually often solved in the cabinets studied here by means of consensus (31 per cent), but in a majority of cases the solution was found elsewhere. Three ways were regarded by ministers as being, alongside consensus, the most frequently practiced, imposition by the prime minister (17 per cent), discussions among ministers (12 per cent) and involvement by the ‘coalition council’ (16 per cent). Other mechanisms, all internal to the government, cabinet committees, discussions between the prime minister and one or more ministers and reference back to the sponsoring department were mentioned by 19 per cent of the ministers. Thus, the ‘coalition council’ was the only outside organ which was regarded as playing a part in the resolution of these conflicts, the ‘coalition council’ being the body representing the parties supporting the government. Parties as such were not mentioned, that council being the ‘functional equivalent’ in the case of a coalition; in a single-party government, the solution is found ‘internally’ in the cabinet, especially by or through the prime minister, the prime minister acting in this case both as head of the government and as embodying the party. Yet the fact that the coalition council, not the ‘parties’ as such, are involved in the resolution of conflicts which coalition cabinets appear unable to solve by themselves indicates that coalitions cabinet are somewhat ‘cushioned’ from direct pressure from the supporting parties. Neither the parties as such, nor any ‘coalition council’, was mentioned in the context of the analysis of the solution of disagreements in Western Europe. All the alternatives given (which also led to a series of separate questions to ministers) were internal to the cabinet system and were constituted by the prime minister or ‘partial cabinets’. There may therefore be in Western European cabinets even less of an appeal to parties when there are disagreements than there is in the case of the cabinets analyzed here. Country variations in the involvement of parties Meanwhile, country variations are substantial on both indicators in this respect as well. In the ten countries, the involvement of parties in issues which the cabinet did not debate fully ranges from 0 to 61 per cent and

Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making

97

the involvement of the coalition council in matters over which there has been disagreement in the cabinet ranges from 0 to 33 per cent. There is a little more consistency between the answers to the two questions than there is about the various ways in which individual ministers have been and continue to be connected to parties. The countries in which the incidence of ‘party government’ has been non-existent are, again, the Czech Republic, but also Estonia and Latvia, while this incidence has been small in Hungary and Slovenia. The involvement has been large in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and, to a slightly more limited extent, Slovakia. However, except for the Czech Republic, at one extreme, and Slovakia, at the other, there is only a limited relationship between the extent to which ministers are individually linked to their party and the extent to which parties are said by ministers to have ‘intruded’ in the cabinet decision-making process. Here again, the cabinets of Central Eastern Europe are not special: equally large fluctuations have taken place among the Western European countries with respect to which parties have been involved in issues which the cabinet could not debate fully. In France, but also in Britain, there was no involvement of this kind at all, while the involvement was substantial (57 per cent) in Denmark (Blondel and Müller-Rommel 1993).

The importance of parties’ impact on cabinet decision-making Parties thus play a part in the processes by which cabinets take their decisions. Yet it does not necessarily follow that that part, however large, should have an important, let alone a very important impact on cabinet decision-making. The concept of ‘party government’ requires, not merely that the supporting party or parties be involved, but that this involvement should be important. To this effect, ministers were asked to evaluate what, in their opinion, was the importance of the party of the minister concerned in cabinet decision-making. ‘In your time as minister, how important was your party (the party that nominated you) for cabinet decision making?’ This wording, and the concentration on the party of the minister in particular, were designed to obtain an answer to the question of importance which was not only as frank as possible, but as informed as possible: it is easier for someone to realize whether his or her own party has been influential than to know whether this is the case of other parties in a coalition. Moreover, a minister might be tempted either to exaggerate or to underestimate the influence of any other party on the government because of the competition

98

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

which inevitably exists between the parties of a coalition: the response about one’s own party is likely, on balance, to be closer to what did occur. 29 per cent of the ministers replied that their party was ‘very important’ to cabinet decision-making, 41 per cent that it was ‘important’, 20 per cent that it was ‘a little important’ and 7 per cent was that it was not important. Those who gave either of the two extreme answers expressed themselves clearly. The proportion of ministers who simply do not think that party counts at all is very small in the cabinets of the ten countries (7 per cent – or 11 per cent if one adds the 4 per cent whose answers were ‘not applicable’). In contrast to the very small proportion of interviewees who feel that the party is unimportant, almost one-third of all the ministers felt the party to be ‘very important’ in cabinet decision-making: this is an appreciably larger group than the number of those who said that party was involved in matters in which there had not been full discussion in cabinet (17 per cent) or that the cabinet council was called to solve disagreements within the cabinet (17 per cent). Thus, in passing the judgement which they passed, the ministers who felt that their party was ‘very important’ clearly also took into account a variety of other elements in which the party played a major part, including perhaps some of the topics which had been placed in the programme of the government at the instigation of the party. While the answers at both extremes of the range thus provide a clear message, it is more difficult to interpret the other two types of answers – those of ministers who said that the party was ‘important’ and of those who said that it was ‘a little important’. Perhaps the 20 per cent who gave the last of these two answers were being ‘polite’ and were in reality trying to say something which was not very different from what had been said by the colleagues who had claimed that that the party was ‘not important’. If this interpretation is correct, it follows that ministers divide in effect in the same proportion, at both ends of the scale (a little under a third in each case), between those who feel the party makes a genuine difference and those who feel the contrary. We are then left with the two-fifths of the ministers who judge that their party is ‘important’. There is often a tendency for the ‘middle’ answers to be chosen by those who are not sure of their own feelings. If so, the ministers who opt for that answer should be regarded as not being really able to decide whether the party is ‘really’ important or is only, let us say, ‘somewhat’ influential. Whatever interpretation is given to this last group, the general conclusion must be that around one-third of ministers are prepared to state

Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making

99

that the party does make a major difference to the decision-making processes in cabinet. Meanwhile, a similar proportion feels the contrary, though it may be appreciably smaller depending on the meaning given to the answer ‘a little important’. Thus, for at least a substantial minority, ‘party government’ is a reality in Central Eastern Europe. To analyse further the possible impact of the notion of ‘importance’ of party, cross-tabulations were undertaken between the answers to the question which has just been examined and answers given to questions discussed in the previous sections of this chapter and relating to the involvement of supporting parties in cabinet decision-making and in the career of the ministers. A relationship does indeed emerge between the ‘importance’ given by ministers to their party and the part attributed by these ministers to parties in matters not fully discussed in cabinet: 45 per cent of those who mentioned the party as the place where these matters had been discussed felt that party was very important, as against 25 per cent among all the other answers given. Meanwhile, the ministers who mentioned the coalition council as providing a solution to disagreements formed 31 per cent of the respondents who said that party was very important, while those who mentioned other bodies as providing the solution were 26 per cent: the trend was limited here, but it was in the right direction. Similar relationships also emerge when the levels of importance of their own party in the eyes of the respondents is cross-tabulated with aspects of the career of the ministers. Thus, among the ministers who think that their experience as an MP has been particularly valuable, 38 per cent feel that their party is very important: they are 24 per cent only among the ministers who mention other career backgrounds as having been particularly valuable. Similarly, among the ministers who have had both official and unofficial meetings with their party, 39 per cent feel that their party is very important: they are 28 per cent only among the ministers who have had only official meetings or have had no meetings involving their party. Even more, among the ministers who state that they had close cooperation with their party, 33 per cent feel that their party is very important: they are 5 per cent only among the ministers who have not experienced close collaboration. While these trends do not constitute a proof that party does affect behavior in cabinet as well as attitudes of ministers, there is at least substantial evidence going in that direction (Table 6.1). Unfortunately, the question about the ‘importance’ of party was not asked of Western European ministers: the only substitute which can be used is a question inquiring whether party was the reason for ministers

100

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

Table 6.1

Importance given to party and involvement of parties (in per cent) Party viewed as

Role of party in debates outside cabinet Role of coalition council Role of experience as MPs Involvement in both official and unofficial party meetings Close cooperation with party

Very important

Not very important

Other

Total

45

25

30

100

31 38 39

26 24 28

43 38 33

100 100 100

33

5

62

100

being ‘important’, the other questions referring to other sources of ‘ministerial importance’, such as the substance of the ministry, the status of the minister, and the seniority and the official position of the minister. While this question can only give an indirect indication of the importance of the party for the ministers concerned, it is interesting to note that 38 per cent answered ‘yes’ and 28 per cent answered ‘no’, while slightly over one-third gave no answer at all: this suggests that, for Western European ministers, the role of party is far from overwhelming (Blondel and Müller-Rommel 1993). One cannot therefore conclude that there is a striking difference in this respect between Western European and Central Eastern European cabinets any more than in other elements of the picture which came to be drawn in this and the previous chapters. As on other aspects, variations from country to country are substantial with respect to the extent to which party is judged ‘very important’, ‘important’, ‘a little important’ or ‘not important’. Thus, over half the Bulgarian ministers and half the Latvian ministers feel that party is ‘very important’, with the Slovak and Estonian ministers not being very far behind (respectively 41 and 37 per cent); on the other hand, unsurprisingly given what was found already about their feeling for party, no Czech minister feels that party is very important for cabinet decisionmaking; nor did any Lithuanian or Slovenian minister do so, while only one Hungarian minister does so. In Western Europe, too, variations from country to country are massive: French and Irish ministers scarcely believe that their party has any importance in cabinet decision-making (only 5 and 6 per cent respectively say it does), while above all the Belgians, but also Austrians, Italians, Finns and Dutch strongly feel the contrary (from 74 to 56 per cent among them). If party government does exist to a significant extent, there are major fluctuations from country to country,

Party Government and Cabinet Decision-Making

101

both among those countries which are regarded as having practiced cabinet government for decades and among those where the cabinet system is recent.

Conclusion In the course of this chapter, the existence and the limitations of party government have emerged as two contrasting elements of a single picture. There are differences at the level of the party background and party involvement of individual ministers; there are differences in terms of the extent to which party ‘intrudes’ in what seem to be difficult moments of the life of the cabinet; there are, above all, differences in the importance attributed to party by the ministers themselves, differences which are compounded by some problems of interpretation in the answers given. The contrast is also to be found at the level of individual country findings, as there are large but, in most cases, apparently erratic fluctuations, the only country whose ministers are markedly consistent in stating that party does not play much of a part being the Czech Republic. Given these contrasts, the overall conclusion must be that party government exists to an extent, but that party government is also challenged to an extent. This does not seem to be due to the fact that the cabinets studied here are young. There is little difference with Western European cabinets in this respect: there is in both regions a mixture of reticence and acceptance. The existence of these contrasts with respect to party government may be unsurprising. From the outset, this volume has emphasized the fact that the cabinet system is unique in its attempt to achieve both representative and efficient government. There has to be ‘a dose’ of party government, if representativeness is to be achieved; but there have to be a managerial and a technical strength if there is to be efficiency: ministers have to know about their jobs as ministers in order to achieve results. Party government is only one element in the equation. It is therefore logical that the two elements should be recognized and that party government should be present, but not overwhelming.

7 Coalitions, Single-Party Governments and Cabinet Decision-Making

As was pointed out in the introductory chapter of this volume, the cabinet system is the only form of government which faces the tension between collegiality and efficiency. This dilemma is rendered more difficult to solve, moreover, as collegiality is expected to be achieved among ministers who are also representative of opinion in the public at large by means of the political parties, and that representative character can be broader or narrower depending upon the extent to which, by means of coalitions, parties in parliament also have seats in the government. It has long been suggested, because representation can be broader or narrower, that the nature of the cabinet decision process is likely to be influenced by the nature of the party composition of that body. If there is single-party government, decision-making problems seem likely to be minimized as the members of the government can be expected to share a common ideological outlook. Coalition governments, by contrast, have been felt likely to be either ineffectual or unstable: ineffectual if the ministers from different parties cannot agree on the policies to follow, unstable if these ministers prefer to break the cabinet to being made to adopt policies which they do not really accept. Yet coalitions are numerous; they are sometimes unstable, but this is far from being always the case (Lijphart 1984, 1999). Single-party governments may be regarded as preferable on a number of grounds, and from the point of view of decision-making in particular, as decisions might be easier to take: but they are often, in practice, an unrealistic goal as a result of the distribution of the parties in parliament. Coalitions then become inevitable. This has been the case in many Western European countries and also throughout Central Eastern Europe following the fall of communism: indeed, the proportion of single-party governments has been much smaller in Central Eastern Europe since the 1990s than in 102

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

103

Western Europe during the second half of the twentieth century. As against as many as 34 per cent of the ministers interviewed in the 12-country Western European survey who served in single-party cabinets, this was the case of only 8 per cent of the ministers who were interviewed for this study (34 cases). This means that political parties in Central Eastern Europe are rarely strong enough to form a government alone, either because they lack the required number of parliamentary seats or because they are unable to enlist external support from parties which do not wish to join the government. Despite such a situation, by and large cabinet government in Central Eastern Europe has functioned remarkably well. This suggests that in these countries the cabinet has satisfactorily combined the requirements of collegiality and efficiency. Yet such an achievement may not have taken place to the same extent everywhere or all the time in all the countries – even in all the countries covered by this study: variations may be due in part to idiosyncratic national characteristics; but, whatever the reason, coalitions are not likely to be equally successful everywhere. The question which arises is whether the size of the coalition – i.e. a small ‘minimum winning’, or a large ‘surplus majority’ – makes any difference in this respect. As surplus majority coalitions include more parties than would be theoretically required by the arithmetic of parliamentary majorities, the danger may be that such cabinets might be ‘ineffectual’. These more representative cabinets might be, in Lijphart’s terms, ‘consensual’, but the combination of collegiality and efficiency might be more difficult to achieve (Lijphart, 1984, 1999). As a matter of fact, there has been an almost equal split between ‘minimum winning’ and ‘surplus majority’ coalitions in Central Eastern European countries. It was noted in Chapter 3 that the 35 majority coalition cabinets were found to divide almost equally between ‘minimum winning’ and ‘surplus’ (19 and 16); in the survey, the proportions of ministers belonging to ‘minimum winning’ and ‘surplus’ coalitions are also almost equal (41 and 38 per cent). It may not be possible to be sure that these find it difficult to combine collegiality and effectiveness, but one can discover whether ministers having belonged to one of these two types react differently when referring to the achievements of these coalitions. Not all cabinets are coalitions, however, nor are all coalitions or singleparty governments of a majority character. In Western Europe, many minority governments occur, as, for example, when parties give ‘external’ support instead of participating in the cabinet, in the hope of obtaining pay-offs in policy terms. It is not possible to state a priori whether that ‘external’ support gives the government a de facto ‘minimum winning’

104

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

or ‘surplus majority’ basis: indeed, the same government may see its support change – perhaps increasing, more often shrinking. What seems likely is that these governments need to have a somewhat ‘open’ approach to the support which they receive and often have to conduct difficult negotiations with the parties which did not wish to participate in them (Strom, 1990). The proportions of both minority and single-party governments are small in Central Eastern Europe and these proportions are even smaller among the ministers interviewed in the survey: while constituting 32 per cent of the cabinets, as indicated in Chapter 3, ministers from minority governments formed 15 per cent of the sample, the ratio of singleparty to coalitions among them being two to one. Coalition governments are therefore divided into three categories – minority, ‘minimum winning’ and ‘surplus’ – nearly equal in terms of the number of cabinets, as was shown in Chapter 3 (14, 19 and 16 per cent ), but unequal in terms of the proportion of ministers interviewed (11, 41 and 38 per cent). Although the number of minority and single-party cabinets is small in Central Eastern Europe, one can nonetheless discover whether ministers who belonged to these governments have been as ‘comfortable’ in minority coalitions and single-party cabinets as in minimum winning or surplus majority coalitions since the distribution of these ‘less representative’ cabinets tends to be clustered in some countries rather than being spread out evenly across the area. As a result, the ten countries analysed here fall into three overlapping groups. First, differences between minimum winning and surplus majority governments can be observed in seven countries, not in all ten, as in Estonia and Lithuania no minister was interviewed from among surplus majority or minimum winning majority coalitions respectively and, in the Czech Republic, only one minister was interviewed from a surplus majority coalition. Secondly, differences between majority and minority coalitions can be observed in five countries – Estonia, the Czech Republic and three of the seven countries of the first group (Latvia and, with certain reservations, Poland and Slovenia). Finally, differences between single-party cabinets and coalitions can be observed in two countries, Lithuania and the Czech Republic, where a significant number of ministers from single-party cabinets are found alongside ministers from coalitions.1 In the more representative cabinets, that is to say in cabinets in which the political base of cabinet is wide, both collegiality and efficiency would seem likely to be more difficult to achieve: frustration may develop among the ministers, as they may feel that, despite their broad ‘representative’ character, they are less ‘effective’ in a number of ways than their

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

105

colleagues from less ‘representative’ cabinets. Ministerial attitudes towards the cabinet decision-making process examined in general in Chapter 5 may be less positive where ministers belong to surplus majority coalitions than where they belong to minimum winning majority coalitions or even to minority coalitions or single-party governments. Meanwhile, one might also wonder whether ‘party government’ would have a different character in more broadly representative cabinets than in cabinets which are more narrowly based. Those ministers who are closest to their party may prefer a narrowly based government, although, at least in Western Europe, some of the most ‘partitocratic’ countries – Belgium and, at least up to the 1990s, Italy – also tended to have more often surplus majority coalition governments. How far is it the case that strong support for ‘party government’ is more associated, in the minds of ministers, with broadly than with narrowly representative governments? The aim of the previous two chapters was to explore the nature of ministerial attitudes to the cabinet decision-making process (Chapter 5) and the nature of ministerial reactions to party government (Chapter 6). This chapter follows directly from these inquiries by examining how far these attitudes vary depending on the type of party structure of the cabinet. It is naturally divided into two sections. The first addresses attitudes to the cabinet decision-making process and the second to ‘party government’, but, in both cases, in so far as these attitudes and behaviour appear related to the existence of narrower or broader majority coalitions, of majority or minority coalitions or of single-party governments. Country variations among the Central and Eastern European countries concerned are examined in both sections, while, where possible, comparisons are drawn with the 1991 survey of Western European ministers.

Cabinet composition and decision-making As pointed out in Chapter 5, most ministers from the countries studied here were comfortable with the decision-making process in the cabinets to which they belonged, despite the fact that cabinet government was new to a large majority – if not to all – of them. To see whether the attitudes of ministers to the character of cabinet decision-making is in any way affected by the type of cabinet composition – single-party or coalition, small or large coalitions – we need to re-examine the five questions analysed in Chapter 5. Three of these inquired about specific characteristics of the life of the cabinets while the other two were concerned with the effectiveness of the decision-making process and with degrees of satisfaction about that process. Let us first see whether judgements differ

106

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

about the character of the decision-making process in broad surplus majority coalition and in narrower minimum winning coalition. Ministerial attitudes to the cabinet decision-making process in surplus majority and minimum winning coalitions Perhaps surprisingly, the broad answer is that there is either no or very little difference in the assessments made by the ministers from the two different types of majority coalitions: the distribution of the answers to all five questions is almost identical. Ministers from surplus majority governments are proportionately as likely as ministers from minimum winning coalitions to state that issues are very often thoroughly debated in cabinet and as numerous as ministers from minimum winning coalitions in stating that there are substantial disagreements in cabinet. They are also proportionately as numerous in stating that these disagreements are rare: since disagreements are likely to be detrimental to the sound development of cabinet government, fewer disagreements can be regarded as a positive feature in cabinets. Ministers in both types of coalitions are also proportionately as numerous in stating that consensus is the way in which disagreements are solved in cabinet. Meanwhile, proportionately as many ministers in both types of coalitions claim that the cabinet is very often effective and as many ministers that it is rarely effective. Finally, ministers in both types of coalitions are proportionately as likely to be very satisfied and as likely to be dissatisfied. Whatever differences there are on a few aspects, these are tiny. It appears to make no difference to ministers whether the basis of the coalition is broad or narrow, in other words whether it is more or less representative, in terms of the specific characteristics of the decision-making process or general judgments passed by the ministers concerned about this decision-making process (Table 7.1). Differences emerge, on the other hand, when majority coalitions are compared to minority coalitions, despite the fact that the numbers of ministers concerned is small (34 in all). On three of the five indicators, ministers from minority coalitions are more positive with respect to the decision-making process in the cabinets in which they served than those ministers who belonged to either type of majority coalitions. On the fourth indicator which relates to debates about major issues, there is only a ‘halfdifference’, so to speak: proportionately more ministers from minority coalitions state that debates occurred ‘very often’ than ministers from majority coalitions, but more of these ministers from minority coalitions also state that debates occurred rarely than among ministers from majority coalitions. Only on the fifth indicator, which is concerned with disagreements in cabinet, are ministers from minority coalitions less positive

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

107

Table 7.1 Proportions of ministers from coalitions and single-party cabinets and attitudes to cabinet system (percentages) Coalitions

Single-party

Mean

Minority

Minimum winning

Issues thoroughly debated Very often Rare

35 35

41 24

43 17

42 23

40 25

Substantial disagreements Very often Rare

21 27

16 40

15 46

4 35

14 37

49

27

28

46

37

Effective Very often Rare

32 6

31 18

30 19

35 8

32 13

Satisfied Very satisfied Dissatisfied

29 12

22 19

18 17

27 27

24 19

(34)

(132)

(123)

(26)

(315)

Solving disagreements by consensus

(N)

Surplus majority

towards the decision-making process in the cabinets in which they served than ministers who have belonged to majority coalitions: proportionately more ministers from minority coalitions state that disagreements occurred often than do ministers from majority coalitions. Minority coalitions are therefore viewed at one level as more contentious than other coalitions, yet this is within a context in which appreciably more ministers from these minority coalitions than ministers from majority coalitions state that ‘consensus’ is the way in which disagreements were solved. Minority coalitions thus appear to be regarded as being not just more effective and more satisfactory but, in general, also more collegial. Ministerial attitudes to the cabinet decision-making process in single-party governments The number of ministers from single-party governments interviewed is small (26). Yet significant differences emerge with majority coalitions over four of the questions analysed here, the exception being the question which relates to major issues being debated in cabinet where the proportions are almost identical with those found for majority coalitions. Substantial disagreements were proportionately appreciably

108

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

fewer, according to the ministers concerned, than in majority coalitions: this might be expected of single-party governments, since the members of these cabinets normally have a similar outlook on policies. The proportion of these relatively few disagreements solved by consensus is also said to be larger than in majority coalition governments. More singleparty governments are said to be ‘often effective’ and fewer are said to be ‘rarely’ effective than is the case with majority coalitions. Finally, the proportion of ministers who are very satisfied with the decision-making process in single-party governments is larger than is the case among ministers from majority coalitions, though the proportions of ministers dissatisfied with the decision-making process in single-party governments is also larger than among ministers from majority coalitions. Majority coalitions are thus viewed rather less positively than other types of governments. Thus, the greater representativeness of majority coalitions does not appear to ministers to be a ‘bonus’: these governments appear to be somewhat less efficient, even perhaps less collegial, than governments which are somewhat narrower, whether minority coalitions or single-party cabinets; meanwhile, the size of the majority coalition does not seem to make any difference in this respect. A comparison of Central Eastern European and Western European cabinets As was noted in Chapter 5, comparisons with the findings for Western Europe are difficult on a number of grounds. The question about the effectiveness of the cabinet was not asked in Western Europe; the wording of answers was also somewhat different: in particular, Western European ministers could merely say that major issues were debated ‘always’, ‘sometimes’ or ‘not at all’, with the possible consequence that the proportion of strongly positive answers was automatically smaller in Western Europe. Moreover, multiple answers were possible when answering the question of how disagreements tended to be solved. A further difficulty stemmed from the fact that no distinction was made in the Western European study between minimum winning and surplus coalitions, but a threefold distinction was made between ‘minority’, ‘near-majority’ and ‘majority’ with respect to single-party governments, as single-party governments were markedly more numerous in Western Europe. However, this division does show that, as in Central Eastern Europe, there is also less dissatisfaction with single-party governments than with coalitions in Western Europe, by 23 per cent against 34 per cent. Two broad conclusions emerge from the comparison. First, in both sets of countries a similar tendency is found for single-party government

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

109

to be rather more open to solving disagreements by consensus than coalition governments, while the proportion of issues which were thoroughly debated was about the same, whether the cabinet was a coalition or single-party. Thus, in both areas single-party governments are less likely to be prone to substantial disagreements than coalition governments, possibly because they are composed of ministers more likely to hold similar views. Moreover, although the study of ministers in Western Europe does not allow for a distinction to be drawn between minimum winning and surplus coalitions, one can distinguish among the number of parties in coalitions: the proportion of cases of substantial disagreements recorded by the relevant ministers increases regularly as the number of parties in the coalition increases, from 4 per cent in single-party systems and 11 per cent in two-party coalitions to 36 per cent in five-party coalitions. Secondly, views about the cabinet are somewhat more positive among the ministers of the ten countries analysed here than they were among Western European ministers. The point was already noted in Chapter 5, but it is confirmed, at least in the context of the distinction between singleparty and coalition governments. The proportion of ‘thoroughly debated’ issues in the two sets of countries cannot be directly compared because of differences in the wording of the answers allowed, admittedly: but the proportion of ministers from the countries analysed here who feel that disagreements occur ‘rarely’ is appreciably larger and the proportion of ministers who are ‘very satisfied’ with the decision-making process is also higher than was recorded among Western European ministers, whether the cabinets concerned are coalitions or single-party governments. The comparison between findings from Central Eastern Europe and findings from Western Europe thus confirms the tentative impression that coalitions are probably less likely than single-party governments to be regarded positively and, indeed, that minority coalitions are perhaps more satisfactory than majority coalitions, whether these are narrowly or broadly constructed. While ministers in Central Eastern Europe are ‘comfortable’ with both coalitions and single-party governments, they are not particularly favourable to more representative cabinets: from the point of view of these ministers, larger coalitions do not seem to have any particular virtues. Ministerial views about coalitions and single-party governments at the level of individual countries At the level of individual countries, comparisons about views on the cabinet decision-making process can be made in relation to seven countries.

110

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

There are variations, but these remain somewhat limited, especially with reference to the reactions of ministers to both types of coalitions; where they differ in this respect, this tends to be because surplus coalitions are favoured to an extent. On effectiveness, however, there is a division of opinion: ministers from five countries tend to praise surplus coalitions more, while, by contrast, those from Slovakia and Slovenia tend to feel the contrary. Slovenia is also the only one among the seven countries where more ministers tend to feel ‘very satisfied’ with the decision-making process in minimum winning coalitions than in surplus coalitions; but the number of ministers from surplus majority cabinets from that country is small (four). Thus, although there are also countries, particularly in Hungary and Bulgaria, in which little difference is found between these ministerial attitudes, the overall finding that attitudes of ministers to the cabinet decision-making process are similar in both types of majority coalitions may to an extent be the consequence of averaging. There are also variations in the relative support given by ministers to majority and minority coalitions in the five countries for which it is possible to draw comparisons. However, only in Latvia is the number of ministers interviewed from among minority coalition cabinets truly significant (17); indeed, these constitute half the ministers belonging to that category, the only other country where the number is not small being Estonia. Latvia is also the country where ministers from minority coalitions tend to be more ‘optimistic’ than ministers from majority coalitions: they are proportionately more numerous in stating that issues are very often thoroughly discussed, that consensus is the solution to disagreements and that the decision-making process is very satisfactory; only on the effectiveness of the cabinet system are Latvian ministers from majority coalitions proportionately more numerous in being ‘very satisfied’. Estonian ministers are somewhat more varied in their reactions, but even these are proportionately more numerous in favouring majority coalitions only with respect to the extent to which ‘thorough debates’ over major issues take place and to the extent to which there are ‘substantial disagreements’ in cabinet: this does not prevent Estonian ministers from minority coalitions from being proportionately more numerous in being ‘very satisfied’ with the cabinet system. It may therefore be that the overall conclusion reached earlier in this section and according to which minority coalitions are viewed more favourably than majority coalitions is partly the result of the fact that Latvian ministers interviewed formed half the ministers from the minority coalition cabinets who were interviewed. As was noted earlier, Lithuania and the Czech Republic are the only two countries for which ministerial attitudes to the cabinet system in

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

111

single-party and coalition government can be compared. With respect to the effectiveness of that cabinet system the position of ministers in both types of government is near-identical; ministers are also equally satisfied in both types of governments, though there is slightly more support for single-party governments in Lithuania on this point than there is for coalitions (all of which, in this case, are of the surplus majority variety). On the other hand, in both countries, the view prevails that coalitions are the form of government in which issues are more often thoroughly debated, but also where disagreements are more frequent, while the consensus solution tends to be viewed as prevailing more in single-party governments. Single-party governments are, therefore, viewed favourably in both countries with no apparent impact of the fact that, in Lithuania, single-party governments were of a majority character while they were of a minority character in the Czech Republic. Despite these differences, individual country cases do not alter the broad conclusion that the cabinet decision-making process is viewed favourably whether this process takes place in coalitions which are large or small, minority or majority, or whether it takes place in coalitions or in single-party governments, even if the conclusion that there is little to choose in this respect between minimum winning and surplus majority coalitions has perhaps to be somewhat played down. It may also be that the apparently larger overall support for minority coalitions is due to a substantial extent to the fact that Latvia is the country from which many ministers from minority coalitions have been drawn, but even that conclusion is, to a certain extent, supported in other countries, Estonia in particular. The cases of Lithuania and the Czech Republic also indicate that single-party governments are appreciated, admittedly in the few cases in which this type of government has occurred in Central Eastern Europe, at least in the first decade of cabinet government in the region. The view that more broadly representative cabinets are regarded as preferable by those who serve in these cabinets is, to say the least, not sustained by the evidence of the survey.

Cabinet composition and ‘party government’ In Chapter 6, we considered three aspects of the way in which ministers may have felt that ‘party government’ took place in the cabinets to which they had belonged: (i) the nature of the relationship of ministers to their own party; (ii) the way in which party ‘intruded’ in the life of the cabinet; and (iii) the importance which ministers attributed to parties in cabinet life. On the first point, the broad conclusion was that

112

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

ministers had close links with their party, but did not seem to be dependent upon their party. On the second point, ‘partial cabinets’ rather than the parties seemed to be the places where discussions occurred over ‘major issues’ when these discussions did not take place fully within the cabinet itself; decisions were also found to be made primarily within the cabinet area when there were ‘substantial disagreements’. On the question of the importance of party, there was evidence of a division of opinion among the ministers. Do these conclusions vary depending upon the type of coalition and upon whether the cabinet is of the single-party type or is a coalition? The links between ministers and their party in coalitions and single-party governments In Chapter 6 four indicators were used to help assess how far the behaviour of ministers could be affected by the relationship which these ministers had with their party. One was concerned with the pre-ministerial background and inquired whether having been an MP was regarded ‘as particularly useful’. Only 12 per cent said so overall, with the range being between 9 and 15 per cent from minority to surplus majority coalitions; the rating was even lower among ministers from single-party governments, since not one of the many Latvian ministers and only one of the Czech ministers who had belonged to a single-party government thought that a parliamentary experience had been ‘particularly useful’. Thus, variations are very small and differ little from the finding, in Western Europe, that there is no difference in this respect between single-party and coalition governments. Variations on a country basis are also small in this respect. Thus, there is at most a limited tendency for parliamentary experience to be regarded as having had a marginally larger effect in coalitions than in single-party governments in the countries analysed here and any such effect is restricted to a small minority. The other three indicators analysed in Chapter 6 are linked to the relationship between ministers when in office and their party. One question asked which types of party meetings were usually attended by ministers, a second what kind of relationship ministers had with the top party executive, and the third whether ministers were briefed by their party on cabinet matters. Little needs to be said about the last of these since the proportion of cases in which ministers were briefed by their party was minuscule and scarcely affected by the type of party base of the government: the range was between nil in the case of single-party governments and 3 per cent in minority coalitions.

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

113

There is a clear relationship, on the other hand, between the extent to which ministers were regularly in touch with their party and the nature of the coalition or the single-party or coalition character of the cabinet. This is particularly the case with the relation to the extent to which ministers attended party meetings. The proportion of both official and unofficial party meetings attended by the ministers concerned increases from 35 per cent among those who belonged to minority cabinets through 46 per cent among those among those who belonged to minimum winning majority cabinets to 59 per cent among those who belonged to surplus majority cabinets, with a corresponding decline among the ministers who only attended official meetings: thus, as the representative character of coalitions increases, ministers feel either the need or the desire to attend more meetings of the party to which they belong; the same trend towards an increase in attendance paralleling an increase in representativeness can be observed among single-party cabinets, since only 19 per cent of the ministers concerned attended both official and unofficial meetings of their party. There is also some relationship, albeit one which is appreciably less marked, between the size of the party base of the cabinet and the extent to which there is close cooperation between ministers and their party. However, to the extent that there is any trend at all, it is the reverse of that which is observed in relation to cooperation with the party: while 85 per cent of the ministers from minority coalitions state that there was close cooperation with their party, the extent of ‘close cooperation’ falls to 71 per cent among ministers from minimum winning majority coalitions and to 68 per cent among ministers from surplus majority coalitions; that trend is not found to extend to single-party governments, on the other hand, since only 46 per cent of the ministers belonging to that type of cabinet stated that there was close cooperation with their party. Country variations are substantial with respect both to minimum winning and surplus coalitions among the seven countries for which comparisons are possible, but they are more marked about reported attendance at both official and unofficial meetings than about reported close collaboration. Indeed, on the closeness of collaboration, only two countries – Hungary and Bulgaria – score low with respect to minimum winning coalitions, with Hungary also scoring low with respect to surplus coalitions. The remaining five of the seven countries which can be compared in this respect are on the average or slightly above the average: thus, except for Bulgaria, the extent to which ministers from these countries report that relations with their party has been close is very

114

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

similar whether these ministers belong to minimum winning coalitions or to surplus majority coalitions. There are somewhat more variations in the replies to the question of attendance to meetings, both within each category and for the same country between scores on minimum winning coalitions and on surplus coalitions, though, even there, only two countries, Slovakia and Bulgaria, score very differently with respect to the two types of coalitions. In Western Europe, single-party governments appear to have attracted more links between ministers and their party than coalitions, in terms of both attendance at meetings and collaboration with the executive, while we saw that the contrary was true in Central Eastern Europe. This somewhat lower degree of partisan activity among ministers from single-party governments, given the fact that these come essentially from Lithuania and the Czech Republic, echoes the point made in Chapter 6 which suggested that Czech ministers tend to see party as relatively ‘unimportant’. It should nonetheless be pointed out that, in the Czech Republic at least, the fact that the prime minister was the party leader could have led to the view, among some respondents, that party and government were in virtual osmosis. Political parties and the life of the cabinet Two indicators were used in Chapter 6 to assess how far ministers felt that parties affected the life of the government. One of these related to the extent to which parties were involved in discussions over matters not fully discussed in cabinet; the other concerned the extent to which the cabinet council was involved in cases of disagreement in the cabinet. Only a small minority thought that such an involvement was taking place in either case and, indeed, that minority was about the same on both aspects (18 and 16 per cent respectively). There are differences between the two sets of involvement when the nature of the party structure of the cabinet is taken into account, however. As in many other respects, there is also no apparent difference between the attitudes of ministers from minimum winning and those from surplus majority coalitions with respect to the involvement of parties in discussions over issues which were not fully examined in cabinet (19 and 17 per cent respectively); but there are differences between majority and minority coalitions in this respect (27 per cent feel that the party is involved), as well as between single-party government and coalitions in general: in single-party cabinets only 12 per cent feel that party is involved outside the cabinet. These findings seem logical: in single-party governments, cabinet and party coincide and there appears to be no

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

115

reason why the cabinet would have to look for support in the party if major issues emerge that the government cannot resolve. Indeed, the same trend was found in Western Europe: while, among the ministers who responded, 46 per cent of those who had been in coalition governments said that there were discussions in parties on issues which the cabinet did not fully discuss, the corresponding proportion among ministers from single-party governments was 39 per cent. Conversely, there may be a strong need to go to a party or parties outside the cabinet in minority coalition governments if an issue arises that the government cannot resolve: the cabinet may well be unable to solve that issue because the bodies making difficulties are the supporting parties outside the cabinet. There is not the same convergence of views between ministers from minimum winning and surplus majority cabinets with respect to the role of the cabinet council when disagreements occur. The cabinet council, as noted in Chapter 6, is the body representing the parties of the coalition in a coalition and it is therefore ‘between’ these parties and the cabinet. Ministers from minimum winning coalitions are those who feel most that the cabinet council is involved (26 per cent); this is appreciably less the case in surplus coalitions (12 per cent); it is even less so in minority coalitions (9 per cent) and, of course, the question does not arise in single-party governments. That more widespread feeling among ministers from minimum winning coalitions than among ministers from surplus majority coalitions seems to correspond to the fact that minimum winning coalitions are probably, in general, more fragile than surplus majority coalitions: disagreements may well therefore need more often to be settled by returning to the ‘fathers’ of the coalition. Interestingly, the importance of the cabinet council in minimum winning coalitions is underlined by the fact that the proportion of ministers from minimum winning coalitions who believe that disagreements tend to be solved by the cabinet council is equal to the proportion of those among them who believe that these disagreements tend to be solved by consensus. Yet, overall, while some difference between types of coalitions does emerge, not only is the ‘intrusion’ of parties in the life of cabinets not felt by ministers to be large, but it is also not felt by these ministers to vary truly markedly depending on the basis of the composition of the cabinet. Country variations are not large either among ministers with respect to the extent to which parties are involved in ‘major issues’ which the cabinet does not fully discuss. Nor are there substantial differences between what ministers from minimum winning and from surplus majority coalitions believe to be the case with regard to the role of party in both

116

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

types of coalitions. The relatively small difference which is found between minority coalitions and other types of coalitions appears to be largely due to Latvian ministers who, as we noted earlier, constitute half the ministers from minority coalitions who were interviewed. There are some differences with respect to the involvement of the cabinet council between minimum winning and surplus majority coalitions, but they are not large and are mainly due to the fact that more Polish and Romanian ministers from minimum winning coalitions than from surplus majority coalitions stated that the cabinet council was involved, the only country where a contrary trend is found to exist being Slovakia. The importance of party in the eyes of the ministers We saw in Chapter 6 that almost as many ministers stated that their party was ‘very important’ in cabinet decision-making (29 per cent) as stated that it was ‘a little important’ or ‘not important’ (27 per cent). Meanwhile 41 per cent of the ministers stood in the middle, so to speak, and said that their party was ‘important’, the main question being what the ‘true’ meaning was of that middle position. Within this general context, the reactions of ministers having belonged to the various types of coalitions and to single-party governments follow a somewhat complex pattern. With respect to the distinction between minimum winning and surplus majority coalitions, to begin with, the proportion of ministers who said that the role of party in the cabinet decision-making process was ‘very important’ is very close to the average in both cases (minimum winning, 27 per cent; surplus majority coalitions, 31 per cent, the average being 29 per cent), as was found to be the case in many of the analyses of this chapter. At the same time, however, proportionately more ministers who have to surplus coalitions said that parties were ‘a little important’ (28 per cent) than ministers having belonged to minimum winning coalitions (17 per cent), while the corresponding proportions of ministers who said that parties were ‘important’ were, respectively, 33 and 45 per cent. It is somewhat intriguing that the difference was only between those ministers who said that the party was ‘important’ and those who said that the party was ‘a little important’: indeed, it is rather difficult to understand why the proportion of ministers from surplus coalitions who said that the party was ‘very important’ should simultaneously be fractionally higher than it is among ministers having belonged to minimum winning coalitions. It may nonetheless be, as was already suggested about the role of the coalition council, that the fragility of minimum winning coalitions accounted for parties being viewed as ‘important’ by more

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

117

ministers from these coalitions than by ministers from surplus majority coalitions. This point is reinforced when one considers the reactions of ministers from minority coalitions in comparison to the reactions of ministers from majority coalitions: in minority coalitions, not only is there a minute proportion of the ministers who say that the role of party is ‘a little important’ (3 per cent – only one case), but the proportion of those who say that the role of party is ‘very important’ is much larger – at 47 per cent. Clearly, the fact that ministers from these cabinets feel the ‘weight’ of the parties on their shoulders must indicate that they feel that these minority coalitions need to be nursed by the parties if they are to survive. On the other hand, the proportion of ministers from singleparty governments who say that the role of party is ‘very important’ is very small (9 per cent), possibly on the grounds, suggested earlier, that party and cabinet are to a large extent ‘fused’ in these situations, even in single-party minority governments. Meanwhile, 62 per cent of the ministers from single-party cabinets state that the role of parties is ‘important’ – more so, perhaps justifiably, if they belonged to minority single-party cabinets than in majority single-party cabinets. Findings about ministerial attitudes among single-party and coalition governments in the Western European case go in the same direction, despite the fact that the question was phrased differently, since ministers could reply only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to whether party was important in single-party government and in coalitions: of those who replied, 35 per cent of ministers from single-party governments said ‘yes’, while the corresponding proportion among ministers from coalition governments was 65 per cent. There is therefore little doubt that, for the ministers themselves, the role of party differs in importance in the cabinets of the countries analyzed here, both among the various types of coalitions and between coalitions and single-party governments. On a country-by-country basis, there were few ministers from singleparty governments and even fewer who stated that party was ‘very important’. In minority coalitions, there were variations in the findings: the proportion of ministers stating that party was ‘very important’ was particularly high in Latvia, but no minister felt the same in Poland or Slovenia. The distribution was uneven among ministers belonging to minimum winning and surplus coalitions: in both cases, country scores ranged from 10 to 15 per cent at one extreme to about half at the other, but the numbers of ministers who stated that parties had only ‘a little importance’ in minimum winning coalitions was lower in absolute numbers in five out of the seven countries where comparisons are possible and in

118

Parties and Types of Cabinets in the View of Ministers

the other two (Slovenia and Romania) the numbers were identical: the movement which was noticeable at the overall level is thus reproduced very generally at the country-by-country level. Thus, there is in many respects a relationship between the importance attributed to party government and the fact that ministers belonged to different types of coalitions or to single-party government. On the whole, the bigger differences which are found to occur are not between the two types of majority coalitions, but between these two types and minority coalitions as well as between coalitions and single-party governments. The importance attributed to party appears to varies markedly depending on whether the cabinet needs external party support, as in minority cabinets and to an extent even in minimum winning coalitions, or does not need any external support, as in single-party governments and in surplus majority cabinets. Yet the interpretation of the importance of this role hinges upon the meaning to be given to the answer ‘importance’ given by the ministers: as was pointed out in Chapter 6, it is not entirely clear that the word should necessarily be taken at face value. This is in part because the ministers themselves do not appear to suggest that they are markedly dependent on their party for their own behaviour and in part because, in describing the extent to which parties or coalition councils intervene, ministers do not indicate that these interventions affect more than relatively small minorities of situations. There is a degree of ‘party government’, in cabinets of Central Eastern Europe, but its extent appears to depend rather instrumentally on the coalition or single party and on the minority or majority character of the coalitions, and much less on whether the coalition is modestly or strongly representative of the shades of opinion in parliament and the public at large.

Conclusion Most cabinets of Central Eastern Europe are coalitions, indeed majority coalitions: it is not so much within majority coalitions, however, that ministerial attitudes to cabinet decision-making and to views about ‘party government’ tend to vary markedly: on the whole, whether they belonged to minimum winning or to surplus coalitions, ministers tended to view both the cabinet decision-making equally positively and the part played by parties as equally modest. The greater or lesser representative character of the cabinet seems only to affect these views marginally, and this was only the case in some countries. Somewhat paradoxically, the relatively small numbers of cases of minority coalition and of single-party

Coalitions and Single-Party Governments

119

governments are those which provide the clearest variations from the overall average, though, here too, these variations are not always large. Thus, to say the least, support for minority coalitions and for singleparty governments is far from being small or even smaller than support for the ‘more representative’ majority coalitions. Above all, ministers do not seem to seek representativeness: they do not seem to feel that either collegiality or effectiveness is likely to be better achieved by means of more representative cabinets.

This page intentionally left blank

Part III Ministers and the Administrative Support of the Cabinet

This page intentionally left blank

8 How Ministers View the Role of Prime Ministers’ Offices

Prime ministers’ offices and their staff play an important part in the decision-making processes of cabinet governments. They initiate political issues and coordinate the flow of business between ministers and their ministries, the governing parties and the prime minister (Blondel 1982; Müller-Rommel 1993). Thus, prime ministerial staffs belong to the ‘core executive’ which has been studied in the literature (Dunleavy and Rhodes 1990). One of the most sophisticated empirical analyses in the field is that of Peters and his colleagues who presented a comparative overview of the different role and of the various tasks of prime ministers’ offices in western democracies. The authors confirm that the coordination of cabinet proposals by prime ministerial staff has become a crucial variable helping to measure cabinet capacity at all stages of the policy-making process (Peters et al. 2000). Compared to Western Europe, little information is available relating to the role of prime ministers’ offices and of prime ministerial staff in Central Eastern Europe. Studies of core executives in the region following the fall of communism were primarily undertaken in the field of public administration (Goetz and Wollmann, 2001; Verheijen 2001). According to Goetz and Wollmann, prime ministers’ offices should primarily be an instrument for the effective administrative coordination of government policy-making and implementation. Hence, the German Bundeskanzleramt served as a unique benchmark for a professional and efficient prime ministerial office in Central Eastern Europe, whereas other institutional configurations of these offices, such as the political preparation of cabinet proposals, were considered less important inferior and remained underdeveloped. Yet for core executives in Central and Eastern Europe the coordination of politics and policy are equally important and must be analysed equally. 123

124

Ministers and the Administrative Support of the Cabinet

This chapter first describes the development of the prime ministers’ offices in the transition period. Secondly, the different types of prime ministers’ offices are classified according to two dimensions. Thirdly, the role and tasks of prime ministers’ offices are analysed in the light of these dimensions. Finally, a classification is undertaken of prime ministers’ offices in the ten countries under consideration.

Prime ministers’ offices and the communist legacy Under the communist regime, communist parties had a monopoly of policy-making. As was pointed out in Chapter 1, ministers lacked the power to initiate policies. The government was also very divided on sectoral lines. Ministries and ministers as members of the Council of Ministers had extensive autonomy: they not only worked out policy directives, but supervised – through the nomenklatura – appointments and activities (Sootla 2001). Thus, the chairman of the Council of Ministers was not the only and primary authority in steering governmental activities. For this reason a huge Council of Ministers’ office was established at the centre of government. It had the enormously difficult task of ensuring as much coordination as possible between the branch ministries. In addition, it also had to steer and manage dozens of inter-branch services. All relations and exchanges, which in a market economy are managed by the ‘invisible hand’ of the market and monetary systems, were managed administratively by the state apparatus in Soviet-type societies. The apex of this huge structure was the Council of Ministers and the Council of Ministers’ Office. Therefore, the new democratic political forces inherited a system where the government had a rather limited experience of collective policy-making. The enormous administrative machine started to crumble as a result of the introduction of the market economy; but the reorganization of the central coordinating body was a difficult task which needed a strong political will. Although the old model of the Council Ministers’ Office was technocratic and limited in power (especially political ones), it still had a strong impact on the institutionalization of prime ministers’ offices during the transition phase. The multiple administrative reforms, many of which have been inspired by the Western European example, and the radical changes in the political system altered, to a varying extent, the impact of the socialist legacy. Thus, after more than a decade of transition and reforms of core executives in Central Eastern Europe, one can distinguish three groups of countries in each of which prime ministers’ offices developed along similar lines. The first group of countries experienced a dominant communist ideology during the Soviet regime. In these countries national values and

How Ministers View Prime Ministers’ Offices

125

a professional bureaucracy had hardly any opportunity to acquire legitimacy within the population. The old bureaucracy was unable to institutionalize itself into the new parliamentary-cabinet system and new political elites were free to monopolize policy-making. Thus, the tasks of the new democratic cabinet governments were strictly concerned with the development of new political values. Another priority was given to the reduction of the central bureaucracy in strategic decision-making. Hence the new cabinets in these countries ceased to rely on existing administrative support structures. Estonia, Latvia and the Czech Republic are the clearest examples of this development. In these countries, prime ministers’ offices did not follow bureaucratic structures. The staff of these offices had strong political power. In the second group of countries, the former communists retained some autonomy during the transition to democracy and even constituted themselves into an opposition to Moscow rule. Consequently, members of the local communist elites were able to achieve some trade-offs and they avoided the implementation of decisions which would lead to a questioning of key issues relating to the nation and society. In this context, the members of the professional bureaucracy linked to the communist party were able to retain some legitimacy after the collapse of communist rule. They could form left-wing parties which used, to a large extent, the organizational resources of the communist party branches, and of the regional and central government. No radical opposition between the new political elites and the old professional central bureaucracy developed. The former central bureaucracy was carefully redesigned into a structure of administrative support for the new cabinet governments. Lithuania, Poland and Hungary fall into this group. In the third group of countries the former communist bureaucratic structure, with its mechanisms of central coordination, remained in existence even after the transition. In these countries, cabinet ministers had no clear political responsibility, for instance, vis-à-vis the political parties, and therefore held extensive individual powers in the cabinet decision-making process. They were supported by numerous vice-ministers and political advisers which rendered impossible the development of policy coordinating prime ministers’ offices. Romania, Bulgaria and, to an extent, Slovakia belong to this group.

Types of prime ministers’ offices In the three groups of countries, the role and the task of prime ministers’ offices differ significantly. Yet in all countries these offices provide political

126

Ministers and the Administrative Support of the Cabinet

TYPE 1

TYPE 2

TYPE 3

TYPE 4

Policy Coordination

Political Coordination

Cabinet support structure

Prime Minister’s support structure

Figure 8.1

Types of prime ministers’ offices

and administrative support to the cabinet: this support can be analysed according to two dimensions, that of cabinet versus prime minister support structure and that of political coordination versus policy coordination (Figure 8.1). At one e