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Project

The cabinetisation of the minister’s court. What is it and why is it happening in Westminster systems?

The institutionalisation and de-institutionalisation of ministerial cabinets of Napoleonic systems.

This project focuses on the institutionalisation and (de)institutionalisation of ministerial cabinets in the Napoleonic systems of Belgium, France, Greece, Spain, Portugal and of the sui generis European Commission. It will investigate processes of the institutionalization and of de-institutionalisation of partisan advice in systems of the Napoleonic administrative tradition. It will analyse in particular what explains the success and failure of recurrent attempts to reduce the number and roles of ministerial advisors (de-cabinetisation). This project will attempt to answer descriptive and explanatory questions by employing an internationally comparative intermediate N research design. Comparisons will be organized along the most similar systems – most different outcomes design and the data will be analysed using qualitative configurational analysis. The project provides a new focus by approaching the (de-)institutionalisation of ministerial cabinets and speaks to ongoing research on the institutionalisation of ministerial cabinets in different politico-administrative traditions. By focusing on Napoleonic systems, it examines the reverse process to that of the institutionalisation of ministerial cabinets that is arguably taking place in Nordic and Westminster systems (the latter being the subject of a FWO project). It will go a long way in bridging different Francophone and Anglophone academic traditions of advisors’ research, against the scientific standards of genuine comparative research of convergence and divergence.

Date:1 Oct 2018 →  30 Sep 2022
Keywords:Political advisers, Special advisers, Ministerial advisers, Ministerial cabinets, Westminster systems, Politicisation, Core executive
Disciplines:Sociology of organisations and occupations