Book Review: Despina Alexiadou, Ideologues, Partisans, and Loyalists: Ministers and Policymaking in Parliamentary Cabinets and Bjørn Erik Rasch, Shane Martin and José Antonio Cheibub (eds), Parliaments and Government Formation: Unpacking Investiture Rules
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917719403 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsComparative Politics |
Book Reviews 647
and from national political systems as a whole
(chapter 5). The second part (chapters 6–9)
examines the reforms in practice, looking at the
patterns (chapter 6) and the processes of reform
(chapter 7), the main protagonists (chapter 8)
and, finally, the challenges and consequences of
party reform (chapter 9).
One of the main concerns of the book is to
contextualise the reforms undertaken by the six
political parties. In this respect, Gauja’s work is
well-documented and it provides a whole pic-
ture of two distant, but at the same time compa-
rable, political systems. Nonetheless, the
comparative analysis appears to be asystemic,
and in this regard, the inclusion of other case
studies from other countries (New Zealand,
Germany, France and the case of the Liberals in
Canada) creates confusion for the reader.
Although the table on party reform presented
on page 104 covers a wide spectrum of changes,
it seems that the patterns of reforms across the
case studies are overwhelmingly dedicated to the
introduction of primaries and changes in the par-
ticipation of members and sympathisers.
If this is the only main change produced by
party reforms, then it should be better specified
why the parties decided to focus on this crucial
aspect of the organisation while excluding others.
Despite this, the book offers an important over-
view of the analysis of party reforms, adding to
the literature on party organisation well-informed
and well-grounded examples of these changes.
Davide Vittori
(LUISS Guido Carli, Rome)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917717443
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Ideologues, Partisans, and Loyalists:
Ministers and Policymaking in Parliamentary
Cabinets by Despina Alexiadou. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016. 268pp., £55.00
(h/b), ISBN 9780198755715
Parliaments and Government Formation:
Unpacking Investiture Rules by Bjørn Erik
Rasch, Shane Martin and José Antonio
Cheibub (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015. 385pp., £55.00 (h/b), ISBN 9780198747017
A growing body of research examines legisla-
tive decision-making in cross-national fashion,
due in part to the increasing data availability
across countries. Scholars capitalising on the
variation in legislative practices among coun-
tries have begun to develop new theories and
test previously unexplored questions.
Alexiadou’s monograph Ideologues,
Partisans, and Loyalists and Rasch et al.’s
edited book Parliaments and Government
Formation are among the most recent attempts
to explore this variation empirically. While
the former of the two books appears to be an
empirical investigation, the latter is a descrip-
tively rich work that brings together two
dozen scholars from various countries.
Despina Alexiadou challenges the oft-
cited assumption that ministers in multiparty
and single party cabinets toe the party line at
the expense of their own power agenda. The
author distinguishes between ministerial
roles, arguing that there are different types of
ministers: loyalists, partisans and ideologues.
This categorisation has important implica-
tions for the policymaking process in Europe.
In the author’s words, ‘ministerial appoint-
ments matter for policy because there are
types of ministers who are more likely to pick
a fight over policy than others’ (p. 3). In other
words, the different types of ministerial role
may lead to different policy outcomes and
this brings the author to another conclusion.
Ministerial appointments are not random
events; they are shaped by ‘political and soci-
etal strategic factors’.
The book is organised into 10 chapters, the
first two of which are devoted to theory build-
ing. Chapter 3 introduces Alexiadou’s novel
data on the ministerial appointment in 18 par-
liamentary democracies. Chapter 4 explores
the determinants of ministerial appointments,
where Alexiadou argues that ‘ideologues and
partisans are not simply agents appointed to
execute orders from their party leaders’ (p. 99).
One of the major findings presented in the
empirical chapters is that the appointment of ide-
ologues is more likely in countries where cabinet
members have more policy autonomy. Perhaps,
more importantly, the author finds that partisan
and ideologue ministers are the ones who can
help create major policy reforms. In short, select-
ing cabinet members are not random events;
cabinet members have a significant impact on
policy outcomes. The case studies of Ireland, the
Netherlands and Greece lend further support to
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