Ministerial stability during presidential approval crises: The moderating effect of ministers’ attributes on dismissals in Brazil and Chile
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221124850 |
| Author | Bastián González-Bustamante |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221124850
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(4) 655 –675
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481221124850
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Ministerial stability during
presidential approval crises:
The moderating effect of
ministers’ attributes on
dismissals in Brazil and Chile
Bastián González-Bustamante1,2
Abstract
This article analyses the effect of ministers’ exposure to periods of low presidential approval in
Brazil and Chile between 1990 and 2014. Approval is explored with quarterly estimates using a
dyad-ratios algorithm and merged into a time-dependent cabinet data set to evaluate individual
ministerial terminations (N = 4245). The empirical strategy combines time-varying exposure Cox
regressions with observational data and propensity score and matching to estimate the effect
of low approval on ministerial survival and perform a moderation analysis with three profiles
associated with presidential strategies: (1) nonpartisan ministers to limit agency loss and moral
hazard; (2) economists as ministers to optimise cabinet performance and send positive signals to
the electorate; and (3) party leaders as ministers to optimise legislative support. The main findings
show that risk increases by 135.1% in periods of low approval. In addition, approximately only one
in five nonpartisan ministers is removed compared to party members.
Keywords
Brazil, cabinets, Chile, ministerial turnover, presidential approval, propensity score, survival
analysis
Introduction
In May 2010, just a month after the start of Sebastián Piñera’s first presidential term,
Jaime Mañalich, the recently appointed health minister, was summoned to testify about
an allegedly falsified alcohol test performed 7 months earlier on Piñera’s brother after a
traffic accident. The test took place at a private clinic where Mañalich was then general
manager and Piñera was a shareholder. Regardless of public pressure, Mañalich remained
1Department of Politics and International Relations & St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2Faculty of Administration and Economics, Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH), Santiago de Chile,
Chile
Corresponding author:
Bastián González-Bustamante, Department of Politics and International Relations, St Hilda’s College,
University of Oxford, Cowley Place, Oxford OX4 1DY, UK.
Emails: bastian.gonzalezbustamante@politics.ox.ac.uk; bastian.gonzalez.b@usach.cl
1124850BPI0010.1177/13691481221124850The British Journal of Politics and International Relations X(X)González-Bustamante
research-article2022
Original Article
656 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(4)
health minister throughout the 4-year administration. A very different situation occurred
in June 2020, when Piñera made the fourth cabinet change of his second term (2018–
2022). Despite persistent questioning of the government’s response to the coronavirus
pandemic, the change consisted only in a reshuffle of the same ministers, designed partly
to protect questioned Health Minister Jaime Mañalich. The protagonists are the same as
in 2010, but the outcome was entirely different: only 9 days after the reshuffle, Mañalich
resigned in the face of criticism of the inefficiency of the dynamic quarantines imple-
mented by the government and a mismatch between the statistics reported by the Health
Ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO). Thus, while the President was again
willing to protect Mañalich, the pressure was unsustainable.
This case is an excellent example of how a president can protect ministers from calls
for their resignation and the effect of scandals. In this particular example, Piñera reap-
pointed Mañalich as a minister in his second term but, this time, was unable to protect
him. Moreover, this is a case of a nonpartisan minister close to the president and illus-
trates how a president can limit moral hazard and agency loss by appointing and protect-
ing independent ministers close to his entourage or inner circle and without partisan
loyalties.
While ministers’ attributes and trajectories are a recurrent topic of study from different
approaches, theoretical arguments tend to result in a conceptual heterogeneity that com-
plicates empirical research (Camerlo and Martínez-Gallardo, 2018). This heterogeneity
translates into a variety of concepts for identifying profiles that are complex to measure
empirically, posing a methodological challenge for testing how ministers’ profiles offer
advantages in the face of unexpected events or shocks that impact governments’ stability.
In this context, we consider periods of low presidential approval, a situation common to
almost every administration that should impact actors’ incentives and strategies.
Thus, our main question is: How can a minister’s attributes prevent his exit from the
cabinet during periods of low presidential approval? Answering this question allows us to
offer an empirically approachable conceptualisation of ministerial profiles linked to pres-
idential strategies in contexts of approval crises and, in this way, make a theoretical con-
tribution to bridging the gap in the general conceptualisation of profiles. In addition, we
propose a specific procedure for correctly estimating effects and bias using the survival
approach, which constitutes a substantial, novel methodological contribution. This contri-
bution is relevant since straightforward modelling of the relationship between low
approval and cabinet turnover may be biased and exposed to endogeneity because presi-
dents or prime ministers tend to reshuffle their cabinets at times of low popularity (Kam
and Indriðason, 2005; Martínez-Gallardo, 2014).
We will refer to two country-specific cases: Brazil and Chile. Although both are cases
of multi-party coalitions, political alliances in Chile have been remarkably stable in recent
decades and, for instance, Chile has more robust party organisation capabilities (Martínez,
2021). In addition, both cases have shown a higher degree of technical control over eco-
nomic policies in recent decades compared to other countries in the region, such as
Argentina, where technocracy has gradually declined (Dargent, 2015). Finally, as evi-
denced below, both countries have experienced periods of low presidential approval and
comparable levels of ministerial survival in the medium to long term.
In the next section, we present the theory and empirical expectations, reflecting first on
stochastic events, low approval and ministerial recruitment before going on to connect
recruitment and political careers with different ministers’ profiles and principal–agent,
signalling and coalition theories. We then present our empirical strategy with the
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