Technocratic Ministers in Office in European Countries (2000–2020): What’s New?
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221140036 |
| Author | Davide Vittori,Jean-Beniot Pilet,Sebastien Rojon,Emilien Paulis |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Early Results |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221140036
Political Studies Review
2023, Vol. 21(4) 867 –886
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299221140036
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Technocratic Ministers in Office
in European Countries
(2000–2020): What’s New?
Davide Vittori , Jean-Beniot Pilet,
Sebastien Rojon and Emilien Paulis
Abstract
Although Europeans are favourable towards the idea of being governed by ‘independent
experts’, and despite the burgeoning literature on technocratic ministers, we still miss important
information about the profiles of technocrats in government. This article provides new insights
into the characteristics of non-partisan, non-elected ministers and the roles they perform once in
government based on a Technocratic Ministers’ Dataset covering all governments in 31 European
countries from 2000 to 2020. First, we show that average share of technocratic (as opposed to
partisan) ministers in European cabinets rose from 9.5% to 14.2% over the last two decades.
This increase is characteristic of all macro-regions, except Scandinavian countries. Second,
technocratic ministers are assigned to a diversity of portfolios and not just finance and economy,
which, respectively, account for only 15% of technocratic ministers. Finally, technocratic ministers
do not hold office for shorter periods of time than partisan ones, except when they are part of
caretaker cabinets.
Keywords
technocracy, political elites, partisan governments, technocratic governments, Europe
Accepted: 25 October 2022
Introduction
Being governed by independent experts as opposed to elected politicians is a widely
supported option among Europeans (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017). The most evident
application of this expert-led model in a democratic regime is the appointment of a non-
partisan technocrat as minister, one of the highest-ranking positions in government.
Technocratic ministers are members of government cabinets who have never been
CEVIPOL - Department of Political Science, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
Corresponding author:
Davide Vittori, CEVIPOL - Department of Political Science, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
Email: davide.vittori@ulb.be
1140036PSW0010.1177/14789299221140036Political Studies ReviewVittori et al.
research-article2023
Early Result
868 Political Studies Review 21(4)
elected to public office, never had formal ties to any political party and, finally, possess
non-party political expertise relevant to their role in government. Such technocratic
ministers are appointed to a variety of cabinets, ranging from partisan-led (e.g. 2020
Sanchez Government in Spain) to full technocratic or ‘caretaker’ (e.g. 2019–2020
Bierlein Government of Austria). In this regard, technocrats are different from political
outsiders, as the formers have a specific expertise, which is in line with the portfolio to
which they were assigned.
Building on the scholarly interest in technocracy, a growing number of studies have
addressed the phenomenon of non-partisan ministers (Alexiadou et al., 2021; Alexiadou
and Gunaydin, 2019; Costa Pinto et al., 2018; Emanuele et al., 2022; Improta, 2021;
McDonnell and Valbruzzi, 2014; Valbruzzi, 2020). The appointment of ministers who
are independent from political parties and experts in the portfolio they manage has been
associated with a broader conception of politics, which aims at de-politicizing policy
decisions and at framing them as technical as opposed to moral or value-laden decisions
(see Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti, 2017; Caramani, 2017). Some studies have
investigated the prevalence, characteristics and portfolios of non-partisan ministers,
demonstrating that they are more common than previously assumed, more likely to
hold a PhD than partisan ministers, and most often appointed to the Ministries of
Finance and/or Economy (Costa Pinto et al., 2018; McDonnell and Valbruzzi, 2014).
Others have focused on the factors leading to the appointment of technocratic minis-
ters, pointing to the increasing complexity of contemporary government (Alexiadou
and Gunaydin, 2019), the role of economic and political crises (Wratil and Pastorella,
2018) and electoral volatility (Emanuele et al., 2022). Finally, some studies have
examined how technocratic appointments affect the democratic quality of government
(Bertsou and Caramani, 2020; Pastorella, 2016). However, most of these studies were
limited to a smaller number of countries, specific positions such as Prime Minister or
Minister for Finance and/or Economy, or full-technocratic/technocratic-led govern-
ments only.
While technocratic cabinets and technocratic ministers are on the rise in Europe
(Costa Pinto et al., 2018; McDonnell and Valbruzzi, 2014; Valbruzzi, 2020), and while
research around this phenomenon is expanding, we still lack a comprehensive examina-
tion of who the technocrats actually are, what they did before entering politics, or the
ministerial portfolios which they are assigned. In this article, we present a newly released
dataset, the Technocratic Ministers Dataset (TMD) that would expand our knowledge in
this direction. The TMD includes data on all government cabinets of 31 European
democracies (EU 27 + Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, UK) between 2000 and 2020,
making it the most comprehensive dataset on technocratic ministers in European democ-
racies ever compiled.1
The TMD
For each of the 31 European countries, the TMD provides detailed information about all
ministers (gender, portfolio, political background before becoming minister) and the cab-
inets in which they served (among others, vote-share, and ideological positioning of all
political parties participating in the cabinet as well as duration of government) (a code-
book is provided in the supplementary materials). In addition, for those ministers with
non-partisan backgrounds, meaning they never ran for elections and/or never joined a
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