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Who Gets What in Foreign Affairs? Explaining the Allocation of Foreign Ministries in Coalition Governments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2018

Kai Oppermann  and
Klaus Brummer
Kai Oppermann*
Affiliation:
Kai Oppermann, Department of Politics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Klaus Brummer
Affiliation:
Klaus Brummer, Faculty of History and Social Science, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: K.Oppermann@sussex.ac.uk
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Abstract

In coalition governments, political parties are concerned not only with how many but also with which departments they control. The foreign ministry is among the most highly considered prizes in coalition negotiations. This article develops hypotheses to explain under which conditions the foreign ministry is likely to be allocated to a ‘junior coalition partner’. The factors that are hypothesized to affect the allocation are: the relative size of coalition parties; the proximity of their foreign policy positions; the party family of the junior coalition party; the salience of foreign policy to the coalition parties; and past allocations of the foreign ministry to junior coalition partners. Employing a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, the article demonstrates that although the conjunction of the junior partner being relatively large and it having led the foreign ministry in the past is not sufficient by itself, those two factors are very influential in the junior partner being allocated the foreign ministry.

Keywords

coalition governmentsportfolio allocationforeign ministryforeign policyQCA
Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 241 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2018. Published by Government and Opposition Limited and Cambridge University Press

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