Entering the Inner Core of Cabinets: Electoral Causes and Consequences of Holding Salient Ministerial Offices

ABSTRACT Can electoral success be an asset for being appointed to more prominent ministerial posts in cabinets? Are ministers punished or rewarded by voters according to the importance of their post? These questions are explored in this article. Portfolio allocation as well as electoral consequences of participating in governments is usually studied at the party level and not for individual politicians. The novel approach in this article is to focus on individual ministers rather than parties. We approach importance of ministerial posts according to membership of certain cabinet committees, which can mark a clear demarcation line of which ministers have more and less influence on cabinet policies within parties in governments. By using a dataset on Danish ministers from 1977 to 2022 we find a complex relationship between personal votes and policy influence in cabinet, providing important nuances to the existing literature on cabinet governance, ministerial selection and cost of ruling.