Finance Ministers and Cabinet Decision-Making

Abstract

Cabinet government is based on the notion that all ministers are equal and contribute to the same extent to what is formally and ostensibly a collective decision-making body. The reality is, of course, different. In the previous chapter, we saw that there were substantial differences in the extent to which the ministers themselves were involved in cabinet decisionmaking, even if there was apparently more collegiality in the cabinets of the countries studied here than there had been in those of Western Europe. Meanwhile, there is something approaching a formal hierarchy between the status of the prime minister and that of the other members of the cabinet, despite the fact that prime ministers need the agreement of their colleagues in order to act. Two key types of differences thus emerge with respect to the involvement of cabinet members in the decision process: one is wholly informal and stems from the extent to which ministers are willing, and perhaps able, to participate actively in that process; the other is close to being formal and results from the manifestly special part played by the prime minister.