摘要:This report describes an approach to assessing how the institution of cabinet responds to the threats that government faces and provides some practical strategies for examining the institutional government for supporting cabinet decisionmaking. The threats are: 1) The threat that the legislature will significantly amend the government's program as expressed in the budget proposals made by the executive. 2) The threat of dismissal between elections. 3) The risk that the executive will be seen by the public as having departed form a previous tradition of cabinet government and judged poorly as a result. The report shows that cabinet government is a rational response to these risks and sets out the institutional arrangements that make cabinet a binding device. It takes a purely empirical view to determine what constitutes cabinets. Using some new data and illustrative quantitative measures, the report shows how to make comparisons across countries. It recognizes the significance of the budget process for collective decisionmaking, but moves beyond the simplistic assumption that tradeoffs in cabinet government can only be made by reallocating the budget. Politicians trade in many commodities, including prestige and public acclaim. In sum, the report supports practical approaches for assessing the strength of cabinet decisionmaking arrangements and for identifying practical steps to improve the prospect that decisions will be collectively binding.
