Strategic Decisionmaking in Cabinet Government : Institutional Underpinnings and Obstacles

"Collective cabinet decisionmaking provides the institutional mechanism by which many governments prioritize their policies and guard against unpredictable policy reversals."- Mansood Ahmed, Vice President, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network, The World BankThe style and membership of cabinets vary in every country. The heads of democratic governments form a cabinet for three principal reasons: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 from a previous tradition of cabinet government and judged poorly as a result.'Strategic Decisionmaking in Cabinet Government' shows that cabinet government is a rational response to these risks and sets out the institutional arrangements that make the cabinet a binding device. This report 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. It 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.