Office versus Policy Motives in Portfolio Allocation: The Case of Junior Ministers

Why junior ministers? What function do they serve? Two explanations dominate the literature. Both focus on the role of junior ministers in coalition formation and coalition management. One approach sees junior ministers as instruments for controlling policy, the other as a means to solve or ease distributive conflict among coalition partners. As of yet, the literature lacks a discussion about when the two interpretations lead to similar empirical predictions and when they lead to different ones. The paper claims that different patterns of portfolio distribution can inform us about the underlying policy or office motives of the partners of a coalition government. Analyzing a rich data set on 11 countries from 1949 to 2004, the paper identifies a group of countries in which portfolio allocation shared a pattern best explained by office-seeking behavior, whereas in another group of countries portfolio allocation is better explained as the result of policy-seeking behavior.