Minister turnover, critical events and the electoral calendar in presidential democracies

This article examines why and when presidents remove members of the cabinet in response to critical events. We propose a formal model that underscores the complex interplay of political shocks, the electoral calendar, and constitutional term limits to explain cabinet turnover in presidential regimes. Our theory suggests that protests against an activist minister and corruption scandals represent critical events with different political dynamics. While presidents may choose to protect an activist minister in order to deliver successful policy outcomes, there is little to be gained in the long run from recurrent scandals. At the same time, presidents discount long-term electoral payoffs when elections are close and when they are starting a lame-duck period. We test these predictions using survival analysis with an original dataset for 12 Latin American democracies between 1979 and 2007