Public popularity as a part of the job description? Dismissing unpopular ministers

Abstract

Are unpopular ministers more likely to be forced out of office than their colleagues in Cabinet? This study examines the relationship between ministers’ unpopularity and their duration in office. By examining opinion polls on the popularity of ministers in Denmark in the period 1978 to 2019, the analysis shows that when Danish Prime Ministers choose to dismiss ministers, they dismiss ministers who are relatively less popular than their colleagues in the Cabinet. Statistical analyses show that less popular ministers have a higher probability of being dismissed. This is particularly true for ministers outside the inner circles of Cabinet. These results suggest that opinion polls on ministers’ individual popularity have been neglected in political science so far and should be considered in future studies of cabinet governments.

Keywords:

• Prime Ministers
• Cabinet committees
• approval ratings
• opinion polls
• coalitions
• ministerial duration

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Rasmus Skytte (Aarhus University) for very useful comments during the work on this article. Also thanks to Flemming Juul Christiansen (Roskilde University) for helpful discussions on the subject. Lastly, special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for particularly useful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Important but brief exceptions are Nielsen (2020) and Kristinsson (2009).

2 As early as 1985 Christensen (1985: 129–30) uses the term ‘inner cabinet’.

3 Respectively ‘Lars Løkke Rasmussen II’ from June 2015 to November 2016 and ‘Poul Nyrup Rasmussen I’ from January 1993 to January 1994.

4 An obvious exception for this would be the resignation of the Minister of Transportation in October 1981.

5 During this period the only exception to this could be the Minister of Employment from 2015 to 2016. It remained quite unclear but he was to all practical purposes considered loyal to the governing party in the then one party government.

6 Recent and very obvious examples of this were seen with the resignation of the Minister of Family and Consumer Affairs in December 2006, the resignation of the Minister of Justice in December 2013 and with the resignation of the Minister of Environment and Foods and Agriculture in February 2016.

7 Kristinsson does not provide any explanation as to how he identified ministers who were removed from office and who chose to leave of their own volition.

8 This goes for explicit quotations from some of the involved actors published in at least one newspaper in days following a minister’s end of term. Newspapers selected are those available in the Mediestream and Infomedia databases. Only on one occasion is it not that straightforward to define whether the minister was dismissed when reading the contemporary press. This was the discontinuation of Minister of Economic Affairs, Anders Andersen, in 1987, where the statements about the reasons of his discontinuation in the press are not dealt with in depth. I rely on the words of the then outgoing Minister of Agriculture, who stated publicly that the Minister of Economic Affairs was dismissed (Fyens Stiftstidende September 3^rd 1987). This statement is supported by the then Prime Minister in his memoirs (Schlüter 1999: 206).

9 Extreme cases of this are for instance the dismissal of the Minister of Health in December 2000 (see Jyllands-Posten 22 December 2000) or dismissal of the Minister of Communication and Tourism in January 1994 (see Berlingske Tidende 29 January 1994).

10 See also: Fischer et al. (2012: 514).

11 In a Danish context see especially the memoirs of former top ministers for many years Mogens Lykketoft (Lykketoft 2019: 363–4) and Mimi Jakobsen (Jakobsen 2016: 162) and special adviser in three different ministries 2011-2015 Søren Lippert (Lippert 2016: 110). See also Nielsen (2020).

12 These are the national newspapers of Jyllands Posten (since 1978), Berlingske Tidende (since 1997), Børsen (since 2004), the TV-channel TV2 (1999–2005) and the political online news media Altinget.dk (since 2011). There may be similar polls in other media, but there is no systematic way in which to collect polls from these.

13 This means for 1978 and 1979 the Economics Committee or the Scheduling’s Committee (Planlaegningsudvalget), for 1981 the Economics Committee, for 1982–1993 the Coordination’s Committee and from 1993 and onwards the Economics Committee or the Coordination’s Committee.

14 All models have been tested for multicollinarity.

15 The values are weighted according to the number of opinion polls that were carried out in the given year.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Heyn Nielsen

Peter Heyn Nielsen is a part-time Lecturer in Comparative Politics at both the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University. His research focuses on cabinet coordination, political leadership and especially the history of the Danish Prime Minister's Office. [[email protected]]