Hot off the press…
Kelly Blidook and Matthew Kerby, 2011, “Constituency Influence on ‘Constituency Members’: The Adaptability of Roles to Electoral Realities in the Canadian Case”, Journal of Legislative Studies, 17(3). pp. 327-339. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13572334.2011.595125
Abstract:
This paper takes a first comparative look at ministerial duration and exit in two Westminster parliamentary democracies: Canada and Australia. Despite sharing the same core rules which govern ministerial tenure (individual and collective ministerial responsibility), Canada and Australia differ with respect to parochial conventions which have evolved since federation in Australia (1901) and Confederation in Canada (1867); these conventions both enhance and diminish prime ministers’ ability to appoint, retain and dismiss their ministers. Furthermore, we expect the variation in institutional and party organization in both countries to affect the rate and nature of ministerial duration and exit. This paper makes use of an original combined dataset of complete ministerial career paths in both countries for the period 1945-2010 in order to provide a first round of descriptive statistics which highlight the similarities and differences in ministerial duration in both countries across space and over time.