A cabinet reshuffle is when the prime minister moves around the ministers in his or her top team. This can be a minor change – if, for example, a minister resigns – or it can be quite significant, with whole departments being moved around and other positions created or removed. Changing the composition of a cabinet reveals how much influence the prime minister has and can signal a shift in priorities or a desire to reward loyalty or punish disloyalty within the party. It can also allow the prime minister to demonstrate his or her power by rewarding high performers with promotions, and remove underperforming ministers from their posts, a practice known as ‘demoting’.
In this event, chaired by Hilary Armstrong and hosted by the Institute’s Senior Fellow Tim Montgomerie, panellists discussed the many ways in which cabinet reshuffles can reveal the balance of power between the prime minister and the cabinet. They also explored whether the number of reshuffles is increasing, and the reasons behind this trend.
Discussion turned to how reshuffles are evaluated, with Hilary Armstrong noting that it was hard to judge a reshuffle as being successful or not. She suggested that there was a need to consider the politics of reshuffles as well as the policy, and to recognise that ministers’ political performance had to be taken into account.
The debate revealed that cabinet reshuffles remain a fascinating aspect of executive politics and are a powerful tool for the exercise of political power. It is therefore pleasing that scholars have begun to analyse reshuffles more systematically, and to uncover their diverse effects. This special collection includes contributions from a range of perspectives, including those grounded in institutionalist theory (Helms and Vercesi 2022) and non-institutionalist approaches such as interrogative political analysis (Rhodes 2019).
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