8
those countries that were democratic or semi-democratic according to Mainwaring et al. (2001)
for which we were able to find cabinet and party system data.
According to Woldendorp et al. (2000, p. 10), a new cabinet in a parliamentary
monarchy, parliamentary republic, or semi-presidential republic should be counted when one or
more of the following occurs:
1) a change of Prime Minister;
2) a change in the party composition of the cabinet; or
3) resignation in an inter-election period followed by re-formation of the government
with the same Prime Minister and party composition.
In a presidential system, the criteria differ slightly. Because presidential cabinets are not
accountable to the legislature, a new legislative election does not necessarily imply the formation
of a new presidential cabinet. Thus we defined a new presidential cabinet when one of the
following occurs:
1) the inauguration of a new president; or
2) a change in the party composition of the cabinet.
Given these criteria, we gathered information on 437 cabinets in 57 countries, distributed
as follows:
Table One Here
We used a variety of primary and secondary sources to identify cabinet ministers’ party
affiliation, or lack thereof (Appendix Two lists these sources.). These sources permitted us, for
each country, to then calculate the proportion of non-partisan ministers in each cabinet, and then
Convention