Cabinet reshuffles occur when government ministers are moved between departments. They can be relatively minor – for example, when a minister resigns or needs to be replaced – or they can be significant transformations in which several ministers move between posts and new ministerial roles are created or removed. They often take place when a new prime minister from the same party takes office between general elections, although they can also happen when a cabinet has been in place for a period of time and a change is needed.
Over the years, it has become commonplace to see cabinet reshuffles depicted as a defining feature of the UK’s political system and of other Westminster-type democracies. This has fuelled a scholarly debate on the importance of these events, which are viewed as major policy-making mechanisms with far-reaching consequences for the party and for public sector politics at large.
Nevertheless, it is only recently that scholars have begun to study cabinet reshuffles in more systematic and comparative ways. This special collection of essays aims to provide an overview of the different elements that mark and explain these important events.
The motivations for a prime minister to reshuffle their ministerial team are varied, from promoting key allies to fending off internal party rivals. But excessive ministerial churn can undermine the capacity of departments to operate effectively and it makes it harder for parliament to hold ministers to account for policies they oversaw from their original conception to their implementation. Furthermore, using reshuffles to exert party discipline can backfire when sending a critical rival to the backbenches releases them from collective cabinet responsibility and allows them to pursue their own agenda independently.