Ministers and the Goldilocks Effect: Presidential Stakes, Performance Extremes,
and Cabinet Volatility in Ecuador
Corresponding author:
John Polga-Hecimovich
Department of Political Science
University of Pittsburgh
4600 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Telephone: 412-648-7250
Fax: 412-648-7277
jop42@pitt.edu
Santiago Basabe-Serrano
FLACSO Ecuador
sbasabe@flacso.org.ec
Andrés Mejía Acosta
King’s College, International Development Institute
a.mejia@ids.ac.uk
Abstract
According to established wisdom, cabinet turnover under presidentialism is driven by
weaknesses in individual performance, changes in legislative coalitions, and exogenous
shocks from the political and economic arenas. However, empirical evidence from
democratic Ecuador seems to contradict this accepted wisdom, with turnover remaining
high over time despite variation in legislative composition, government status, economic
conditions, and even constitutional rules. We propose that differences in ministers’
duration over time is in part a function of the level of stakes of the principal-agent
relationships between presidents and ministers, with higher political uncertainty resulting
in a ‘Goldilocks Effect’ where both poor and exceptional ministerial performance are
sanctioned as threats. We find cautious empirical support for this theory in a series of
hazard and event count models using over thirty years (1979-2012) of original ministerial
data from Ecuador.
Keywords: Presidential cabinets, ministers, Ecuador, institutional instability
2
On January 12, 2012, Ecuadorian Minister of Health David Chiriboga resigned after
visiting the Baca Ortiz Children’s Hospital in Quito with President Rafael Correa.
Patients complained of long waits and a lack of available doctors throughout the political
visit, but the nadir came when Nayelli Naranjo, a six year old girl, fell down an open
elevator shaft ("Correa confirma renuncia de Chiriboga al Ministerio de Salud" 2012).
After two largely ineffective years in the position, Chiriboga presented his resignation
that afternoon at the request of the president.
This change came just two months after the resignation of Coordinating Minister
of Production, Employment, and Competitiveness Nathalie Cely on November 10, 2011.
Cely, a Harvard graduate and doctoral candidate in Development Economics at
FLACSO-Quito, presented quite a distinct public image from Chiriboga. In fact, she was
publically lauded on numerous occasions by the president as an “examplary” ("Gabinete
a imagen y semejanza" 2010) and “influential” (Enríquez 2011) minister. Further, as an
economics expert within the government, she wielded an enormous amount of influence.
Nonetheless, after merely a year and a half in her position, she was removed by President
Correa and then named Ambassador to the U.S.
In this paper, we argue that these two cases of ministerial removal are not as
different as they seem. Instead, each removal acted as a bulwark protecting a president
anxious to retain a high level of power. In the first scenario, an incompetent minister
proved to be a public risk to the president’s image and was promptly replaced. In the
second, a highly competent, visible, and ambitious minister was transferred out of her
position and appointed to an important post removed from the domestic political game.
From a broader perspective, these cases illustrate that as the stakes of the principal-agent
3
game grow for presidents (i.e. where drift or failure may result in increasingly deleterious
consequences for the president), ministerial removal will increase—especially at
performance extremes.
Nonetheless, this “Goldilocks Effect” of low- and high-
performance ministers being removed as uncertainty grows is at odds with some of the
accepted wisdom regarding cabinet turnover in presidential systems.
Established theory says that cabinet designation in multiparty minority
governments is a common way of consolidating government coalitions under
presidentialism (Amorim Neto 1998; Altman 2000; Mejía Acosta 2009a; Alemán and
Calvo 2010; Martínez-Gallardo 2012), implying that changes in the government coalition
are likely to be accompanied by changes in the executive cabinet. Cabinet appointments
are also seen as an essential tool that presidents use to overcome the challenges of
governing, such as economic crisis or scandal (Martínez-Gallardo 2005). Other literature
focuses on individual characteristics, such as cabinet ministers’ education and experience
(Berlinski et al. 2007), expertise (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008), and ambitions
(Nicholls 1991) as the key factors in determining tenure. Yet, none of these accounts
appears to adequately explain cabinet turnover over time in Ecuador.
Ministerial
turnover has remained high between 1979 and 2012 despite variation in legislative
composition, government status, and economic conditions. The motivating questions are
thus: how applicable is the conventional wisdom regarding ministerial change, and what
factors explain sustained patterns of ministerial duration from country to country?
We propose that presidential instability—or the specter of instability—makes a
president more likely to use strategic removal in order to limit incompetence or threats
from within his or her own cabinet. It is the size and likelihood of potential loss for the
4
president, then, that drives the rate of ministerial turnover.
In stable political
environments like the U.S. or Chile, agency loss may result in poor policy and a decrease
in presidential approval, while in political unstable environments like Ecuador, in which
no elected president finished their term between 1996 and 2006, all types of ministers
may pose direct or indirect threats to presidential permanence. The long history of
presidential instability and uncertainty in Ecuador may therefore be one reason why the
country has maintained the lowest ministerial duration rates in Latin America since
World War II (Suárez 1982).
Here we empirically test our theory of ministerial duration as well as a number of
the accepted reasons for ministerial turnover on an original database of every Ecuadorian
cabinet minister between 1979 and 2012. In order to test a range of parameters, these
data are structured both as discrete-time data, which allow for analysis with time-varying
independent variables, as well as continuous data, permitting the application of a hazard
model.
We find a paucity of statistically significant variables for many of the
conventional explanations, but some support for the theory that government risk and
imminent elections do indeed have a positive impact on cabinet volatility. We then
return to the phenomenon of presidential instability to better explain this change, and
suggest that this should be tested on cross-national data.
The paper proceeds as follows. In the first section we review the conventional
wisdom regarding cabinet turnover, emphasizing the role of cabinet change in
presidentialism. In section two, we explore relevant theories, focusing on those most
relevant to Ecuador’s brand of presidentialism, and develop our own theory of ministerial
volatility. The third section analyzes the Ecuadorian case, establishing the descriptive
5
parameters from 1979-2012 and showing the rise of cabinet reshuffling under President
Correa. We then test this proposition in section four using monthly cabinet data from
1979 to 2012 using duration modeling and a series of event count models. The fifth
section concludes.
1. The Study of Presidential Cabinets
The study of presidential cabinets, and specifically ministerial turnover, is a subfield of
Political Science that has generated great interest in parliamentary systems (Browne et al.
1984; Strøm et al. 1988; King et al. 1990; Laver and Shepsle 1990; Diermeier and
Stevenson 1999), but far less under presidentialism (notable exceptions include Amorim
Neto 1998; Martínez-Gallardo 2005; Camerlo 2012). This is not a minor oversight.
Cabinet stability, or lack thereof, can be indicative of the stability of public policies and
governments’ short- or long-term policy visions and the capacity of governments to carry
out their policy visions, since great volatility may impede policy continuity.
High
turnover can create vacuums in which newcomers have little experience or expertise in
the bureaucracy of which they are in charge (Chang et al. 2001), while excessively long
ministerial tenures may be indicative of executive intransigence, patronage, or nepotism.
In general, when there is uncertainty about whether a politician will be in office in
the next period, politicians do not fully internalize the costs associated with their policy
choices (Persson and Tabellini 2002) and they are unable to commit credibly to
intertemporal arrangements. In terms of cabinet politics in particular, a certain degree of
stability is also necessary to promote long-term policies and, importantly, to see the
implementation of programs and policy through to completion. Frequent turnover
6
promotes shortsightedness in policymaking and favors outcomes that have short-term
benefits, regardless of how costly they might be in the longer run, since their costs will
not be borne by current decision makers.
Volatility is also a measuring stick of government stability itself in the eyes of the
public and especially the legislature, in which excessively high (or low) turnover rates
may show a lack of policy direction. Rapid turnover may be associated with weak
governments that bow to external pressure to change policy, or are simply unable to
implement policy. In this same vein, cabinet control by the president can be interpreted
as a type of signaling game to the legislature and the public about the direction of policy,
willingness to negotiate or collaborate with opposition parties, or simply as a way to
acknowledge a previous policy misstep. As Nelson Polsby says, “When a new president
picks his cabinet, he gives observers the first set of solid clues about the kind of president
he intends to be” (Polsby 1978: 15). For example, removal of a single visible minister or
even wholesale cabinet changes could be a signal of executive strength or policy change.
Or perhaps, given carrying interpretations of the signals based on context and history, a
more useful signal (although not necessarily a true one) could be sent by not removing
ministers. In either case, cabinet appointments serve both implicit and explicit policy
purposes.
2. Ministerial Turnover and Presidential Stakes
What explains variation in the rate of cabinet appointments across administrations and
countries? Accepted theories focus on a range of factors, from administration-specific, to
individual characteristics and qualifications, to exogenous political and economic
7
impacts. One prominent explanation ties cabinet stability under presidentialism to the
stability of government coalitions.
Cabinet designation in multiparty minority
governments is a common way of consolidating government coalitions (Amorim Neto
1998; Altman 2000; Amorim Neto 2002; Mejía Acosta 2009a), which implies that
changes in the government coalition are likely to be accompanied by changes in the
executive cabinet.i
This is especially true of the so-called “political” ministries, as
opposed to the largely economic “technical” ones (Strøm 1990; Conaghan 1995; Amorim
Neto 1998, 2002; Siavelis 2006). The political posts are those portfolios distributed by
the president to forge or fortify legislative support, while technical ministries are
generally protected from explicit legislative political pressure in order to guarantee policy
agility and executive influence (Conaghan 1995).
A second theory views cabinet appointments as an essential tool that presidents
use to overcome the challenges of governing, such as economic crisis or scandal
(Martínez-Gallardo 2005). According to this theory, variation in cabinet stability largely
depends on the electoral calendar and presidents’ relative institutional and political
strength. To begin with, presidents are more likely to use appointments to deal with
shocks as elections draw closer, so it predicts higher cabinet instability as elections
approach. Secondly, and contrary to the first theory, the greater the relative strength of
presidents, the more likely they will rely on cabinet changes to manage crisis.
Consequently, this theory implies that coalition governments should be more stable than
single-party governments.ii
Other literature focuses on individual characteristics, such as cabinet ministers’
education and experience (Berlinski et al. 2007), expertise (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo
8
2008; Dewan and Myatt 2010), and ambitions (Nicholls 1991) as the key factors in
determining tenure. Ministers who enjoy a higher level of education and experience are
should be less likely to commit errors that require sanctioning by the political principal
than their less experienced or educated counterparts. The empirics bear this out in some
circumstances. For example, in an empirical analysis of parliamentary ministers in
Europe, Berlinski, et al. (2007) find that educational background increases ministers’
capacity to survive, and that older ministers and more experienced ministers have higher
hazard rates than newly appointed ministers. The same logic holds for expertise in the
portfolio area: regardless of age, education, or experience, the more knowledgeable a
minister in his or her area, the longer he or she should survive.
Removal therefore functions both as a direct tool and as a signal. To wit, Dewan
and Myatt (2010) assume that any type of government requires high performance by
talented ministers. Removal—or threat of removal—is therefore a mechanism of control
to rid presidents of underperforming ministers and serve as a signal to ministers who gain
too much autonomy. Lastly, ambitious ministers may pursue private ambitions rather
than the objectives of the government. This can result in simple policy loss or drift,
favoring, for example, the business sector in the U.S. (Nicholls 1991). However, in
contexts of low presidential stability, it is possible that this threat is more insidious and
that a capable and ambitious minister may actually pose a threat to the president’s power.
Presidential Stakes and the Goldilocks’ Effect
In the children’s fairy tale of the same name, Goldilocks enters the house of three bears
and finds successive amenities (e.g. porridge, beds) too extreme in one direction or the
9
other before settling on one that is “just right”. As applied to the social or natural
sciences, the Goldilocks Effect refers to the phenomenon failing at extreme conditions,
but thriving in the middle. Along these lines, we propose that enduring ministers in
environments of high institutional instability are those that comply with the Goldilocks’
Principle: they fall within a certain margin of compliance and capability without reaching
negative (incompetence) or positive (extreme capability) extremes. We theorize that
ministers at these performance extremes exacerbate the principal-agent problem inherent
in the delegation of power, especially as presidential risk rises.
A powerful minister can overshadow the president and threaten party leadership
in the president’s scheduled or premature succession. A president rationally attempts to
carry out useful policies, or at least maximize his or her own electoral prospects through
policy. He or she can achieve this in part by surrounding herself with capable ministers
(Dewan and Myatt 2010). This, of course, creates the possibility of an agency problem:
ministers may choose to pursue individual ambitions instead of presidential goals. The
solution to this problem is clear. In the private sector, the principal could manipulate the
agent’s financial compensation to create incentives for compliance with the president’s
objectives; however, this is not feasible in the public sector. Instead, the president can
exercise control by removing or rotating that minister.
Cabinet reshuffling, then, is a useful instrument in tempering ministerial ambition
and threats to the president’s power.
Notably, Indriđason and Kam’s (Kam and
Indriđason 2005; Indriđason and Kam 2008) theory of cabinet reshuffles in parliamentary
systems emphasize that it is a tool used to retain power in the face of both intraparty and
electoral challenges. According to their theory, the more vulnerable a Prime Minister
10
(PM) is to an internal leadership challenge or electoral defeat, the greater the incentives
to reshuffle her cabinet. Although we agree with Indriđason and Kam’s basic logic, it is
important to note that cabinet reshuffles under parliamentarism involve re-distributing
cabinet portfolios to other members of the same coalition parties, and not merely the
transfer of ministers from one ministry to another. Nonetheless, the underlying reasoning
remains: presidents want to remain in power (both de jure and de facto), and cabinet
reshuffles allow them to maintain the expertise and loyalty of trusted ministers while
undercutting those ministers’ power.
Our twist to this explanation is that both cross-national and longitudinal variation
can be explained by examining the expected utility of agency loss. In situations or
systems where presidential survival is guaranteed and the impact of agency loss is limited
to the policy arena, ministerial turnover is likely to be blunted. However, in other
situations, agency loss may ultimately result in threats to the president’s survival, through
threats from the population or the legislature (as a result of policy mistakes, in the case of
a poorly performing minister) or through threats from the cabinet (as a result of strong
ministers who may pose a direct threat to presidential power). Ultimately, the same level
of ministerial competence or ministerial threat should then produce different outcomes
under different institutional environments, meaning the range of behavior that leads to
turnover grows as presidential stability decreases.
This range of permanence is depicted in Figure 1.
In a stable political
environment, a broad range of competence or threat posed by ministers is tolerated, since
the consequences of their actions are more limited. In unstable environments where
presidential stability is not guaranteed, as in the bottom part of Figure 1, the survival
11
range decreases. The same minister that might survive in the stable political environment
will not survive in this unstable one.
This distinction is important, because it
acknowledges the validity of commonly accepted causes of minister termination, such as
individual performance or a shakeup in the wake of an exogenous shock, while offering
an explanation for broad cross-national or administration-to-administration differences.
As the figure shows, incompetent ministers are less tolerated under both circumstances
than potentially challenging “strong” ministers.
In other words, all things equal, a
president prefers a potentially threatening competent ministers to a potentially threatening
incompetent minister.
[Figure 1 about here]
In other words, ministerial volatility is a function of the stakes of the principalagent relationship, in conjunction with the competence of or threat posed by a president’s
cabinet ministers.
Sensibly, volatility is therefore a result of both presidential and
ministerial characteristics. On one hand, an incompetent or highly threatening minister –
the two extreme types— should be removed under any type of government for
undermining the president’s objectives. On the other hand, this is conditioned on the
potential consequences for the president.
Focusing on this conditioning factor, we
therefore propose that,
H: An increase in presidential risk will cause a decrease in ministerial tenure.
This hypothesis is similar to Martínez-Gallardo’s (2005) proposal that cabinet
reshuffles are responses to exogenous shocks, such as economic or political crisis, yet
there is a subtle and vital difference: we believe that managing the cabinet is not a
response to crisis, but in anticipation of it. Further, there is no way to account for
12
pervasive, long-term cross-national differences in duration patterns under MartínezGallardo’s account. Taking into account political and presidential stability does this quite
well.
In sum, the conventional wisdom may do a good job of explaining cabinet
ministers’ tenure, but these variables’ impacts are also conditional upon the country’s
institutional stability (like country fixed effects) and the president’s perceived stability
(administration fixed effects). So, how do these theories apply to Ecuador, a country
with one of the highest rates of ministerial turnover in the world?
3. Cabinet Turnover and Reshuffling in Ecuador
The rate of ministerial turnover in Ecuador has been consistently high dating from the
1940s. In a comparative analysis of executive power from 1940 to 1976, Suárez (1982)
shows that Ecuador had the lowest average ministerial duration of the twenty Latin
American countries included, at just 13.7 months per minister (compared to a regional
average of 23 months and a high of 50.6 months in Paraguay). In part, this is due to the
fact that Ecuador also exhibited the lowest level of presidential duration in the region in
the same timeframe, with the average president lasting only 1.6 years, compared to a
regional average of 2.7 years (Suárez 1982: 116). Still, it is notable that these patterns
have not changed over time. If anything, the high rate of turnover in Ecuador has
continued after the return to democracy in 1979.
Comparing 12 Latin America countries’ cabinetsiii between 1990 and 2000,
Martínez Gallardo (2005) shows that the most unstable cabinets were the five Andean
countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela) while the most stable
cabinet came from more institutionally stable polities (Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and to
13
a lesser degree Argentina and Mexico). According to these data, the cabinet turnover rate
in Ecuador was among the highest in the region: it had the second-highest number of total
ministers, the second-highest number of total changes, the second-lowest average tenure
length, the second-lowest overall portfolio stability, the fourth-lowest average tenure as a
proportion of the total presidential term, and the highest proportion of turnover due to
termination and not reshuffling (Martínez-Gallardo 2005: 83-85, 178).
Our own data, which covers the full period of time from re-democratization in
1979 to January 2013, reveal even higher rates of ministerial volatility as those described
by Martínez-Gallardo.iv These data were collected independently from publicly available
records, presidential decrees, and then corroborated with newspaper reports and the
excellent ministry-by-ministry breakdowns provided in Rivera Molina (2006: 505-518).
They reveal 451 departed ministers in 29 different cabinet offices in 12 administrations.
As shown in Table 1, the overall average duration of a minister is approximately 386
days, less than 40% of Martínez-Gallardo’s regional average of 991 days. The mean
duration is a little over thirteen months per minister, with a model category of merely
150-200 days and a heavily right-skewed distribution. During this time, only seven
Ecuadorian ministers managed to last a full presidential term of four years, and all seven
served under the Borja (1988-1992) or Durán-Ballén (1992-1996) administrations.v
[Table 1 about here]
As illustrated by previous research (Burbano de Lara and Rowland 1998; Mejía
Acosta 2009b), average duration is likely to vary by administration, constitutional
periods, and type of cabinet ministry.
Not surprisingly, the average shortest-lived
ministers come from administrations that were interrupted by death of the president
14
(Jaime Roldós), presidential oustings (Abdalá Bucaram, Jamil Mahuad, Lucio Gutiérrez)
or that resulted from an interim government (Alfredo Palacio).vi When aggregated by the
constitutional period, the administrations corresponding to the 1978 Constitution (19781998) had a cabinet duration of 443 days. The cabinet ministers serving during the next
period under the 1998 Constitution (1998-2008) lasted an average of 337 days. The
increased volatility in this second period is in fact paradoxical given that the 1998
constitution which was meant to bring improved governance, by protecting (among other
things) cabinet ministers from legislative challenges in the form of impeachments.
Finally, the cabinet members serving during the Correa administration have lasted an
average of nearly 366 days.
The data also show significant variation in duration according to exit patterns. As
illustrated in Table 1, 39% (177 of 451) of the cases end their mandate due to exogenous
factors that are outside direct political motivations (death of incumbent, end of elected
period, or end of interim period). Another 47% (212 of 451) of cases are the result of
direct resignations from ministers or removals by the president. While most resignations
are nominally explained as “personal reasons”, in practice it is quite challenging to
determine the real cause behind the resignation. For example, ministers would have been
asked to resign by the president if their exit contributes to a broader coalition formation
strategy, or the president is trying to pre-empt an imminent scandal.
[Table 2 about here]
This high level of turnover in Ecuador before the Correa government is a logical
extension of the conventional wisdom tying coalition formation and maintenance to the
distribution of cabinet portfolios. From 1979 to 2006, Ecuadorian presidents largely
15
relied on coalitions to govern (Burbano de Lara and Rowland 1998; Mejía Acosta 2009a;
Mejía Acosta and Polga-Hecimovich 2011), in large part because no president ever held a
single-party majority in the National Congress. Pro-government majorities were formed
in 15 of 23 congressional elections between 1979 and 2002 and there were at least four
more majority coalitions formed under the Gutiérrez and Palacio administrations from
2003 to 2006 (Mejía Acosta and Polga-Hecimovich 2011).
One of the primary
bargaining chips in negotiating these legislative agreements was cabinet appointments.
Yet given the negative public perception of being allied to the government—the origin of
the pejorative term “gobiernista”—parties often preferred to negotiate clandestine
legislative agreements known as “ghost coalitions” in lieu of public ones (Mills 1984;
Mejía Acosta 2009a). As a result, most cabinet officials were officially unaffiliated with
any political party, and Ecuador was the Latin American country with the lowest
percentage of partisan cabinets (Amorim Neto 1998).
This explanation also loses traction in explaining turnover after 2008. Under the
2008 Constitution, President Correa’s Alianza País earned a near single-party legislative
majority in the new National Assembly, with 59 out of 124 possible seats, and snared an
additional four “unaligned” legislators. As of January 2013, Correa had ruled for a total
of six years, the longest tenure of any president in the past century. He has enjoyed close
to a government majority during this time, record-high petroleum prices helping to fill
government coffers, and sustained high public approval. Under these circumstances, the
expectation would be for ministers to endure longer than average, or at least the average
from the legislative-dominated 1979-2006 era. However, referring back to Table 1, the
16
mean duration for cabinet ministers under Correa is 413 days, shorter than the regional
average, but slightly longer than the historical average in post-Third Wave Ecuador.
Censored data
Still, none of these data take into account censored cases, where presidential duration
may prejudice the “natural” duration of ministers. As the literature describes, ministers
almost never endure from one administration to the next (Amorim Neto 1998; MartínezGallardo 2005).vii This is especially important to consider in Ecuador, where all three
presidents elected from 1996 to 2006 failed to finish their terms, and none of their
caretaker presidents lasted more than three years in office. As a result, it would be
impossible, for example, for Bucaram’s ministers to exceed 184 days because Bucaram
himself left office after only 184 days in office. Correa, meanwhile, has endured nearly
six years in power.
We plot a bar chart of the monthly turnover from 1979 to January 2013 in Figure
2, where the vertical tick marks and reference lines denote presidential change (either
through elections or non-constitutional means). The results show that the longer duration
of Correa’s ministers is in part a function of the increased term length, with absolute
volatility remaining high. Despite the creation and inclusion of new ministries in 2009,
the Correa period shows consistent turnover from month to month, and reaches a
maximum of 13 in April 2010, as denoted by the high mark three-quarters of the way into
the period.
[Figure 2 about here]
17
Plotting the “natural” duration rates of ministers by administration reinforces
these previous conclusions. A Kaplan-Meier survival function estimates the hazard rate
while taking censored data into account (e.g. the government ends before the minister’s
fate is observed, the minister dies, etc.). When no truncation or censoring occurs, the
Kaplan–Meier curve is equivalent to the empirical distribution function. On the plot in
Figure 3, the small vertical tick-marks indicate losses, where a minister’s survival time
has been right-censored. Disaggregated by administration, it is clear that ministerial
duration under Correa’s government is close to the historical mean. Comparing the rate
at 500 days of government, Correa’s ministers have a 40% chance of survival, around the
same rate as previous administrations that lasted at least 500 days.
A log-rank test of equality for each administration provides further evidence of
the proportionality of the groups to the larger sample (i.e. whether or not the survival
functions are approximately parallel). This allows us to compare the observed ministerial
change in each administration to the predicted change, and evaluate which
administrations were more or less volatile. As Table 3 shows, the Roldós was much
more volatile than expected, with 14 non-censored ministerial changes against an
expectation of fewer than six.
By contrast, the following eight administrations—
including two removed presidents and three interim presidents—were actually more
stable than expected given the volatility of the whole sample. The remaining three
presidents—Gutiérrez, Palacio, and Correa—then appear to have much less stable
cabinets than expected. These data are confounding in a number of respects. First, it
appears that constitutional changes do not map onto these patterns of ministerial
instability clearly.
Secondly, periods dependent on coalition government are both
18
volatile (Roldós, Gutiérrez) and relatively stable (Borja, Febres Cordero), while the noncoalition Correa government was relatively less stable. Lastly, there is no consistent
pattern or increasing or decreasing stability over time.
[Figure 3 and Table 3 about here]
Applying the same Kaplan-Meier survival function and log-rank equality test to
data disaggregated by ministry type reveal some clear results. We advance a rather
simple but effective division in terms of cabinets in charge of technical regulation,
political influence and service delivery. The first group is made of cabinet members
elected on purely technical criteria or to serve in cabinets of strategic economic
importance for the country (Finance, Energy, Production, Mines and Oil, etc.). By
definition, these cabinet posts are not directly linked to partisan interests in the legislature
but are rather isolated to produce decisive policy making (Conaghan and Malloy 1994;
Mejía Acosta 2009b). In second place, the “political” ministries are cabinet posts that
serve a direct strategic political function directly relevant to the president (Interior,
Foreign Affairs, etc.). Generally these cabinets are the product of internal and strategic
negotiations with other political allies.
Thirdly, the “service delivery” (Education,
Health, Social Development, Public Works) cabinets play an important political role
because they can have direct electoral consequences. As shown in Figure 4, the ministers
in the economic ministries last less time than their counterparts in political or social
ministries, beginning to differentiate themselves about 200 days into their period. The
log-rank test reveals 83 technical ministers resigned or were removed from office
between 1979 and 2012 when “only” 59 were expected given the overall level of
volatility.
19
[Figure 4 about here]
4. Data and Method: Testing Causes of Cabinet Change in Ecuador
To test the explanations of presidential cabinet turnover, we use a data on all 479
Ecuadorian cabinet ministers from August 1979 to December 2012. To test the range of
hypotheses, we create two databases: (1) a discrete time set that uses month (N=401) as
the unit of analysis and allows the inclusion of time-varying independent variables, such
as government stability/risk, (2) a continuous-time set with individual ministers as the
unit of analysis (N=479), permitting tests of individual-level characteristics. In set (1), the
dependent variable is monthly status of each cabinet minister, measured dichotomously
(in office, removed) or categorically (in office, removed/resigned, transferred, exogenous
removal). The dependent variable for set (2) is the duration of each individual in office
in days, with a mean value of 386 days.
We operationalize the principal independent variable, presidential risk, through a
measure of government risk from the Political Risk Group’s International Country Risk
Guide (ICRG). This monthly assessment, carried out from 1984 to the present, is a
combination of the government’s ability to carry out its declared programs and its ability
to stay in office. The rating is the sum of three subcomponents, each with a maximum
score of four points and a minimum score of 0 points. A score of 4 points equates to the
lowest risk and a score of 0 points to highest risk.
The subcomponents are: 1)
government unity, 2) legislative strength, and 3) popular support. The values here range
from 4 to 11, with a mean of 6.72 (SD=1.57), and are once-lagged in the estimations to
20
account for a government reaction to perceived risk; descriptive statistics for all variables
summarized in the appendix.
We also include fixed effects for administration in the duration model, adding
presidential dummies. These variables can help determine if ministers were more likely
to leave under presidents who lasted a full term (Febres Cordero, Borja, Durán Ballén,
Correa until the present) in comparison to those who were removed from power before
ending their terms (Bucaram, Mahuad, Gutiérrez) or those who were caretakers (Hurtado,
Alarcón, Noboa, Palacio). We can also observe the impacts of presidents who faced
great uncertainty and survived (Hurtado) versus those who fell (Mahuad, Gutiérrez) and
those who faced greater certainty and fell (Bucaram) and those who survived without any
great threat to their survival (e.g. Borja).
Other independent variables are included to test the validity of accepted theories.
Approaching elections is operationalized in set (1) as a dummy variable that codes if the
change took place within one year of a scheduled election. For testing the effect of
coalition changes, we draw on data from Mills (1984), Burbano de Lara and Rowland
(1998), Mejía Acosta (2006) and Mejía Acosta and Polga-Hecimovich (2011). This is a
dummy for whether there was a change in legislative coalition that month. To test the
effect of ministry type, we code a trichotomous variable “ministry type” for political,
economic, or social ministry as described above. In the estimations, we then present
three sets of dummy variables for the three values. We use a number of variables to test
the effect of economic effects on turnover. Using data from the National Institute of
Statistics and Census (INEC), we code for 1) the percentage difference between the
estimated cost of the food basket and the minimum monthly salary, and 2) the monthly
21
average price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, Ecuador’s primary source of
government revenue. We also include a dummy to code for any previous ministerial
experience.
Following the two changes of political constitution since 1998, we trichotomously
code for the three political constitutions and then use dummy variables for each of them.
To fill in any questions regarding the coalition change variable, we include continuous
variables of percentage of presidential party seats in the assembly and share of coalition
seats in the assembly. Likewise, “gender” is a dummy variable that accounts for the
minister’s gender; and “initial appointment” is a dummy that shows if the minister is the
first appointed under a given president. “Presidential change” is added to some of the
discrete-time models to control for turnover due to administration change.
Like ministerial threats, other theoretical links shown in the literature such as
partisanship and education have been shown as predictors of turnover (Borrelli et al.
2012).
Unfortunately, in many cases these ministers are officially unaffiliated
“independents” in Ecuador, and their education history is not readily available, especially
prior to the 2000s.
Models
Given our research question(s) and data structure, we utilize an event history approach to
model the risk of ministerial exit in Ecuador. A basic OLS estimator would not only bias
the statistical conclusions but produce nonsensical results: OLS does not easily
accommodate covariates that change value over time, it assumes linearity in survival
times that may not be realistic, it cannot distinguish censored from non-censored cases,
22
and since it is not based on maximum likelihood, it may return negative predicted
duration values. An event history model overcomes these problems while explicitly
modeling the dependent variable’s conditional failure rate. Further, given the nature of
our theoretical expectations and independent variables, we use two different types of
event history models: 1) discrete time event count modeling, and 2) continuous time
hazard modeling. We need both sets of models because in order to test both individuallevel and time-varying characteristics, our dependent variable takes two forms: one that
records the number of ministers removed per month, and a second that uses the amount of
time elapsed before ministerial removal.
The first set of estimations uses an even count model, specifically a negative
binomial (NB) model. In this approach, the dependent variable is a count of events—in
this case, number of minister removed—that are nonnegative integers, bounded at a lower
limit of 0 and unbounded above. The specific model type depends on the ratio of
dispersion of the dependent variable to the mean of that variable. Since they are not
roughly equal, indicating overdispersion of the dependent variable, we discard the
possibility of a Poisson regression and instead run an NB regression.viii
In the latter case, we apply the Cox proportional hazards model with a Breslow
method for handling ties. The Cox model is most appropriate because, unlike other
hazard models, it is does not assume any specific duration dependency parameter. The
model employs the Breslow method to handle ties, or coterminous events, which leaves
the risk set unchanged and is one of the most commonly implemented methods for Cox
models (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 2004: 54). This model produces hazard ratios that
can be interpreted as the hazard of experiencing an event in the baseline or “reference”
23
category; values between 0 and 1 indicate a smaller hazard than the baseline hazard,
while values above 1 indicate a greater propensity to suffer failure.
Results
The results of the estimations (Tables 4 and 5) show mixed evidence for established
theories of ministerial turnover in presidential systems, and cautious support for the role
of government risk. The count models include the incidence rate ratios (IRR) for all
estimations, which is the equivalent of log-odds ratios or the hazard ratios from the
duration models.
Model 1 in the event count estimations is a full estimation that
maximizes the number of observations and uses absolute ministerial exit as the dependent
variable. In it, lagged presidential risk is statistically significant and positive, indicating
that a one unit increase in risk one month is associated with an increase of 1.16 ministers
removed the following month (following the IRR value). There are other positive values.
Following some of the conventional wisdom associated with the Ecuadorian case, a
change in coalition is associated with a high level of ministerial turnover.
More
enigmatically, and contrary to theory, an increase in the price of oil is associated with an
increase in minister turnover in the first three estimations.
Model 2 includes a dummy for whether or not the presidential administration
changed in a given month, and further includes the variable for the restriction on the
family food basket. The first of these totally wipes out the effect of lagged risk, as well
as that of coalitions. This is not surprising: a change in administration, which three times
in the data was the product of increased government instability, is correlated to both
coalition change and risk.
When this risk is taken into account by changing the
24
dependent variable to only those changes that were due to removal or resignation (model
3), negating the utility of administration change, neither risk nor coalition change are
significant.
However, drawing a sub-sample from the Correa administration, which has not
faced administration change or large-scale pacts between parties, provides some
additional leverage for the role of government risk on ministerial change: the lagged
value is nearly significant when all types of removal are taken into account (that is,
resignations, removals, transfers, and interim minister changes) and reaches conventional
levels of significance when considering only removals, resignations, and transfers.ix
[Table 4 about here]
As Table 5 shows, individual-level factors do not have a systematic effect on
duration, while administration-level variables are a more intriguing.
For example,
election years cause a noticeable increase in ministerial change, as do specific
administrations. Ministers from economic ministers can expect to last less time in their
positions that there counterparts in political ministries; using the ratios from models 6
(without the constitutional dummies) and 7 (with these constitutional dummies), these
ministers suffer around a 60% higher hazard rate. Likewise, ministers in their position
one year before an election should expect even less stability: a 115-127% higher hazard
than ministers serving in non-election years. The administration dummies also offer
some interesting answers: many of these variables are significant in the two estimations
shown in Table 5. However, almost all of these hazard rates are all between 0 and 1,
indicating a lower probability of experiencing ministerial turnover under them then the
reference category of President Roldós. That is, all else equal, a minister under any
25
president besides Roldós had a better chance at surviving. Yet, controlling for different
constitutional rules in model 2, the Gutiérrez and Palacio administrations rise above 1 and
become statistically significant, with ministers under these governments experiencing a
hazard rate around 100% higher than Roldós’ ministers.
[Table 5 about here]
How does the accepted theory fare?
The effect of approaching elections is
supported in the Cox estimations—where it is operationalized as a dummy variable
coding for exit in the year leading up to an election. There appears to be an important
electoral period in the last year before presidential elections in which presidents aim to
reposition their or their party’s support through strategic ministerial removals or transfers.
Similarly, the type of ministerial post does appear to have a statistically
significant impact when it concerns economic posts. Yet contrary to expectations, these
technocratic positions appear to be more easily replaceable by the president—about 60%
more than political posts. Ministers in social ministries, however, do not endure any
shorter or longer than their counterparts. This may be linked to presidents’ trust: the
political ministries represent “inner-circle” portfolios staffed by individuals the president
trusts more, while economic ministries are more likely to be staffed by technocrats the
presidents trusts less.
The relationship between coalition change and turnover is only partially supported
by the data. This confounds the empirical explanations proposed in Mejía Acosta, et al.
(2009b) and others regarding ministerial change in Ecuador. Likewise, the effect of
economic crisis on ministerial reshuffling does not find support from the economic
variables in the models. Lastly, the impact of previous ministerial experience is not
26
supported by the statistical results. In other words, when presented with over 33 years of
ministerial turnover in a highly volatile political environment, few of the conventional
theories appear to hold water.
The large magnitude and significant Gutiérrez and Palacio dummies in model 2
indicate that these unstable governments did rely on ministerial change more than other
administrations in order to endure. The real concern should actually be the lack of
variation in presidential stability with which to test removal: Ecuadorian presidential
survival is among the most tenuous in Latin America, from pre-Third Wave leaders
(Fitch 1977; Pyne 1977) to the present period (Mejía Acosta and Polga-Hecimovich
2011; Bowen 2012; Conaghan 2012). The best laboratory to test this proposal may be the
entire universe of cases from stable, institutionalized democracies as well as uncertain,
poorly institutionalized ones like Ecuador. Martínez-Gallardo’s description of ministerial
stability in Mexico and the Southern Cone in contrast to the Andes is just one sign that
this may be the case.
The poor statistical performance of many commonly held explanations shows that
ministerial change is not just a kneejerk response to exogenous shocks, the result of
changes to negotiated agreements between the president and congress, or characteristics
of the individual ministers. What does this mean for the role of risk? As our theory
predicts, it does have an effect on ministers. The fact that it is not as consistent as hoped,
however, may be testament to empirical weaknesses rather than theoretical ones. First,
the ICRG measure of stability does not vary wildly over time in Ecuador, with a standard
deviation of 1.57 around a mean of 6.72. Secondly, its insight into measuring the
president’s perception of his risk is ultimately limited, since it is based on observable
27
statements and actions.
Lastly, a baseline level of instability likely pervades all
administrations, dulling the effects of monthly changes. Ministerial exit patterns are not
likely to vary greatly from one administration to the next within a single country, and
future tests of this theory must consider a cross-section of countries.
This issue deserves further study.
As mentioned, Correa was ex-President
Alfredo Palacio’s Minister of Finance, and used the position and some radical policy
rhetoric to leap to the public consciousness. Although only in office for a short while, he
used this media attention and public platform as a springboard to launch his presidential
candidacy and establish his bona fides as a political heavyweight. The Latin American
Weekly Report, suggests that the April 2010 cabinet reshuffling and an increasing
reliance on technocrats may have been Correa’s reaction to threats to his power from
within his own party, specifically ex-Foreign Minister Fander Falconí and ex-Alianza
País ally Alberto Acosta, rather than other parts of the weak and fragmented congress
(Farmer 2010: 7). Acosta, for example, used his own visibility to launch his presidential
campaign against Correa in the 2013 elections.
5. Conclusion
We offer an original theory of ministerial change that builds on existing ideas and
enriches the conventional wisdom by providing explanations for administration- and
country-level differences through the concept of presidential risk. Whereas the accepted
theoretical tools are insufficient to explain sustained high or low rates of turnover, our
theory links cabinet management not only to threats faced by the president (from
ministers or otherwise) but the underlying level of stability in that administration or
28
country. Individual-level or systemic factors therefore play roles in both systems, but
there effects are likely to be accentuated in less stable institutional environments or in
places where governments face high risk or the consequences of agency loss are high.
The implications in a country like Ecuador are clear. Ecuadorian presidents have faced
constant concerns about their own survival since the nineteenth century, so the potential
threat posed from excessively weak or excessively strong cabinet ministers is much
higher than, for example, in the U.S.
This produces an increase in the so-called
Goldilocks Effect.
Empirically, we offer original data of over 400 ministerial changes in Ecuador in
two formats, permitting different types of statistical tests and the inclusion of different
types of variables. The results raise questions as to the strength of many conventional
explanations for cabinet turnover in presidential democracies. These results are mixed:
while electoral concerns and certain administration-level factors do impact cabinet
change, many individual-level traits and exogenous factors are statistically insignificant.
Neither political or economic crisis nor shifting “mobile majorities” in the legislature
appear to have an impact on ministerial exit.
Furthermore, basic individual
characteristics such as gender and previous experience do not appear to have an effect on
duration. Instead, in at least some of the scenarios tested here, political risk has a
statistically significant and positive effect on ministerial exit. Still, more cross-national
work along the lines of Martínez Gallardo (2005, 2010) is needed in order to determine
the macro causes responsible for these patterns.
Additionally, what are the consequences of extreme ministerial volatility? Does
volatility beget more volatility? Do policies suffer? This is a subject of great import.
29
Cabinet control by the president is a way to signal to the legislature and the public about
the direction of policy, willingness to negotiate or collaborate with opposition parties, or
simply as a way to acknowledge a previous policy misstep. Much of the literature has
focused on cabinet change as a dependent variable, but more is needed that examining
ministerial change as an independent variable affecting everything from bureaucratic
stability and efficiency, to policy time horizons. There must be substantive differences in
the policy output of a ministry with one minister in four years to one with six ministers
over the same time span. Cabinets are a nexus of executive decision-making and policy
delegation, and understanding both the causes and effects of cabinet change are essential
to understanding a president’s intentions and goals.
30
APPENDIX
Table. Descriptive statistics
Variable
Minimum Maximum
Event count model:
Ministerial exit
0
17
Government stability
4
11
Presidential change
0
1
Coalition change
0
1
Crude oil (WTI, US$)
11.28
133.93
Basic food basket (%)
0
67.2
Hazard model:
Ministerial duration
Gender
Initial appointment
Previous experience
Electoral year
Ministerial type
Constitution
Administration
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
Mean
N
1.125
6.716
0.03
0.057
37.653
33.574
401
350
401
401
401
269
1794 385.913 451
1
0.154 479
1
0.342 479
1
0.203 479
1
0.148 479
3
2.159 479
3
1.752 479
12
7.956 479
31
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34
Table 1. Ministerial duration by administration (1979-2012)
President
Years
Party Mean duration Min Max
Jaime Roldós
1979-1981 CFP
238.78
9
544
Osvaldo Hurtado
1981-1984 DP
470.03
62
983
León Febres Cordero 1984-1988 PSC
527.31
7
1221
Rodrigo Borja
1988-1992 ID
664.04
21
1440
Sixto Durán Ballén
1992-1996 PUR 479.05
6
1440
Abdalá Bucaram
1996-1997 PRE 153.35
40
184
Fabián Alarcón
1997-1998 FRA 341.08
102 536
Jamil Mahuad
1998-2000 DP
270.43
1
524
Gustavo Noboa
2000-2003 Ind.
475.24
11
1074
Lucio Gutiérrez
2003-2005 PSP
252.56
3
816
Alfredo Palacio
2005-2007 Ind.
219.41
5
624
Rafael Correa
2007-2012 AP
413.44
4
1794
Ecuador
1979-2012
385.91
1
1794
Latin America
1990-2000
991.25
1
3233
Source: Original; Latin American data from Martínez-Gallardo (2005)
N
18
37
32
26
42
17
24
30
33
48
42
102
451
997
35
Table 2. Types of ministerial change by period, 1979-2012
Constitution
Exit
1978-1998 1998-2007 2008-2012 Total
2
0
6
Death
4
51
0
137
Presidential change
86
17
12
34
Interim term
5
19
8
47
Transfer
20
115
29
212
Resignation/removal
68
2
0
15
Censoring
13
0
28
28
In office
0
206
77
479
Total
196
36
Table 3. Log-rank equality test for survival functions
Admin.
Observed Expected
Roldós
14
5.81
Hurtado
21
27.51
Febres Cordero
16
28.29
Borja
13
29.18
Durán Ballén
25
32.34
Bucaram
2
2.72
Alarcón
10
11.82
Mahuad
10
11.39
Noboa
23
26.01
Gutiérrez
32
17.21
Palacio
26
12.34
Correa
82
69.38
Total
274
274
Chi-squared
63.23
p value
0.000
37
Table 4. Negative binomial models of ministerial duration in Ecuador
Full sample
Correa Subsample
(1) Exit, Full
(2) Exit, Adm. Change
(3) Removal
(4) Exit
(5) Removal
Coef/se
IRR
Coef/se
IRR
Coef/se
IRR
Coef/se IRR Coef/se IRR
Admin. change
2.919**
18.530**
(0.428)
(7.928)
Risk (t-1)
0.149** 1.161**
0.040
1.040
0.018
1.018
-0.01+ 0.99+ 0.518* 1.679*
(0.062) (0.072)
(0.061)
(0.063)
(0.070) (0.071)
-0.267 -0.264 -0.297 -0.499
Oil
0.013** 1.014**
0.013**
1.013** 0.014** 1.014**
-0.01
0.99 -0.001 0.999
(0.004) (0.004)
(0.004)
(0.005)
(0.005) (0.005)
-0.011 -0.01
-0.01
-0.01
Food basket
0.002
1.002
0.007
1.007
0.017 1.017 -0.031
0.97
(0.010)
(0.010)
(0.011) (0.012)
-0.028 -0.029
-0.03 -0.029
Coalition change 1.880** 6.553**
0.193
1.213
0.038
1.039
(0.373) (2.446)
(0.384)
(0.466)
(0.452) (0.470)
/lnalpha
0.764**
0.075
0.413**
0.653**
0.406
(0.141)
(0.215)
(0.198)
-0.273
-0.33
N
347
266
266
72
72
log likelihood
-469.714
-361.879
-326.720
-104.38
-104.38
* p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.001, + p≈0.1
38
Table 5. Cox models of ministerial duration in Ecuador (Breslow method)
(6)
(7)
Variable
Hazard ratio/se
Hazard ratio/se
Gender
0.831
(.16) 0.835
(.16)
Initial appointment
0.878
(.12) 0.919
(.13)
Previous experience
1.171
(.19) 1.160
(.19)
Electoral year
2.153*** (.35) 2.273*** (.38)
Ministry type (0=political)
Economic
1.616**
(.27) 1.608**
(.27)
Social
1.031
(.16) 1.026
(.16)
Constitution (0=1978-1998)
1998-2008
0.326*** (.11)
2008-present
0.453*
(.15)
Administration (0=Roldós)
Hurtado
0.232*** (.08) 0.231*** (.08)
Febres Cordero
0.158*** (.06) 0.153*** (.06)
Borja
0.135*** (.05) 0.131*** (.05)
Durán Ballén
0.2533*** (.09) 0.248*** (.09)
Bucaram
0.365
(.28) 0.355
(.27)
Alarcón
0.305**
(.13) 0.293**
(.12)
Mahuad
0.408*
(.17) 1.227
(.45)
Noboa
0.298*** (.11) 0.899
(.24)
Gutiérrez
0.783
(.25) 2.380*** (.60)
Palacio
0.662
(.23) 1.964**
(.51)
Correa
0.378**
(.12) (omitted)
N
451
451
Log-likelihood
-1357.409
-1356.497
* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001, all in one-tailed t tests
39
Figure 1. Range of ministerial behavior in which ministers remain or are removed
1.1 Stable political environment
Low competence
High competence
(Range in which minister remains)
1.2 Unstable political environment
Low competence
High competence
(Range in which minister remains)
40
Figure 2. Monthly ministerial volatility in Ecuador (August 1979 — January 2013)
SD
B
R
BC
LF
C
O
H
L
JR
A
Changes
0
5
10
15
August 1979 - March 1996
R
C
D
AP
G
LG
B
G
N
B
W
JM
AB
O
FA
R
0
5
10
15
April 1996-January 2013
Month
41
Figure 3. Kaplan-Meier survival functions, by presidential administration
Kaplan-Meier survival estimates
Roldós
Febres Cordero
Borja
0.
0
0
0
1
00 .25 .50 .75 .00
Hurtado
0
200
400
600
0
500
Durán Ballén
1000
0
500
1000
1500
0
500
Alarcón
1000
1500
Mahuad
0.
0
0
0
1
00 .25 .50 .75 .00
Bucaram
0
500
1000
1500
0
50
100
150
200
0
Gutiérrez
200
400
600
0
200
Palacio
400
600
Correa
0.
0
0
0
1
00 .25 .50 .75 .00
Noboa
0
500
1000
0
200
400
600
800
0
200
400
600
0
500
1000 1500 2000
Days
Graphs by Administration
42
Figure 4. Kaplan-Meier survival functions, by ministry type
0.
00
0.
25
0.
50
0.
75
1.
00
Kaplan-Meier survival estimates
0
500
1000
Days
Political
Social
1500
2000
Economic
43
i
One caveat is raised by Amorim Neto (2002), who is careful to note that not all types of
cabinet distribution imply coalition government.
ii
A related research question concerns the sources of cabinet turnover (Amorim Neto and
Strøm 2006; Schleiter and Morgan-Jones 2009, 2010). The concept of cabinet control is
explicitly explored by Schleiter and Morgan-Jones (2010), who use a principal-agent
account of semi presidential cabinets to explain whether cabinet management lies with
the president or assembly parties. They combine the Amorim Neto and Strøm (2006) “tug
of war” bargaining model between the prime minister and the president with the
perspective of parties who negotiate with the president on behalf of the assembly
(Schleiter and Morgan-Jones 2009).
Broadly speaking, Schleiter and Morgan-Jones
(2010) argue that control of semi presidential cabinets depends on the authority that the
constitution and elections give to presidential and assembly parties to control the
government on behalf of voters.
iii
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay,
Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
iv
A complete list of all ministers and their duration is avarilable in the supplemental
appendix and online at [web address removed to preserve author anonymity].
v
Three under Borja (Defense Minister Jorge Félix Mena, Health Minister Plutarco
Naranjo Vargas, and Foreign Relations Minister Diego Cordovéz) and four under DuránBallén (Housing Minister Francisco Albornoz, Agriculture Minister Mariano González
Portes, Labor Minister Alfredo Corral Borrero, and Public Works Minister Pedro López
Torres).
Ministers Marcela Aguiñaga Vallejo (Environment, 1794 days) and Javier
44
Ponce Cevallos (Defense, 1454 days) actually lasted for a longer period of time, but their
terms straddled Correa’s first two terms of office.
vi
An interesting exception is the interim Gustavo Noboa administration whose cabinet
members lasted considerably longer than the average cabinet minister in Ecuador.
vii
Ecuadorian exceptions include Galo Leoro Franco, who served under presidents Sixto
Durán-Ballén and Abdalá Bucaram, and José Ayala Lasso, who served under presidents
Fabián Alarcón and Jamil Mahuad.
viii
The variance for “all exits” is 6.6 and the mean only 1.1. “Removal” has a mean of
1.7 and a mean of 0.6. The Poisson regression returns a large chi-square value (422.71)
in the full specification, and a significant test statistic (p<0.001).
ix
Neither administrative nor coalition change are applicable variables during this period.
45