What makes a good minister of a political party? Impact of party- and field-related experience on party pledge fulfilment

Abstract

The article examines the effect of the personal characteristics of ministers on their party and coalition partners’pledgefulfilment. Partisanship and additional party-related experience is expected to help party pledge fulfilment. Previousfield-related experience should additionally open up the space for alternative principals. However, partisan motivation should bethe leading mechanism for the behaviour of the minister–andfield-related experience can help partisan ministers to followparty mandates better. The joint dataset of objectively testable pledges in the Czech Republic (2007–2015) supplementedby information on government ministers is used to test hypotheses. The article shows that not only holding the portfoliobut also the particular features of ministers, especially those related to party-related experience, influence their ability tofulfil party promised policy.