Institutional Effects of Changes in Political Attention: Explaining Organizational Changes in the Top Bureaucracy

All democratic countries have ministries for issues like foreign affairs, defense, transportation, education, and social affairs. Yet, we know little about what determines the number and issue content of ministries. Why do some policy issues have their own ministry while others do not and when are new ministries created? The article offers a theoretical argument for how creation and termination of ministries may be patterned from a policy agenda setting perspective that focuses on the importance of changes in political attention. The basic claim is that such changes in attention in combination with the issue preferences of the incumbent government are crucial for understanding significant changes in the ministerial structure. In a broader perspective, the article attempts to bring the literature on agenda dynamics into the study of bureaucratic structure in order to better understand organizational changes in the top bureaucracy.