Cabinet instability and delegation in parliamentary democracies

In most parliamentary democracies, two things are true: cabinet ministers d elegate to bureaucrats and coalition governments replace cabinet ministers with little advance notice. Many people claim that cabinet instability (i.e . uncertainty about the timing of ministerial replacements) allows bureaucr ats to Ignore ministerial orders. To evaluate this claim, we present a dele gation model that introduces cabinet instability as a variable. We discover numerous cases in which instability has no effect on bureau behavior. We a lso identify circumstances in which instability causes bureaucrats not to c hoose policies that would otherwise make both them and their ministers bett er off. Such outcomes are caused by the bureaucrats' dilemma-the fear that a bureaucrat's efforts will be unrewarded, or even punished, if the incumbe nt minister is replaced unexpectedly general, we find that instability's ef fects on delegation are usually taken for granted and often misunderstood. With this model. we seek to improve on both counts.