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Chapter 2 addresses the most critical issue related to selecting heads of state: the extent to which direct elections enhance presidential powers and political involvement. First, it outlines the conventional argument that direct elections influence presidential activism by increasing presidents' legitimacy. Next, this chapter develops an alternative explanation that concrete political opportunity framework, rather than abstract legitimacy, constrains presidents' incentives and opportunities for participating in political processes. Finally, this chapter presents the results of a large-N empirical test of the alternative rival hypotheses, using presidential intervention in the process of cabinet formation to measure political activism. The results corroborate the theory on political opportunity framework, and show that election mechanisms do not affect presidential activism.

Examines whether the behaviour of parties in cabinet formation and in control of the executive branch have changed over time. The evidence indicates that parties remain entrenched in the core of the executives studied, but party control seems to wane the further we move from this institution. The chapter concludes by examining the implications such changes have on the primacy of parties in government, arguing that among the several alternatives to representative democracy, pluralist democracy seems to be the most likely alternative to party government.

Chapter 1 introduces the three research questions guiding the book and outlines the patterns of timing, magnitude, and persistence of women’s cabinet inclusion in Australia, Canada, Chile, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It identifies the year of appointment of the first woman to cabinet; the year of the last all-male cabinet; and addresses the questions of cross-country and cross-time variation in numbers of women in cabinet. The chapter identifies formal and informal rules as forces shaping women’s opportunities for cabinet appointment, and introduces the concept of the “concrete floor,” the minimum proportion or number of women for the cabinet team to be perceived as legitimate.

Chapter 2 sets out the book’s theoretical, conceptual, and methodological approaches for explaining gendered patterns and processes of cabinet formation. Employing a feminist institutionalist approach, the chapter explains how formal and informal rules create and maintain gendered hierarchies that have historically advantaged men in the cabinet appointment process. The chapter also shows how rules change over time, emphasizing the importance of agency, ambiguity, and ideas. The chapter offers a model of the relationship among sets of rules to produce cabinets that include women. The chapter provides justification of the case selection, methods of data collection and organization, and a description of each country case.

Chapter 3 focuses on the political actors who are empowered to select ministers: predominantly presidents and prime ministers. It identifies all the rules, formal and informal, that determine whether selectors are empowered or constrained when constructing their cabinet. The chapter shows that, in most cases, presidents and prime ministers are strongly empowered to choose their minsters, although in some cases selectors are constrained by having to share powers with co-selectors from other parties (i.e. in coalition governments) and within their own party organization. The chapter categorizes the book’s seven country cases into three groups: one where formal and informal rules always empower a single selector, one where party rules have constrained selectors, and one where selectors are always constrained.