A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Cabinet Turnover in the United States

What explains cabinet turnover in the United States? This paper argues that US Presidents can increase their prospects of reelection by dismissing incompetent secretaries from the cabinet. A game theory model developed in this study shows that, in some cases, a secretary whose performance is below average will be dismissed from the cabinet. In other cases, only very poor performance will cause the replacement of a secretary. These cases are determined by the president's support at the Senate, and by the competence of the official who leads the department during the nomination and confirmation of a new nominee. The paper empirically tests the hypotheses using a database of 39 US Presidents and 366 Secretaries covering the years 1809 to 2001