Foreign Policy Specificity: An Analysis of Ministerial Survival in Latin America, 1945–2020

This research note analyzes the incentives of different types of policy areas for a president to keep or dismiss a minister. It uses ministerial survival analysis to compare foreign and domestic policy areas, focusing on comparable and analogous presidential decisions among countries and portfolios. The research utilizes ministerial survival data for education, finance, health, and foreign policy between 1945 and 2020 in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. Using Cox regression models, we find that a foreign policy portfolio has a positive effect on ministerial survival, but the specificity of this portfolio does not hold for autocratic governments. Autocracies show higher levels of ministerial survival in all four portfolios, but a foreign policy portfolio is no more stable than domestic portfolios. Democratic presidents have the incentive to signal stability to the international audience, preserving the foreign policy portfolio from the frequent ministerial changes in domestic portfolios.