Decabinetisation as a presidentialisation strategy: a process-tracing analysis of the executive state law in Greece

This paper develops and empirically tests the novel concept of ‘decabinetisation’, a type of depoliticisation reform that affects the advisory and support offices of executive politicians. Reforms that restrict and constrain the work of ministerial advisers and reduce the political resources of ministers are puzzling, even more so when pressure to reform ministerial offices is absent. To understand why governments undermine a system that has been put in place to serve them, this paper investigates the provisions of Law 4622/2019 on the Executive State in Greece, using ‘theory-building process-tracing’ based on data collected from government documents and 23 elite interviews. Initially selected as an extreme case of second-order decabinetisation in the absence of pressure to reform, the study morphed into a more typical case that exemplifies how ministerial office reforms can be the result of strategic forms of presidentialisation. Decabinetisation can be triggered by the Prime Minister’s intention to ‘presidentialise’ the core executive in face of centre-of-government dysfunctionalities; policy entrepreneurs couple the problem and politics stream with the decabinetisation policy; but the reform becomes possible only in the presence of a critical juncture during which the power asymmetry between the head of government and other members of government is big.