Replication Data for: Introducing ‘Ministerial Politics’: Analyzing the Role and Crucial Redistributive Impact of Individual Ministries in Policy-Making

This is the dataset and replication material for Garritzmann/Siderius (forthcoming) "Introducing ‘Ministerial Politics’: Analyzing the Role and Crucial Redistributive Impact of Individual Ministries in Policy-Making", in: Governance. The dataset offers information on all social policies decided in the German Bundestag between 1969 and 2021, including information on the respective responsible ministry that led the policy-making process ("federführend"), the partisan affiliation of the respective minister, the respective policy field, as well as information on the policies' distributive profile (whether the policies are inclusive, stratified, or targeted): Here's the paper abstract: Policy-making is a complex business. While scholars have studied the politics of policy-making for decades, we know surprisingly little about the role of individual ministries. We argue that and why individual ministries crucially shape policies’ content, particularly their distributive profiles. We explain that it matters whether for example a Ministry of Labor, of Finance, or of Home Affairs designs a policy. First, we systematically review existing literature on the factors that influence preferences of ministries and their power in policy-making. Second, we develop a theory explaining that and why ministries have substantive policy impact and introducing a typology of three different ministerial ideal-types (following a “social logic”, “efficiency logic”, and “law-and-order logic”, respectively). Third, we offer systematic empirical evidence: Using the least likely case of Germany, we introduce a novel content-coded dataset on all social policies in the Bundestag since 1969, showing that ministries shape policies’ distributive profiles, even when controlling for rival explanations. We conclude by developing a research agenda on ministerial politics and highlight important implications for representation and responsiveness.