CABINET CONGESTION: THE GROWTH OF A MINISTERIAL MAZE - MARCH 2024

Ministers are required to be members of the legislature (Parliament) and will represent the leadership of the pares (or party) controlling the country’s unicameral legislave house.1 The two bodies are therefore fused, with the leaders of the house and the members of Cabinet being one and the same. [...] There is a notable correlaon between the number of ministries and the number of ministers across the comparison countries, with the former rarely exceeding the later. [...] 9 Secon 2: Potenal Effects of Size on the Funconing of New Zealand’s Execuve This secon examines some factors that may have contributed to the size the New Zealand’s Execuve and the resulng impact of its size on the efficiency of the system. [...] 14 performance of the recent Labour Government, whose inability to enact policy must be parally atributable to the quality of its ministers.38 Fourth, the high number of ministers selected from a limited pool exposes the Execuve to a diluon of the overall efficacy of ministers as a group. [...] Departments: The size of the Execuve might also be expected to generate inefficiencies in the departments it controls; for instance, ministers who hold overlapping porolios.39 Consider that MBIE (the result of a merger of the Department of Building and Housing, the Department of Labour, the Ministry of Economic Development, and the Ministry of Science and Innovaon) answers to 14 ministers and two.