The African Cabinet Politics Dataset

This paper introduces the African Cabinet Politics (ACP) dataset, a new comprehensive data collection on cabinet politics in Sub-Saharan Africa. The dataset covers 40 countries from their independence to the end of 2019 and provides monthly information on cabinet composition, ministerial appointments, dismissals, rearrangements, and individual ministers’ tenure in office. Offering comprehensive geographical and fine-grained temporal coverage as well as a Wikidata integration that provides extensive minister-level biographical information, the ACP dataset substantially extends existing data resources on cabinet politics. The paper illustrates the analytical value of the dataset through descriptive analyses and two empirical applications. First, it documents long-term trends in cabinet size and cabinet instability, showing a steady expansion of cabinets and volatility in cabinet changes over time. Second, it examines how political regimes affect the tenure of ministers, demonstrating that dominant-party regimes exhibit the most stable cabinets, while personalist dictatorships are characterized by high turnover, with military regimes and democracies displaying similar patterns. A further application revisits the evolution of female representation in African cabinets, showing distinct trajectories for democracies and autocracies that converge over time. Accordingly, the ACP dataset provides gives scholars a new opportunity to test and refine theories of elite management and executive governance in Africa.