Cabinet Political Elites: Surviving in Times of Crisis (Chile, 2018-2021)

Abstract

This article analyzes the behavior of ministerial survival in the second government Sebastián Piñera Echeñique, from 2018 to 2021. In recent years, the study of political elites has focused particularly on identifying the factors with the highest incidence in the appointment and rotation of State ministers, since it corresponds to a highly coveted position in the political sphere. In this context, the article identifies both theoretically and empirically the influence of the political system’s structural conditions, as well as characteristics intrinsic of ministerial agents themselves, as incident variables in explaining the ability to survive within a cabinet. This period is selected given to its highly-convulsed scenario, both social- and health-wise, which allows the envisage of critical events in the system and the behavior of the cabinet during it. To pursue this objective, descriptive statistics and Kaplan-Meier survival curves are presented.