ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the allocation of office payoffs by means of statistical analyses applied to the Italian and French case, while in the German case secondary data reading and qualitative analyses are adopted. The results suggest that, overall, portfolios are shared in proportion to the strength of each faction, in line with the prediction of Gamson’s Law. Nevertheless, some important deviations from this path are found. Rules that foster the autonomy of the party leader grant him more discretion in allocation. The leader will use such discretion to reward his followers or to ward off any credible and harmful threat to party unity. In particular, when party system competitiveness rises, i.e., in the case of looming elections, portfolio allocation embraces criteria of perfect proportionality. In turn, powerful minorities seem to be rewarded with a more than proportional return when they are markedly dissatisfied in terms of policy payoffs.
