With just 15 ministers, Germany shows that small cabinets work

Reports that Boris Johnson is considering shrinking the size of the Cabinet if he becomes Prime Minister will come as no surprise to Germans.

Mr Johnson will not be the first European leader to contemplate the possibility that, when it comes to government departments, less can be more.

Angela Merkel runs Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and pre-eminent power, with a cabinet of just 15.

That’s smaller than Donald Trump’s cabinet of 16, and far fewer than the 28 voices competing to be heard around Theresa May’s cabinet table.

Germany does it, in part, by the same method members of Mr Johnson’s team are proposing — by merging different policy areas into larger departments.

So, for instance, there is no German equivalent of the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Instead the interior ministry — Germany’s Home Office — takes care of sport, the transport ministry is in charge of digital infrastructure, and there is a junior minister for culture and media in Mrs Merkel’s chancellery office.

Olaf Scholz, the finance minister, doubles as vice-chancellor, doing away with the need for a separate cabinet post.

In general the system works well, and there have been few calls for a larger cabinet or more government departments.

But it did come unstuck when Horst Seehofer, the current interior minister, made sweeping new responsibilities his price for joining Mrs Merkel’s coalition.

Mr Seehofer was accused of seeking to build a “super ministry” when he demanded control of housing and “homeland affairs” be added to the interior ministry.

Many suggested it was too much for a department that already has to deal with policing and immigration. “It has to be manageable,” Mr Seehofer’s predecessor, Thomas de Maiziere, commented waspishly. “I certainly wouldn’t have expected the breath of responsibility he seeks.”

Mr Seehofer has since struggled in office, and has some of the lowest approval ratings for any member of Mrs Merkel’s government.

Key differences in the German political system also help keep the cabinet small. Mr Johnson’s team has suggested merging the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland offices into a single department for devolved affairs. In federal Germany, the 16 states each have their own fully empowered regional government, so there is no need for cabinet representation.

Business in the German parliament is decided by a committee of senior MPs, not the government, so there is no equivalent of the Leaders of the Commons and Lords. 

Government whips are elected by MPs, not appointed, and are seen as representatives of backbenchers. They guard their independence and do not attend cabinet meetings.

Mrs Merkel is not the first postwar German chancellor to govern with a small group of senior ministers. While the cabinet ballooned to over 20 under Helmut Kohl, her predecessor Gerhard Schröder slimmed it back down.

But the system does throw up problems — as Mr Johnson may find. The small number of departments means Mrs Merkel has fewer appointments to offer rivals in order to buy their support.

As Mr Johnson may also find, it gets even trickier when you have to divide the jobs up in a coalition — as is usually the case in Germany.

In the most recent coalition negotiations, Mrs Merkel was forced to give up control of the three biggest departments — finance, foreign and interior — to other parties in return for their support.

That was the equivalent of a British Prime Minister handing over the Treasury, Home Office and Foreign Office, and it left many in Mrs Merkel’s own party unhappy that there weren’t enough plum jobs left for them.