Do ministers’ occupational and social class backgrounds influence social spending?

Recent studies have reported a relationship between legislators’ occupational and social class backgrounds and their economic policy preferences, but these analyses have largely been confined to legislative actors in presidential systems (e.g., Carnes 2012, 2013; Carnes and Lupu 2015; but see O’Grady 2018). This paper extends this research to the study of government executives in parliamentary systems. It uses a new dataset of the occupational backgrounds of cabinet ministers in Canadian (Westminster-style) provincial governments to study if the professional backgrounds of these powerful government actors influence social spending. Examining the expected spending preferences of cabinets based on ministers’ occupations prior to entering politics, this paper shows that ministers’ occupational backgrounds are associated with spending on social services, most notably within center parties.