Shadow Cabinet

As a shadow cabinet is called in politics a composed of campaigning parties government team, which also includes the so- called shadow minister. They should, in the case of a successful election result form the Cabinet.

Putting up a shadow cabinet is a commonly practiced campaign funds. This is to the planned highlights of future policy transported to the public and the campaign will be extended to human elements.

Term

In the UK, where the concept originated, the shadow cabinet since the end of the 19th century a fixed size. There, the opposition forms after each general election mirror image of the British government, a team of shadow ministers who comment on the respective plans and decisions of the incumbent Prime Minister, and prepare at the same time to the acquisition of the office for a change of government. The respective party leader is " Shadow Prime Minister ".

Since there the time of the announcement is traditional to conduct of the parliamentary elections only a month, the opposition would otherwise be too little time to put together a credible government team.

In Germany shadow cabinets were formed since the 1960s. In the German political science, the term became more common " government team " whereas in the press of pictorial term " shadow cabinet " is often used.

Composition

When forming a shadow cabinet or competence teams value is usually taken to ensure that important topics are busy, large socially relevant groups are involved, women are adequately represented and people from different regions or states are considered.

Competence team

In recent years, various German leaders have presented several times before an election instead of a complete government team a small team of experts ( CDU and CSU and SPD ) or top team (The Greens), as Edmund Stoiber before the federal election in 2002, Jürgen Rüttgers before the state election in North Rhine -Westphalia in 2005, the top candidates of the Green Party and the Union for the parliamentary elections in 2005, Joschka Fischer and Angela Merkel as well as in the federal election campaigns in 2009 and 2013, the top candidate of the SPD, Frank -Walter Steinmeier and peer Steinbrück. The members of these expert teams should not in any case actually be a minister, but to complement the top candidates for additional, competent expertise.

Others

Beyond politics, the term has naturalized in a broad sense for groups that certain management functions will jointly assume, for example, when trying Stefan Effenberg to take the lead at Borussia Mönchengladbach or relating to television presenters who are on larger tasks in conversation.