Parliamentary scrutiny of executive patronage: The relationship between institutional norms, reputation and accountability

While executive patronage brings important benefits in terms of governance and control, political influence over the selection of agency staff entails a democratic dilemma: how should the exercise of executive patronage be controlled? This article addresses this critical issue, examining Westminster's system of pre‐appointment scrutiny by analysing an original database that encompasses every pre‐appointment hearing held between 2007 and 2018....