Cabinet collective responsibility

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Cabinet collective responsibility" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Cabinet collective responsibility, also known as collective ministerial responsibility,^[1] is a constitutional convention in parliamentary systems and a cornerstone of the Westminster system system of government, that members of the cabinet must publicly support all governmental decisions made in Cabinet, even if they do not privately agree with them. This support includes voting for the government in the legislature.^[2] This convention formed in the 19th century in the United Kingdom. Some political parties, most commonly communist, apply a similar convention of democratic centralism to their central committee.

If a member of the Cabinet wishes to openly object to a Cabinet decision then they are obliged to resign from their position in the Cabinet.

Cabinet collective responsibility is related to the fact that if a vote of no confidence is passed in parliament, the government is responsible collectively, and thus the entire government resigns. The consequence will be that a new government will be formed or parliament will be dissolved and a general election will be called. Cabinet collective responsibility is not the same as individual ministerial responsibility, which states that ministers are responsible for the running of their departments, and therefore culpable for the departments' mistakes.