## Notes from 28 February 2026 [[2026-02-27|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-03-01|Next note →]] [[Roger Partridge]], chair of [[The New Zealand Initiative]], published "[Time to Unscramble Government](https://rogerpartridge.substack.com/p/time-to-unscramble-government)" (_Plain Thinking_, September 2025), arguing that New Zealand's executive structure (81 ministerial portfolios across 28 ministers and 43 departments) is an outlier among peer nations and a structural impediment to coherent policymaking. His proposal: consolidate portfolios and create a statutory junior minister role for meaningful delegation without fragmenting accountability. The junior minister model draws on Australia's 1987 Hawke reform (Cabinet portfolios cut from 28 to 16, with a disciplined two-tier ministerial system that survived changes of government) and on Ireland's constitutional cap of 15 Cabinet members paired with "Ministers of State" for delegation. From a Latin American comparative perspective, the proposal highlights institutional features that simply do not exist in countries like Brazil. Each Brazilian ministry has one and only one _Ministro de Estado_, appointed and dismissed by the President. There is no formal statutory tier of junior ministers: delegation happens informally through _secretários_ and _secretários-executivos_ within ministries, but these are administrative subordinates, not political officeholders with defined portfolio authority. The closest exception is the Vice President, who occasionally heads a ministry simultaneously (as Geraldo Alckmin currently does with the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade, and Services) but this is an _ad hoc_ political arrangement, not a systemic design feature. Crucially, a single minister overseeing a "portfolio of departments" in the Westminster sense is not how Brazilian presidentialism works: coalition arithmetic drives ministerial proliferation because each ministry is a discrete political asset allocated to a coalition partner. Chile has been experimenting with its _biministro_ figure — under Boric, [Álvaro García served simultaneously](https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/bbcl-explica/bbcl-explica-notas/2025/10/16/que-significa-que-alvaro-garcia-sea-biministro-y-que-otros-gobiernos-han-utilizado-esta-formula.shtml) as Minister of Economy and Minister of Energy, and the incoming Kast government has [designated Daniel Mas as _biministro_](https://www.ex-ante.cl/daniel-mas-quien-es-el-vicepresidente-de-la-cpc-que-llega-al-ministerio-de-economia-de-kast-y-su-agenda-anti-permisologia/) of Economy and Mining. It is a rare Latin American example of consolidating portfolio responsibility under a single officeholder rather than creating new ministries. Brazil has no equivalent mechanism, and the junior minister model remains an unexplored institutional design option worth studying for presidentialist coalition systems where portfolio inflation is driven by political logic rather than functional need.