cabinet

1. An upright, cupboardlike repository with shelves, drawers, or compartments for the safekeeping or display of objects.
2. Computer Science. The box that houses the main components of a computer, such as the central processing unit, disk drives, and expansion slots.
3. often Cabinet A body of persons appointed by a head of state or a prime minister to head the executive departments of the government and to act as official advisers.
4. Archaic. A small or private room set aside for a specific activity.
5. Rhode Island & Southeastern Massachusetts. See milk shake (sense 1). See Regional Note at milk shake.

1. Suitable for storage or display in a cabinet, as because of size or decorative quality.
2. Of, relating to, or being a member of a governmental cabinet: cabinet matters; a cabinet minister.
3. Used in the making of cabinets: teak and other heavy cabinet wood.

[French, partly from diminutive of Old North French cabine, gambling-room (perhaps alteration of Old French cabane, small house; see cabin) and partly from Italian gabinetto, closet, chest of drawers, akin to Old North French cabine. N., sense 5, possibly from the square wooden container in which the mixer was encased.]

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(1) A regular meeting of ministers, chaired by a head of government, with authority to make decisions on behalf of the government as a whole. Such a cabinet is common in parliamentary forms of government, including that in the United Kingdom, where it has been imitated in the devolved parliaments and assemblies for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
(2)A regular meeting of ministers which is consultative to a head of government, not sharing responsibility for final decisions. Such a cabinet is exemplified in the American presidential system.
(3) (In this meaning often spelt in italics and pronounced as in French, to indicate its origins and the distinction from senses 1 and 2.) A group of political advisers which is consultative to an individual minister. Ministerial cabinets exist in a number of European executives.

The term ‘cabinet system’ relates to sense (1), which is discussed in the remainder of this entry.

Cabinet systems of government share two common principles. First, they observe the principle of collective responsibility. Cabinet ministers share in the process of making cabinet decisions and are duly bound to defend those decisions in public irrespective of private opinion. Secondly, they observe the principle of parliamentary accountability. However, whilst the principles of cabinet government are universal, the structure, membership, and operations of cabinet in practice are open to considerable variation.

Cabinets vary in size between roughly ten and forty members. Size is principally a function of absolute levels of public expenditure and the amount of governmental business this engenders. However, it is also determined by decisions taken on the proportion of government ministers to be included in the cabinet. In Canada virtually all ministers are included as a result of the need for territorial as well as departmental representation in the cabinet, meaning that there are between thirty and forty cabinet ministers at any one time. By contrast, the United Kingdom, which has generally over a hundred government ministers, has only a fifth of them in the cabinet.

Cabinets also vary according to their use of committees. Cabinet government in Luxembourg, Iceland, and Sweden under the Social Democrats is notable for making no use of committees. In the first two cases the extent of government business is sufficiently limited to allow it to be dispatched by the meetings of full cabinet. In other cabinet systems delegation of cabinet business to committees is commonplace. It is usual that there are standing committees on foreign affairs, defence, economic policy, and budgetary policy. Beyond this there is considerable variation in both standing and ad hoc committees.

Membership of full cabinet and of cabinet committees is formally determined by the prime minister. In practice many prime ministers face many constraints. Much is made of the case of Labour governments in Australia and New Zealand, where cabinet membership is determined by parliamentary party election, the power of the prime minister being limited to the apportionment of specific cabinet portfolios. However, it is also commonplace in countries which are federal, or have strong regional government, for prime ministers to have to ensure appropriate territorial representation, and in coalition governments for each of the coalition partners to have bargained representation in cabinet and cabinet committees. Small parties which are nevertheless crucial to the forming of any government can dictate continuous control of particular cabinet portfolios, as was the case with the Free Democrats in Germany. Even where single party majority control is long-standing, the apportionment of cabinet positions may have to be sensitive to intra-party factionalism, as with the Liberal Democrat governments in Japan.

Differences in the operation of cabinet government reflect differences in structure and membership, and the role of the prime minister that they incorporate. In multi-party coalition governments a prime minister's ability to control the cabinet agenda, use cabinet debates as a means to arbitrate between ministers in dispute, and coordinate the overall policy of the government is very weak. Even in more consensual cabinets derived from more than one party, or based on diverse territorial representation, decision-making can be slow and chaotic. This has led to the charge that cabinet government is managerially inefficient.

In the United Kingdom the Cabinet is generally drawn from parliamentary members of the single majority party. As a result cabinet government is based upon relative cohesion in purpose. In addition, the leading role of the Prime Minister as primus inter pares (‘first among equals’) is not questioned. Ever since the modern cabinet system evolved during the First World War, when formal cabinet meetings were convened with written agendas and staffed by a cabinet secretariat, the Prime Minister has had clear powers of agenda control. The Prime Minister has also had power to appoint cabinet committees and determine their terms of reference, allowing their recommendations to become effectively the policy of the government. This has led to the charge that in Britain cabinet government has fallen prey, not to chaos and inefficiency, but to an overriding power of the Prime Minister. Over time there is considerable evidence of prime ministers bypassing cabinet and potential cabinet opposition on economic and defence-related issues by resort to carefully selected cabinet committees. This was true, for example, of Attlee's approach to framing policy on an independent nuclear deterrent 1945-51. A more general thesis of prime ministerial government gained credence with the publication of the Crossman diaries detailing the practice of the Wilson governments 1964-70, and with the apparent contempt for collective decision-making shown by Mrs Thatcher during her premiership 1979-90. The advent of a Labour government in 1997 arguably ushered in a period of dual prime ministerial government. Tony Blair and his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, decided most key policies either singly or together while cabinet meetings were reduced to a perfunctory weekly meeting lasting less than an hour.

The practice of cabinet government in the UK, however, remains contingent on prime ministerial style, elite political culture and political position. Attlee delegated considerable power in domestic policy areas to his ministers working on cabinet committees. Churchill and Macmillan prided themselves on a patrician style that allowed full debate in cabinet of all key issues. Callaghan used the full processes of cabinet decision-making to deal with the financial crisis in 1976. Even Mrs Thatcher relented on a number of policy ideas against cabinet opposition and eventually fell because she did not do so more. The Major Government 1990-7 actively sought to re-establish the notion of consensual cabinet government as a way of rebinding a Conservative Party tearing itself apart over European policy. As part of this, the secrecy surrounding cabinet government was eroded. In May 1992 Questions of Procedure for Ministers, which is the nearest thing Britain has to a constitution for cabinet government, was published. This disclosed the names, membership, and purposes of sixteen standing cabinet committees and ten cabinet subcommittees. The secretary to the cabinet made it clear that while only Treasury ministers had the right to challenge committee decisions in full cabinet, any alliance of five or more ministers could effectively do likewise and have a chance of success. This suggests that prime ministerial government has not only political but also constitutional limits.

— Jonathan Bradbury

The executive committee of the government, appointed by the prime minister. It evolved in the later 17th cent. out of the Privy Council, which had become too large. Two developments of crucial importance were the withdrawal of the monarch from attendance during George I's reign, allowing the first minister to take the chair and impose his views on his colleagues, and the growth of the principle of cabinet solidarity.

In the 18th cent., the cabinet was overwhelmingly aristocratic. George Grenville in the 1760s had a cabinet of nine, in which he was the only commoner—yet he was the younger brother of an earl. Not until the later 19th cent. did commoners predominate. Like most committees, the cabinet has tended to grow. The Fox-North coalition in 1783 had seven cabinet members; Peel in 1841 had fourteen; Salisbury in 1895 had nineteen; John Major in July 1995 had 23.

In Bagehot's words, the cabinet links the legislative part of the state to the executive. Its members are normally drawn from the majority party in the House of Commons, together with some peers: at the same time, they head the executive departments. The government as a whole consists of about 100 ministers, ministers of state, junior ministers, and whips: as a body, it never meets.

The extension of the state's functions imposed a burden on an institution better suited to the minimal state of the 19th cent. Committees had long been a feature of the cabinet but they were ad hoc and temporary. The modern system of permanent standing committees of the cabinet dates effectively from the Second World War. Small committees of ministers deal with matters too important, too sensitive, or too broad to be determined within a single department. By 1995 there were nineteen cabinet committees or subcommittees.

Recent discussion has emphasized the increasing power of the prime minister and the declining status of the cabinet. There is little doubt that during the 20th cent. the office of prime minister has expanded in power. However, the cabinet remains the ultimate court of appeal within the government.

1.A private room for study or conference.
2. A suite of rooms for exhibiting scientific and artistic curiosities.
3. A case or box-like assembly consisting of shelves, doors, and drawers and primarily used for storage.
4. An enclosure having a front hinged door or doors, for housing of electrical devices or conductor connections.
5. In French Vernacular architecture of Louisiana, one of two areas at the rear corners of a typical house; one was used for sleeping or storage, and the other used to house a stairwell.

The cabinet is a Presidential advisory group composed of the secretaries of the executive branch departments and other invited officials. At the Constitutional Convention delegates assumed that the President might convene the heads of departments for advice, but the cabinet was never mentioned in the original Constitution. The 25th Amendment, however, gives the cabinet certain duties regarding succession to the Presidency in cases of Presidential disability.

George Washington created the cabinet in 1789 when he invited the secretaries of state, Treasury, and war and the attorney general to meet informally with him. At first these officials met the President with other advisers, such as the chief justice of the United States, and it was not until 1791 that the cabinet met separately with the President. The secretary of the navy was added in 1798 by President John Adams, and the postmaster general in 1829 by Andrew Jackson. Other secretaries were added when their departments were created; the postmaster general was dropped in 1970 when the post office department became the U.S. Postal Service, an independent agency. Richard Nixon was the first Vice President to sit regularly with the cabinet (Coolidge had done so occasionally).

From 1791 onward Washington frequently convened his secretaries to debate the most important issues of his administration, and the term cabinet gained currency in 1793 during a crisis with the French government, when it met in a small room almost every day for nearly a year. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson were the major figures in the first cabinet. Their disagreements over foreign policy led them to create the Federalist and Republican parties. By 1795 Washington understood that his cabinet and administration should be united on the major principles of foreign and domestic policy. By 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became President, it was understood that the cabinet would consist of appointees who supported his principles. Since the Democratic-Republican party retained power until 1828, it became the practice for a new President to retain some of his predecessor's secretaries and to consult with them before taking any action. Presidents often counted the opinion of the cabinet as equal to their own, creating a system of cabinet government. Cabinet government ended with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Jackson established new rules: the President convenes cabinet meetings at his pleasure; the cabinet has no right to be consulted or convened; Presidential appointees serve as his subordinates and take direction from him; and the President may fire secretaries who disagree with his instructions. Because of a dispute with the cabinet over its ostracism of the wife of Secretary of War John Eaton in 1829, Jackson did not convene a meeting for two years and instead relied on a group of informal advisers known as the “kitchen cabinet.” But in 1831 he finally bowed to pressure from members of his own party to meet with his secretaries.

Jackson dropped the prior practice of polling the secretaries for their positions on issues and then following the majority. President Lincoln was reported to have taken a vote in which he was the only person to favor a certain course of action. He then announced, “The ayes have it.” After the Civil War the cabinet met regularly twice a week and was used primarily to give the President advice on patronage—the awarding of government jobs on the basis of political ties—and party politics and to coordinate legislative and budget proposals to Congress from the executive departments.

Until the 1930s there was only a handful of examples of a President making major decisions without first consulting the cabinet. These include the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln, who gathered his cabinet and said, “I do not wish your advice about the main matter. That, I have determined for myself.” Nor did Woodrow Wilson consult his cabinet on most issues, including the decision that the United States should enter World War I. Recent Presidents have convened their cabinets irregularly, one or two times a month at best. John F. Kennedy thought that cabinet meetings were a waste of time, asking; “Why should the Postmaster General sit there and listen to a discussion of the problems of Laos?” Kennedy held only six meetings in three years.

Today cabinets provide the President with political advice, serve as sounding boards for his ideas, and enable secretaries to coordinate their public statements on administration policy. Presidents also use cabinet meetings for symbolic purposes: Jimmy Carter used his first meeting to order that high officials use fewer limousines.

The “inner cabinet” consists of the secretaries of state, defense, and Treasury and the attorney general. These positions are usually the most prestigious, and the opinions of these secretaries carry the most weight with the President. The President sees these officials often, together or individually. The “outer cabinet” consists of the secretaries of the clientele agencies such as the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Labor. These secretaries deal with issues that concern constituencies such as union workers, farmers, and business executives. Presidents spend little time with these secretaries and often use the White House staff and agencies of the Executive Office of the President to supervise their work.

See also Attorney general of the United States; Brains Trust; Departments, executive; Executive branch; Executive Office of the President; Kitchen cabinet; Modern Presidency; Office of Management and Budget; Patronage; Removal power; Secretary of defense; Secretary of state; Succession to the Presidency; 25th Amendment

Sources

• Richard Fenno, The President's Cabinet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959)

This body, which has existed since the presidency of George Washington, rests on the authority of custom rather than the Constitution or statute. During Washington's presidency the cabinet consisted of only four positions: secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of war, and attorney general. The size of the cabinet has grown steadily since. By the early 2000s, it was composed of the heads of the major federal administrative departments: State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, and Education. In terms of money spent, number of persons employed, and scope of legal authority, these are the most significant units of the administration. The heads of these departments are presidential appointees, subject to Confirmation by the Senate and serving at the choice of the president.

Although all presidents have, periodically, held formal cabinet meetings, the role of the cabinet in presidential decision making has generally been limited. The importance of the cabinet varies depending on the particular president (for example, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson relied on the cabinet more than Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy did), but as a collective body it does not play a central role in any administration. Frequently cabinet meetings are largely symbolic; they are held because of the expectation that such meetings take place. The cabinet collectively may lack significance, but individual members can have great influence in an administration because of their expertise, political skill, or special relationship to the president. Examples of this kind of influence were noted with the service of John Mitchell as attorney general under Richard M. Nixon; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara under Kennedy and Johnson; Attorney General Robert Kennedy under Kennedy; and Secretary of State James Baker under George H. W. Bush.

Frequently and increasingly, the expanding White House staff (personal assistants to the president) has over-shadowed cabinet members. Also of considerable importance in any administration are informal advisers to and confidants of the president. In no area have cabinet members found their influence with the president more severely challenged than in the realm of foreign affairs. In particular, the post of national security adviser, a non-cabinet position, has consistently generated conflict and rivalry with the secretary of state. Although the secretary of state technically holds a higher-ranking position, the national security adviser typically enjoys comparable access to the president, and in some cases even greater access, as during the administrations of Kennedy and Nixon. Similar rivalries continue to characterize the cabinet's relationship with the ever-expanding White House staff.

The cabinet in the United States, unlike that in most parliamentary systems, does not function as a collegial executive; the president clearly is the chief executive. Cabinet members in the course of their work find that their survival and success generally do not depend on their colleagues or on any sense of collegiality; rather, they must often fend for themselves. Particularly crucial are their own relationships to the president, the clientele of their agency, the Congress, and the national media. Also in contrast to parliamentary systems, U.S. cabinet members may not serve concurrently in the legislative body. If a person is a member of Congress when appointed to the cabinet, that person must resign the congressional seat.

Bibliography

Fenno, Richard F. The President's Cabinet: An Analysis in the Period from Wilson to Eisenhower. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959.

Neustadt, Richard E. Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Maxwell Macmillan, 1990.

—Dale Vinyard/A. G.

The counsel or group of advisers of a king or other chief executive of a government. A group of individuals who advise the president of the United States.

The president's cabinet was created by custom and tradition and was instituted by the first president. The heads of each of the executive departments of the government, including the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of defense, the attorney general, the secretary of the interior, the secretary of agriculture, the secretary of commerce, the secretary of labor, the secretary of health and human services, the secretary of education, the secretary of housing and urban development, and the secretary of transportation, comprise the cabinet.

See: executive branch.

The curtain-enclosed space in which mediums claim to condense the psychic energy necessary for séance-room manifestations. Hereward Carrington suggested an electrical analogy: less expenditure of energy is required to charge a small electric conductor to a given voltage than a large one, so it may be with the cabinet, "which acts as a sort of storage battery, retaining the energy and liberating it in bundles of quanta during the séance."

Nineteenth-century biblical scholar Allen Putnam saw the ark of the covenant as an interesting model by which to under-stand the Spiritualist cabinet: "The ark of the covenant was constructed expressly for use as a spirit battery, or an instrument through which to give forth the commands of the Lord. The special care taken to have the ark and all its appurtenances charged with the auras or magnetisms of a selected class of workmen, becomes very interesting in these days when much wonder is expressed at the customary stickling of spirits and mediums for right conditions. Biblical history furnishes precedent for great particularity, when constructing a cabinet for manifestations."

The cabinet is usually of very simple construction. It need not be more than a curtain thrown across a corner of the room. The Davenport brothers employed a special one. It had three doors; the middle door had a curtained opening on the top. Through this opening, phantom hands were immediately thrust out after the doors were shut on the mediums tied within to their seats. However, such an elaborate arrangement suggests a conjuror's apparatus, and the phenomenon of the Davenports is considered by many people to have been a stage illusion. It is described in some detail by Houdini in A Magician among the Spirits.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, many of the famous mediums, such as D. D. Home and Stainton Moses, had never used the cabinet. Through the course of the twentieth century it has gone almost entirely out of use; the majority of contemporary psychics and channels have never used the cabinet.

Sources:

Houdini, Harry. A Magician among the Spirits. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924. Reprinted as Houdini: A Magician among the Spirits. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

Putnam, Allen. Bible Marvel Workers. Boston, 1876.

A group of presidential advisers, composed of the heads of the fourteen government departments (the secretaries of the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of the Interior, Department of Labor, Department of State, Department of Transportation, Department of the Treasury, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the attorney general (head of the Department of Justice) — all of whom are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate) and a few other select government officials. Theoretically, the cabinet is charged with debating major policy issues and recommending action by the executive branch; the actual influence of the cabinet, however, is limited by competition from other advisory staffs.

Look up cabinet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Cabinet may refer to:

• The local name for a milkshake in the US state of Rhode Island.
• Cabinet (room), a private room for a man serving as a retreat, furnished with books and works of art, adjacent to his bedchamber.
• Cabinet (furniture)
• Cabinet (government), a council of high-ranking members of government
  • Cabinet (European Commission), a personal office of advisors and administrators for a European Commissioner
  • Cabinet of the United Kingdom, composed of the most senior government ministers chosen by the Prime Minister.
  • United States Cabinet, composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States
• Cabinet Inlet in Antarctica
• The Cabinet, clandestine Norwich journal 1794–5
• The Cabinet a professional wrestling faction
• Casing for a loudspeaker
• The cabinet variety of slotted screwdriver blade
• The Cabinet (film), a 2007 short film starring Sonja Bennett

Commercial brands

• Cabinet (file format)
• Cabinet (design tool)
• Cabinet (cigarette)
• Cabinet (magazine)
• Cabinet (Milkshake): local term for a milkshake in Rhode Island
• Cabinet (album), debut album of the Swedish technical death metal band Spawn of Possession

Compound terms

• Cabinet of curiosities, early form of private museum
• Cabinet painting, small paintings (for a cabinet room)
• Filing cabinet
• Cabinet (computer), a casing for computing equipment
• Arcade cabinet, a type of furniture which houses arcade games
• Cabinet card or cabinet photograph
• A Cabinet selection, type of box in which cigars are sometimes sold
• Cabinet projection

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - skab, kabinet

idioms:

• cabinet maker    møbelsnedker

Nederlands (Dutch)
kabinet, ministerraad, kast, kamertje

Français (French)
n. - cabinet, petit placard, vitrine (décorative sur pieds), (GB, Pol) cabinet, Conseil des Ministres

idioms:

• cabinet maker    ébéniste

Deutsch (German)
n. - Kabinett, Schrank

idioms:

• cabinet maker    Möbeltischler

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ντουλάπι, ντουλαπάκι, ερμάριο, σκρίνιο, προθήκη, βιτρίνα, φωριαμός, (μικρό) υπουργικό συμβούλιο

idioms:

• cabinet maker    επιπλοποιός

Italiano (Italian)
segretariato, armadio, armadietto, credenza

idioms:

• cabinet maker    ebanista

Português (Portuguese)
n. - armário (m), escritório (m), gabinete (m)

idioms:

• cabinet maker    marceneiro (m)
• filing cabinet    armário (m) de arquivo

Русский (Russian)
кабинет, шкаф, сервант

idioms:

• cabinet maker    краснодеревщик
• filing cabinet    картотечный шкаф

Español (Spanish)
n. - gabinete, consejo de ministros, armario, bargueño

idioms:

• cabinet maker    ebanista

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - skåp, kabinett

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
橱柜, 内阁

idioms:

• cabinet maker    细木工匠, 家具木工师

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 櫥櫃, 內閣

idioms:

• cabinet maker    細木工匠, 家具木工師

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 상자, 회의실, 내각

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 飾りだんす, キャビネット, 内閣, 大統領顧問団

idioms:

• cabinet maker    家具職人
• filing cabinet    書類整理棚, キャビネット

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) مجلس الوزرا, خزانه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮ארון, ממשלה, קבינט, שידה, חדרון, לשכה‬

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