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The shadow cabinet or shadow ministry is a feature of the Westminster system of government. It consists of a senior group of opposition spokespeople who, under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition, form an alternative cabinet to that of the government, and whose members shadow or mirror the positions of each individual member of the Cabinet. Their areas of responsibility, in parallel with the ruling party's ministries, may be referred to as a shadow portfolio. Members of a shadow cabinet have no executive power. It is the shadow cabinet's responsibility to scrutinise the policies and actions of the government, as well as to offer alternative policies. The shadow cabinet makes up the majority of the Official Opposition frontbench, as part of to the parliament. Smaller opposition parties in Britain and Ireland have .
In many countries, a member of the shadow cabinet is referred to as a shadow minister. In the United Kingdom's House of Lords and in New Zealand, the term spokesperson is used instead of shadow. In Canada, the term opposition critic is also used.
Members of a shadow cabinet may not necessarily be appointed to the corresponding Cabinet post if and when their party forms a government, assuming that they retain their seats which by convention is usually considered a prerequisite to serve in the cabinet. However, the consistency with which parties assuming power appoint shadow ministers into the actual roles in government varies widely depending on such things as jurisdiction, the traditions and practices of the party assuming government, the exact circumstances surrounding their assumption of power and even the importance of the cabinet post in question.
As well as being potential future ministers, a number of shadow ministers have held ministerial posts in the past.
As a mark of discipline, shadow ministers are expected to speak within and not outside their portfolio areas.
In most Westminster systems, the leader of the opposition heads the shadow cabinet in person and directly shadows the prime minister, and the title of "shadow prime minister" is generally not used. Non-Westminster systems that have adopted a shadow cabinet system, however, typically designate its head as "shadow prime minister". Moreover, in these systems, the shadow prime minister is not necessarily coterminous with the leader of the opposition party (for example, in Czechia, ANO 2011 party leader Andrej Babiš designated Karel Havlíček as the party's shadow prime minister) and is not necessarily expected to become prime minister if the opposition party assumes power.
Some parliamentary parties, notably the Australian Labor Party, elect all the members of their shadow cabinets in a party room ballot, with the shadow prime minister then allocating portfolios to the shadow ministers. In other parliamentary parties, the membership and composition of the shadow cabinet is generally determined solely by the shadow prime minister.
A related term is the shadow budget, which is often prepared by shadow cabinets (and, when released, usually presented by the shadow finance minister or equivalent) as an alternative to the real budget presented by the government. When prepared and released in an election year, an opposition party's shadow budget will typically form a key part of the party's manifesto, and will be largely if not wholly implemented if the opposition party subsequently forms a government (especially if it wins an outright majority).
Opposition parliamentary parties which are sufficiently small that they are about the same size as the government cabinet will often appoint all of their elected members to their shadow cabinet or equivalent, with third parties more likely compared to official opposition parties to use this sort of arrangement. If the parliamentary party is only slightly larger than the government's cabinet, its leadership potentially faces the awkward position of embarrassing a small minority of legislators by singling them out for exclusion from the shadow cabinet. On the other hand, incoming governments in the Westminster system often change the number and/or composition of ministries upon assuming office. Therefore, one solution to such an aforementioned issue when it occurs is to create nominal shadow "ministries" that correspond to currently nonexistent cabinet posts the party actually intends to create once in government. An opposition party can also employ this process in reverse by "merging" its shadow ministries to correspond to actual cabinet posts the opposition party wants to merge or otherwise eliminate.
In France, although the formation of a shadow cabinet is not compulsory or common, several shadow cabinets have been formed.
In Hungary, a shadow cabinet under the leadership of Klára Dobrev was established by the strongest opposition party, the Democratic Coalition, for the first time, in 2022. Árnyékkormányt alakít Dobrev Klára – Telex.hu, 16 September 2022
In Japan, the term "Next Cabinet" was coined for the de facto shadow cabinet, though it has only been used by the Democratic Party of Japan and its successors.
In Turkey, the main opposition party, CHP, formed a shadow cabinet after the election of Özgür Özel as its leader, in 2023.[2], 25 January 2025
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