The Prime Minister

Question 1

What is the core executive model?

Answer 1

Argument that power is shared between actors who are mutually dependent, there is an exchange of resources

Question 2

Who is the core executive? (Ian Holliday, 2000)

Answer 2

‘Defined as the Cabinet (including the prime minister), Cabinet Committees, the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s office, parts of the Treasury, the major government law offices and those central elements engaged in managing the governing party’s parliamentary support base’

Question 3

How does the Cabinet Manual (2011) refer to the positions of PM and the Cabinet?

Answer 3

PM - ‘has unique position of authority’ ‘will usually take the lead on significant matters of state’
Cabinet - ‘ultimate decision-making body of government’

Question 4

What does structure refer to?

Answer 4

The institutions, rules, norms, laws. PM is powerful because he is the leader of the largest party.

Question 5

What does agency refer to?

Answer 5

Individuals and their actions. Look at personality and leadership styles of PMs.

Question 6

What does context refer to?

Answer 6

The political environment. Is the economy performing well? Is the country at war? What’s the size of the majority?

Question 7

What is the prime ministerial predominance model? (Richard Heffernan, 2003)

Answer 7

Idea that authority of PM varies according to their use of the resources that they have. The PM is always pre-eminent, can be predominant but cannot have a monopoly of power.

Question 8

When is a prime minister predominant?

Answer 8

When they make good use of their institutional and personal power resources and when context allows.

Question 9

What are institutional power resources?

Answer 9

Patronage, chairs Cabinet, policy leadership

Question 10

What are personal power resources?

Answer 10

Leadership skills, political success, popularity, standing in party.

Question 11

What does Rhodes (2000) say about core executive players?

Answer 11

They ‘are dependent upon each other because all parts of the core executive have resources.’

Question 12

How does Heffernan (2003) criticise the notion of presidentialisation advanced by Foley?

Answer 12

He suggests that ‘it underplays the core degree of collegiality found within parliamentary systems.’
He also argues that it confuses because there is no ‘national constituency’/direct election of PM and no independence from legislature.

Question 13

What does Keith Dowding (2013) argue in relation to the notion of presidentialisation?

Answer 13

That it is better understood as the personalisation of politics and a decreasing emphasis on parties.

Question 14

What is the presidentialisation model (Micheal Foley)?

Answer 14

The British PM looks more like a president as their leadership has become more personalised.

Question 15

What is ‘leadership stretch’? (Foley, 2000)

Answer 15

Where party leaders have become progressively differentiated from their organisational bases in terms of media attention, public recognition and political identity.

Question 16

In the presidentialisation model, what is to blame for leadership declines?

Answer 16

The PM is personally blamed for problems (Foley, 2008) because the ‘effective personalised leadership lays the foundation for an enriched and inflated accountability’
E.g. Thatcher & Poll Tax, Blair & Iraq war, Brown and the recession

Question 17

Who suggests that prime ministers are more powerful than presidents? (A critique of the presidentialisation model)

Answer 17

Keith Dowding (2013).

Question 18

What do Buller & James (2012) identify as the 4 statecraft functions relating to gaining and retaining power in British politics?

Answer 18

1. A winning electoral strategy
2. Governing competence
3. Party management (2001 - 2005 Labour MPs only defied the leadership on 21% of divisions)
4. Political argument hegemony
   - argues that Blair successful as did all this but achieved in favourable context and about collective result (e.g. Role of Brown and Ed Balls)

Question 19

What is Peter Mair’s (2008) criteria for party government?

Answer 19

1. Party wins control of executive as result of competitive elections
2. Political leaders recruited by and through parties
3. Parties offer voters clear policy alternatives
4. Public policy determined by the party in the executive
5. Executive held accountable through parties

Question 20

What does Smith (1999) define as the core executive?

Answer 20

‘the key institutions and actors concerned with developing policy, co-ordinating government activity and providing the necessary resources for delivering public goods.’

Question 21

What does Rhodes (1981) argue?

Answer 21

that organisations are dependent on each other for resources and they have to exchange their resources in order to achieve their goals

Question 22

If context is favourable will the PM depend more or less on the cabinet?

Answer 22

LESS.

But will always need its support e.g. Thatcher in 1990 removed because lost support of cabinet.

Question 23

In the Royal Holloway Group (2015) rankings of post-war popular PMs from various surveys across the years who features in the top three and why?

Answer 23

Churchill, Atlee and Thatcher. Blair features 3rd in 2010 survey. All agenda-setting PMs.

Question 24

In 2012, what do Bennister and Heffernan argue in relation to David Cameron’s premiership?

Answer 24

That he is still pre-dominant - he is ‘presently no more constrained than a PM faced with a pre-eminent intra-party rival with a significant power base’.

Question 25

In 2014 how do Bennister and Heffernan’s views about Cameron’s predominance change?

Answer 25

They argue that he is not predominant like Thatcher or Blair, claiming that he was not fully able to assert himself on the party or the government - constraints of coalition!

Question 26

Why does Heffernan (2005) claim that the PM cannot be a president?

Answer 26

Institutional factors make it impossible, e.g. legislative process and accountability/no direct elections.
He also argues that Foley’s leadership stretch is a power resource which can make PMs stronger but does not change them into another type of chief executive.

Question 27

What is the concept of ‘spatial leadership’?

Answer 27

Leaders are outsiders in their own parties e.g. Foley (1993) talks about Thatcher’s alienation from cabinet and language used ‘they’ rather than collective ‘we’.

Question 28

Conclusion: is the concept of presidentialisation helpful?

Answer 28

The context between the US President and British PM is so different that not useful to compare. Better understood as personalisation. PM is more powerful in executive that President anyway. Prime Ministerial Predominance better model for measuring prime ministerial power.