CENTRAL CO‐ORDINATION OF COMMONWEALTH POLICY‐MAKING: ROLES AND DILEMMAS OF THE PRIME MINISTER'S DEPARTMENT

Abstract

The Cabinet, in a word, is a board of control chosen by the legislature, out of persons whom it trusts and knows, to rule. the nation…A Cabinet is a combining committee—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the State to the. executwe part of the State. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its funcuons it belongs to the other…The real power is not in the sovereign, it is in the Prune Minister and in the Cabinet—that is, in the hands of a committee appointed by Parliament, and of the chairman of that committee. Walter Bagehot: The English Constitution, 1867.