Departments and the Core Executive

Abstract

In the past, discussions of the power of the Prime Minister normally counterposed her/his power to that of the Cabinet and saw it very much as a zero-sum game. Indeed, even today, some authors focus almost exclusively upon the Prime Minister and see British government as becoming increasingly presidential or even ‘Bonapartist’ (Foley 1992; Pryce 1998, Hennessy 1998; Kavanagh and Seldon 1999). However, we follow Rhodes (1997), Smith (1999a) and others in arguing that we should conceptualise power in British central government in terms of a series of exchange relations between different elements of the core executive. Of course, there are different definitions of the core executive and we do not intend to add to this debate (see Smith 1999a). Rather, we shall focus upon our departments’ relations with other key elements of the core executive: the Prime Minister and his or her territory, notably the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office; the Cabinet; the Treasury; and other departments.