Westminster Systems Research Articles

Small Opposition Parties in a Westminster System: How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Participation, Decision-Making and Oversight in the UK House of Commons?

Opposition parties are a key feature of parliamentary democracies, but their participation rights differ markedly. In the UK House of Commons, the institutional operation of the Westminster model facilitates a marked distinction between the rights afforded to the Official Opposition party compared to smaller opposition parties. During times of crisis, these Westminster model dynamics can shift, impacting opposition rights. This article uses a case study of the COVID-19 pandemic to assess institutional inequalities across opposition party groups. Drawing on an analysis of over 4000 contributions to parliamentary debates and interviews with MPs, we examine the pandemic’s impact on the roles of opposition parties beyond the Official Opposition. We find that the pandemic initially generated unprecedented cooperation between the government and small opposition parties but that this was short-lived. In the long term, the pandemic exacerbated existing institutional barriers and the size and geographical concentration of small opposition parties in the devolved nations brought disproportionate participation and oversight barriers. This suggests the need to guarantee formal opposition rights within Westminster systems beyond the Official Opposition party to ensure that all political parties have the capacity to carry out their functions during times of crisis.

Seen but not partisan: Changing expectations of public servants in Westminster systems.

The principles of ministerial responsibility and public service non-partisanship are supported by the public, politicians, and public servants themselves.There is a desire among these three groups for public servants to become less anonymous, face more public scrutiny and engage more with external actors.The public and politicians' expectations surrounding public servants' political activities are still unclear, although a large majority of public servants believe they can be politically active outside of work.

Institutional boundaries and the challenges of aligning science advice and policy dynamics: the UK and Canada in the time of COVID-19.

This comparison of institutions of science advice during COVID-19 between the Westminster systems of England/UK and Ontario/Canada focuses on the role of science in informing public policy in two central components of the response to the pandemic: the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and the procuring of vaccines. It compares and contrasts established and purpose-built bodies with varying degrees of independence from the political executive, and shows how each attempted to manage the tensions between scientific and governmental logics of accountability as they negotiated the boundary between science and policy. It uses the comparison to suggest potential lessons about the relative merits and drawbacks of different institutional arrangements for science advice to governments in an emergency.

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

The executive lawmaking agenda: Political parties, prime ministers, and policy change in Australia

AbstractIn Westminster systems, governments enjoy a privileged position in the lawmaking process that they can use to deliver on their campaign promises and achieve their policy goals. What policy areas do governments seek to affect through lawmaking? How stable is the executive lawmaking agenda? How responsive is that agenda to changes triggered by elections or by transitions in prime minister? This study uses a dataset of 3982 Australian bills introduced between 2000 and 2017 to answer these questions. While it finds considerable stability in the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas, the analysis also indicates that Australia's executive lawmaking agenda is more responsive to changes in prime minister than to changes in the party in power. As the first application of the comparative policy agendas approaches to government bills in Australia, this article offers new insights into executive lawmaking priorities during an especially turbulent period in Australian politics.

Prime ministers in waiting? Women leaders of the opposition in Westminster systems

One of the key defining features of Westminster-type democracies is the acknowledgement of an official Opposition and a Leader of the Opposition typically referred to as a ‘prime minister in waiting’. This article focuses on this crucial element of Westminster democracy and applies a gender perspective, looking into women Leaders of the Opposition in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (1975–2022). As this inquiry reveals, there have been few and mostly short-lived women Leaders of the Opposition. Further, contrary to plausible assumptions, there have been more women Leaders of the Opposition from conservative than from left-wing parties. In particular, however, the office of Leader of the Opposition has, with few exceptions, not proven to be a springboard to the premiership. In fact, a majority of women prime ministers were ‘takeover prime ministers’, inheriting the office from a predecessor from their own party, rather than former Leaders of the Opposition, while many women Leaders of the Opposition were not even given the opportunity to lead their party into a national election campaign. The article discusses possible explanations for these patterns.

Applying the Multiple Streams Framework in Westminster systems: A comparative case study of pay-for-performance policymaking in primary health care in England and New Zealand

Applying the Multiple Streams Framework in Westminster systems: A comparative case study of pay-for-performance policymaking in primary health care in England and New Zealand

An election too far: Why do MPs leave politics before an election?

Why do members of parliament retire? In most parliamentary systems, a substantial number of MPs decide, before every election, not to run again. Though the decision to leave politics is essentially personal, a broader look at a large sample of MPs can reveal the existence of structural factors such as an uneven playing field or other sources of discrimination that could explain why certain individuals stay while others leave. A survey of the current literature indicates that the empirical work on this topic is almost exclusively focused on the US Congress. There is thus a need to conduct more research in other contexts to generate a more general explanation of why MPs leave politics on their own terms. The current literature suggests that the decision to leave could be explained by a complex combination of variables that are personal, partisan, and contextual. The purpose of this article is to better understand why sitting MPs decide not to run for re-election in parliamentary systems, focusing on three Westminster systems: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand since 1945. Various factors play a role, but our results suggest that as time passes, parliamentarians simply become less prone to seeking reelection.

Procedural Rationality in Westminster Systems: HowDe‐SeparationAffects the Decision Premise

AbstractWestminster administrative systems were characterized by a clear separation between the political careers and roles of elected ministers and career civil servants. The former set the values or aims of the organization; the latter utilize those values when generating policy ideas. This separation provides what H.A. Simon calls “procedural rationality.” The decision premise of public servants is (1) an apolitical commitment to government service, and (2) a commitment to advise on and implement the current government values, including expert advice using their personal and institutional memory and procedural knowledge. Using evidence from Australia and the United Kingdom, we track the de‐separation of political careers. Policy advice increasingly comes from outside the career public service, including politically appointed special advisors. Furthermore, senior politicians are increasingly drawn from the world of special and external advisors. De‐separation changes the decision premise of all actors, which we argue deleteriously affects the nature of policy formation.

The prime minister's constitution: Cabinet rulebooks in Westminster democracies

The transformation of governance in Westminster democracies is well documented. However, one aspect of their change that has not received much attention is the creation and publication of cabinet rulebooks. The few studies of cabinet rulebooks have focused on their potential constitutional implications, leaving unclear how their emergence fits within the broader development of Westminster governance. We address this gap in the literature by examining cabinet rulebooks in five Westminster democracies: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. We analyze their features and emergence, and then set out a framework to analyze their potential effects on cabinet dynamics. We find that the appearance of cabinet rulebooks can be tied to several forces of change in Westminster systems, but most especially the growth of government. Furthermore, we find that these rulebooks project an account of prime ministerial power that is favorable to the prime minister.

The United Kingdom and the pandemic: problems of central control and coordination

ABSTRACT The UK policy response to Covid-19 illustrates the problems arising where (1) a central government faces few countervailing political pressures as in Westminster systems; (2) the design of intergovernmental relations (IGR) mechanisms of coordination and conflict resolution fails to cope with the realities of a severely, asymmetric devolution settlement; and (3) local government faces serious collective action problems in influencing and mobilising resistance to a dominant central government. Firstly, the UK policy response illustrates the UK core executive’s serious problems in governing strategically and coordinating services across entrenched departmental and multi-level boundariesdespite government ministers enjoying a largely unchecked capacity to initiate major departmental reorganisations with significant IGR implications. Secondly, Westminster ministers resisted pressure from the three UK devolved nations and English city-region mayors to rebalance UK and English IGR mechanisms. Thirdly, the central response illustrates how the UK government, as the ‘English’ central government, maintained its control of local government through financial controls and outsourcing services.

Pandemic Parliamentary Oversight of Delegated Legislation: Comparing the Performance of Westminster Systems

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic is testing parliamentary systems of governance across the world, especially in relation to oversight of executive actions. Observers in multiple jurisdictions have already noted the proliferation of delegated legislation during the pandemic and the shortcomings in legislative oversight of the same. To date, however, no close analysis has been conducted of the way in which legislative oversight mechanisms have broken down during the pandemic. This paper provides such an analysis, using examples from Westminster systems adopting the ‘legislative model’ of providing extraordinary powers. Looking at individual examples from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the analysis seeks to identify and explain the failures, and relative successes, in different mechanisms for parliamentary oversight, including parliamentary scrutiny committees (pre-existing and ad-hoc), disallowance, and sunset clauses. Although primarily descriptive, the comparative approach analysis permits preliminary conclusions to be drawn as to the way each jurisdiction may improve its methods of parliamentary oversight of delegated legislation. These comparative lessons will be of use both during and beyond the pandemic.

Westminster as Usual? Three Interpretations for the UK Democracy

AbstractThe Brexit process has shattered the foundations of British politics, with prime ministerial resignations, government defeats, continuous rebellions and floor-crossings. These phenomena seem at odds with the usual decisiveness of Westminster systems. However, the aforementioned departures from the British tradition could be interpreted as compatible with the typical distance of any empirical reality from theoretical models, as exceptions to the rule due to the specificity of the European issue, or as the surfacing of some deeper social, economic and cultural tensions. Data alone are insufficient to confirm any of the alternative interpretations, although they seem to confirm the existence of long-term dynamics rather than some short-term exceptionalism. Within this scenario, the article suggests that a series of institutional innovations introduced since the late 1990s have facilitated the political consolidation of those tensions, contributed to the partisan dealignment, and made room for a potential departure from a Westminster model of democracy.

Creating Public Value in a Westminster Context: The Case of the Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet‘s Indigenous Regional Network, 2013-2018

ABSTRACT For public administration scholars, one of the key attributes of public value as a concept is that it provides a framework for relating managerial action to policy outcomes. While the empirical delineation of public value remains elusive, its best ‘fit’ seems to lie with conceptions of public policy that stress co-production between different stakeholders (including government). However, there is still a significant caveat involving public servants working in Westminster systems, which prescribe a normative framework restricting public servants to implementation of policies determined by ministers and their advisers. In this paper, the practical operation of these norms is examined, by tracking the implementation of a highly ‘top-down’ policy in a complex field, that of Indigenous community support and development. This investigation highlights the implications for the achievement of public value of highly-constrained notions of civil servant action implied by ‘classic’ Westminster position.

Duopoly, court politics and the Danish core executive

AbstractThis article applies the ideas of the core executive and court politics to Danish coalition and minority governments. It asks two questions. Do these ideas travel beyond their Westminster origins? What are the dilemmas confronting the Danish executive and its court politics? The analysis is based on documentary sources and 22 elite interviews with cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries. It identifies a duopoly of Prime Minister and Minister of Finance as a distinctive variety of court politics. It identifies the key dilemmas confronted by the Danish executive; namely trust, political support and politicization. It concludes that court politics provides unique insights into the workings of Danish government. The article is a contribution to the comparative analysis of the court politics of governing elites. It shows that the focus on court politics is not only useful for majoritarian Westminster systems but also for the analysis of consensual parliamentary democracies.

Parliamentary Prorogation in Comparative Context

AbstractThis paper examines the power to prorogue (or suspend) Parliament following the 2019 prorogation controversy in the UK. We outline the legal basis of prerogative‐based prorogation, survey its uses in the UK and other Westminster systems, and compare it with equivalent rules in other European parliamentary democracies. The comparative perspective highlights the outlier status of the UK among comparable European democracies. In the UK, the absence of explicit legal limits on the use of prorogation gives the executive exceptional scope to employ the power for political purposes to sidestep Parliament. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for current discussions about the desirability of reforming the UK’s prorogation rules and placing express legal limits on the executive’s power.

The Veiled Sceptre: Reserve Powers of Heads of State in Westminster Systems

One institution that once dominated the world constitutional landscape has received little attention in the recent renaissance of comparative constitutional law1: the “reserve powers” held by the head of state in a constitutional monarchy.2 Professor Twomey’s book, The Veiled Sceptre, presents itself as a welcome exception. Focusing on “the [head of state’s] discretionary powers . . . that may be used to uphold and maintain the fundamental principles of the [Westminster-style] system of [responsible] government that the [head of state] represents” (p. 1), Professor Twomey’s magnum corpus helps resurrect the seemingly antiquated institution of reserve power as a legitimate...

Book Review: The Veiled Sceptre: Reserve Powers of Heads of State in Westminster Systems

Book Review: The Veiled Sceptre: Reserve Powers of Heads of State in Westminster Systems

Studying policy advisory systems: beyond the Westminster-bias?

ABSTRACTResearch on policy advisory systems has rapidly proliferated over the last decade and now focuses on advisory system change dynamics. Yet, empirical studies predominantly focus on the study of policy advisory systems in Westminster systems and it is those studies upon which theorization relies. This paper argues that this Westminster-prevalence resulted in a Westminster-bias of our understanding of policy advisory systems and directs attention to more abstract or general analytical dimensions that may be relevant for the comparative study of policy advisory systems and research on advice systems in transitional and developing countries.

Institutional amnesia and public policy

ABSTRACTInstitutional amnesia continues to be ignored by policy scholars despite the fact that it can undermine the effectiveness of public policy in various ways. In calling on policy scholars to start taking amnesia seriously as a research concern, this article provides data and analytical tools to help develop that agenda. The data are drawn from an international comparison of policy learning and amnesia in four Westminster systems (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK), which highlights how public-sector leaders widely regard amnesia as a serious matter of concern. Analytical tools are presented in the form of a working definition of amnesia that can operationalize research; a series of hypotheses about how amnesia can act as an independent variable in relation to other policy concerns; and a variety of research-based pathways through which policy practitioners might seek to address the risk of memory-loss.