Westminster Tradition Research Articles

The state of British policymaking: How can UK government become more effective?

Abstract How can UK and devolved governments be more effective when addressing chronic problems like inequalities or crises like climate change? The dominant story is of pessimism: policymaking is bound to a Westminster tradition of short-termism, elitism, and centralization, and reform efforts are doomed to failure. We present a more cautiously optimistic account about the prospects for a more effective government, grounded in theory-informed lessons from two decades of UK and devolved government reform efforts. We describe a potentially more innovative and less blundering state and present a coherent Positive Public Policy agenda that can help to realize this potential.

The Power of Norms: Gender Equality Reforms in the Parliaments of Fiji and Samoa

Parliaments are increasingly defined as “gendered institutions,” with rules, norms, and practices that are often stubbornly resistant to gender equality initiatives. The gender sensitive parliaments’ global agenda has made substantial progress in both drawing attention to the gendered nature of parliaments and in spearheading gender equality reform. While a positive trend, there remains a significant disconnect between the (global) normative framework that sets out this agenda and the realization of gender equality in national (local) parliaments. In this article, we build on previous work that begins to unpack and test the process of global norm localization through “contextualization” and “contestation.” We select new sites to test these processes—Fiji and Samoa—where specific gender equality reforms have been implemented in the past 10 years, one a gender mainstreaming mandate for parliamentary committees and the other a parliamentary gender quota. The Pacific Islands region presents an important cultural context worthy of exploration: Parliaments are not only overwhelmingly male-dominated, but many are also derivative of hegemonic masculinist cultures evident in the Westminster tradition, albeit hybridized with local political traditions. We compare and contrast the process by which these reforms were developed and implemented in each country and examine the extent to which they can be considered effective mechanisms for addressing gender inequalities. We find that the extent to which these reforms are sustainable and transformative depends on local contexts, local actors, and locally derived solutions. Specifically, the culturally relevant process of contesting the gender quota in Samoa constitutionally, electorally, and through the courts has localised and thereby legitimised this globally endorsed reform. By contrast, gender mainstreaming in Fiji’s parliamentary committees has been little more than a “tick-a-box” exercise, having had limited engagement from the political elite under a relatively autocratic regime.

A positive partnership: public servants in ministerial offices

ABSTRACT The Australian system of government was founded on the Westminster tradition, which relies on the binary relationship between Ministers and the Australian Public Service (APS). However, the increasing number of ministerial advisers over the past 40 years has changed the balance of power in the Australian executive. While public servants are able to work in a Minister's office, this article considers whether the movement of public servants between the public service and ministerial offices has the effect of politicising the role of the APS. Based on 22 interviews with current and former Commonwealth Ministers, public servants and ministerial advisers, the authors argue that public servants gaining experience in ministerial offices is beneficial to both the APS and the Minister's office. This is because public servants are exposed to the political side of government which helps improve the output of the department, while the Minister's office gains technical expertise. Despite these benefits, there appears to be fewer public servants working in ministerial offices over recent years. This article considers the benefits of public servants working in a ministerial office, why the movement has reduced, and explores ways in which this can be changed to support the executive governance of Australia.

Jonathan Craft and John Halligan, Advising Governments in the Westminster Tradition: Policy Advisory Systems in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 274 pp. £75 (Hardback) ISBN: 9781108421492

Jonathan Craft and John Halligan, Advising Governments in the Westminster Tradition: Policy Advisory Systems in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 274 pp. £75 (Hardback) <scp>ISBN</scp>: 9781108421492

Advising Governments in the Westminster Tradition: Policy Advisory Systems in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand

Advising Governments in the Westminster Tradition: Policy Advisory Systems in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand

Being Present: Embodying Political Relations in Indigenous Encounters with the Crown

Political encounters between settler governments and indigenous communities are freighted with the unresolved issues of indigenous independence asserted under ongoing conditions of colonial domination. Within political science, these encounters have been primarily theorised and analysed as struggles of indigenous communities for political recognition from settler states. Further, the politics of recognition is widely understood as colonising by indigenous scholars, with some arguing for an alternative politics of (indigenous) resurgence and refusal, a ‘turning away’ from the state. In this article, we argue that in the case of Māori in Aotearoa ‘turning up’ is the ethical and correct practice of politics, a practice stemming from the relational ontology of the Māori world. Thus ‘turning up’ rather than ‘turning away’ can, for Māori, itself be a practice of refusal. We outline the centrality of the embodied, face-to-face encounter within Māori politics, and identify the ongoing presence of the sovereign’s body and embodiment more broadly within the Westminster tradition, as symbolised in the concept of the Crown. Building on these compatibilities within distinct political ontologies, we argue for the potential and productivity of face-to-face political encounters, and call on the New Zealand Crown to also prioritise ‘turning up’ in its engagement with indigenous communities.

The politics of senior bureaucratic turnover in the Westminster tradition: Trust and the choice between internal and external appointments

The extent to which new governments appoint and dismiss senior public servants is widely claimed to be influenced by their country’s underlying administrative tradition. This is particularly the case within the Westminster tradition where such turnover is limited in nature, with most appointees coming from within the ranks of the public service. This article challenges the assertion that turnover in the Westminster tradition is homogeneously internal. Theorizing that new governments appoint senior public servants to increase their control over the bureaucracy, and that the desire for control is negatively correlated to trust, this article develops hypotheses between the trust new governments harbour towards the bureaucracy and whether they appoint and dismiss bureaucrats from within or outside the public service. The hypotheses are tested with longitudinal data measuring internal and external appointments and departures to the senior public service in Canada’s provincial governments over a period of 18 years. The results from various multinomial regression models suggest that political appointments to the public service are not as homogenous as frequently suggested. Although a transition in the governing party and a newly elected premier from the same party of the previous government both lead to an increase in bureaucratic turnover, a newly elected first minister has a greater incidence of internal turnover than a change in party, meanwhile the level of external turnover does not meaningfully differ between these two political events.

The Use of English Caselaw in the Malaysian Law of Judicial Review

The Malaysian legal system has a complicated relationship with English law. Although imperial ties to the colonial metropole’s legal system have long been severed, the pervasive influence of English law on the past, present, and future development of Malaysian law looms large. Within this context, the connection between English and Malaysian public law is of particular significance. Although the Malaysian constitutional settlement borrows from the Westminster tradition and its legal system is part of the common law family, the applicability of English administrative and constitutional law concepts is challenged by the presence of a written constitution, the provisions of which enjoy legal supremacy. This essay argues that, throughout their history, the Malaysian courts’ use of English law has been unaccompanied by comparative methodology that is sufficiently robust in ensuring that borrowed doctrines and norms are consistent with the Constitution.

CIVIL SERVANTS, POLITICAL HISTORY, AND THE INTERPRETATION OF TRADITIONS

ABSTRACTA renewed interest in aspects of high politics among historians who subscribe to the ‘new political history’ has coincided with the embrace by some political scientists of interpretivism as a method for understanding how beliefs and traditions impact on British political life. In order to examine the potential synergies between these two developments, this article utilizes a form of ‘historical interpretivism’ to study the beliefs and actions of senior civil servants. In 1980, the British government released a Memorandum of Guidance for Officials Appearing before Select Committees – known ever since as the ‘Osmotherly’ rules – to help civil servants navigate the stresses of appearing before parliamentary committees. This article analyses the civil service files in the decade leading up to the publication of the Osmotherly rules to reveal how senior civil servants sought to reconcile their interpretations of Westminster tradition with the need to respond to the demands of the ‘open government’ agenda. The article argues that studying the narratives which guide the beliefs of individual civil servants and their political masters can help political historians and political scientists alike analyse the power of tradition in shaping political action.

More Westminster than Westminster? The Office of Speaker across the Commonwealth

The office of Speaker at Westminster is one which has been used as a model for those who preside over the parliaments and assemblies of the countries that make up the Commonwealth. While the Westminster speakership has evolved and adapted itself to changing needs, those within the Commonwealth have stuck more rigidly to their origins. This paper will compare and contrast the different speakerships in the parliaments that follow the Westminster tradition. It will analyse just how closely they have managed to keep to those long-established traditions and assess how successful they have been in achieving the impartiality that is necessary for a neutral umpire. The duties and responsibilities both within and beyond the legislature will also be explored, as will the ceremonies associated with this office.

The Administrative Sherpa and the Journey of Public Service Leadership

The sherpa is offered as a helpful metaphor amid the rich and diverse metaphorical landscape describing public administration at the interface between senior public servants and ministers. The sherpa model acknowledges the complexity and nuanced leadership now demanded in the Westminster tradition, offering fresh tools for practitioners to think more critically about their role and how they can improve leadership skills. It also offers theoretical ability to incorporate relevant but underdeveloped factors, such as the environment, into the administrative leadership equation, thus enlarging issues at stake and forces demanding scrutiny, if administrative leadership is to be better understood.

Weeding the garden: The Third Way, the Westminster tradition and Imprisonment for Public Protection

This article engages with the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence of the UK Criminal Justice Act 2003, a prominent measure against ‘dangerous offenders’, in a ‘substantively political light’ (O’Malley, 1999). It provides an interpretation based on policymakers’ beliefs and traditions. I argue that the perceived need for the IPP sentence and its ultimate form was the result of New Labour ministers’ reliance on the Third Way political ideology and its implications for criminal justice policy. In addition, in terms of the policymaking process, I suggest that the ‘Westminster tradition’ conditioned policymakers’ actions in relation to the IPP sentence, in ways that were crucial to its outcome. The article concludes with an examination of the moral significance of these beliefs and traditions by reference to Bauman’s discussion of the dangers of a modern ‘garden culture’.

Equipping the Australian Public Service for Australia's Future Challenges

Equipping the Australian Public Service for Australia's Future Challenges

Suppressing Vote-Buying: the ‘War’ on Electoral Bribery from 1868

Electoral bribery is an ancient phenomenon, but its manifestations and pathologies can only be understood in the context of particular electoral norms and political practices. The spark for electoral bribery in the Westminster tradition was the shift from parliamentary service as a duty to a privilege, whilst its paradigm forms of treating and crude vote-buying are traceable to a shift from buying a seat to buying the voters. The gradual move from cultural acceptance to legislative and ethical condemnation of electoral bribery is attributable to a concern with the rising cost of elections and developing notions of fair electoral competition. This article focuses on the seminal period in the ‘war’ on electoral bribery from 1868 to the early twentieth century, giving a taxonomy of the various forms of bribery and judicial responses to them, as well as an explanation of the role played by statutory developments. The ultimate success of this war on corruption is shown to lie in a confluence of politico-legal techniques – election courts, tighter legislation, the secret ballot and the mass franchise – and institutional developments, in particular the rise of centralised, professional parties.

Beyond Westminster: The New Machinery of Subnational Government: Political Management in the Australian States

Government in Australia is three-tiered—commonwealth (or federal), state and local. The Australian states and territories operate within a Westminster tradition, although demonstrating significant departures. As large sub-national systems, they have developed central mechanisms for providing direction and co-ordination at the state level, and for seeking control of and responsiveness from the public service. This article reviews the patterns of change at the state level in Australia with regard to three sets of design issues: the organization of the political executive and central political direction; the vertical and horizontal aspects of the policy function; and the relations between the public service and politicians.

The effect of access and privacy legislation on the conduct of scholarly research in Canada

Canada's new Access to Information and Privacy Acts were proclaimed on 1 July 1983. Both statutes will affect the conduct of scholarly research, in the social sciences and history, that depends on information in the files of government departments. Restrictions on access to microdata, based on concern for the protection of individual privacy, may impede social research. A similar obstacle may deny certain archival records to historians. Since cabinet documents are excluded from the Acts' purview, political scientists will find it difficult to study the evolution of policy development, except in retrospect. These problems are compounded by the survival of many bulwarks of official secrecy, both legislative and customary, within the Westminster tradition inherited by Canada. Among the unresolved questions are the status of the Official Secrets Act and of ministerial responsibility. Social scientists should prepare themselves to address these issues when the legislation is reviewed by Parliament in three years' time.

VII. On Some Later Funeral Effigies in Westminster Abbey

On the 31st January 1907 the late Sir William St. John Hope read a paper before the Society ‘On the Funeral Effigies of the Kings and Queens ofEngland,with special reference to those in the Abbey Church of Westminster’, and to this paper our Fellow the late Dr. Armitage Robinson, then dean of Westminster, appended ‘A Note on the Westminster Tradition of Identification’. In this paper the origin and history of the earlier effigies—‘the Ragged Regiment’— were dealt with in detail, but the later effigies, familiarly known as the ‘Waxworks’, were outside its scope, and their history was only lightly sketched in a few sentences by the dean of Westminster.

On the Funeral Effigies of the Kings and Queens of England, with special reference to those in the Abbey Church of Westminster. By W. H. St. John Hope, Esq., M.A. With a note on the Westminster tradition of identification by the Very Rev. Joseph Armitage Robinson, D.D., F.S.A., Dean of Westminster

There used to be exhibited in the Abbey Church of Westminster, distinct from the later and better known “Waxworks,” a remarkable series of figures of deceased royal and noble personages, that came to be known as “the Ragged Regiment,” from the condition to which most of them had been reduced by course of time.