With the rise in the professional politician many prefer to remain loyal in order to gain power and move up in the hierarchy as opposed to become a rebel who remains in the back benchers. This can be seen after the vote on tuition fees and the liberal democrats. Despite the fact that they had campaigned for this cause endlessly only 26 (including a few Conservatives) chose to vote against the bill. Whips play an important part in removing efficiency from Parliament. By having whips who ensure that MPs behave in accordance to the decisions of the executive both Parliaments ability to scrutinise and hold the executive to account is diminished, but also their role as representatives of their individual constituency is also compromised.
What Cabinet members discuss in the Cabinet committees is decided by the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister can even chair the committee. In this way the Prime Minister can just get them to discuss what they want them to and even influence the outcome. The use of Cabinet committees also takes away the important of the cabinet because it means that issues aren’t actually discussed in Cabinet meetings. Instead decisions are just made outside of the meetings and just reported back during the meeting. Since the Cabinet is meant to discuss and decide on major issues as well as ratifying decisions taken outside the Cabinet surely this means that the Cabinet no longer has an important role.
Above all, he suggests these leaders deliberately make themselves into outsiders within government. They separate themselves from its other members and so are able to act independently, but also remain part of government itself. Thatcher and Reagan took this a step further: they even criticised governments of which they were the head, suggesting that they tended to be insufficient, wasteful and simply tried to do too much. Meanwhile, Margaret Thatcher was promising to ‘roll back the frontiers of the state;, was roundly criticising the civil service for its conservatism and wastefulness and was not averse to openly opposing her own ministers. Blair chose to adopt certain areas of policy as his own – foreign affairs, Northern Ireland, education and health – and attempted to dominate the political agenda by introducing his own policy initiatives above the heads of the relevant ministers.
Discuss how two Prime Ministers differed in their treatment and use of the cabinet (10 marks) A Prime Minister’s (PM) relationship and utilization of his/her cabinet can be an important factor in determining a successful premiership as PM. PMs over recent decades have differed in various ways in their treatment and use of the cabinet. Two examples of PMs who have contrasted in their approaches to their cabinet are John Major (PM from 1990-1997) and Tony Blair (PM from 1997-2007). John Major can be regarded as a more transactional leader, in the sense that he took a preference to a more collective cabinet; decisions would be made in cooperative meetings involving all cabinet ministers and there was room for compromise on certain issues discussed in Cabinet Office. In that regard, Major adopted a more collegiate style in his cabinet, making sure that all ministers had a contribution in the discussions at hand.
However, for the most part main causes of shutdowns are quite balanced between a presidents refusing to sign a bill or vetoing a bill and congress failing to approve a budget to propose to the president to sign (Longley). Simply a government shutdown is a result because: The U.S. Constitution requires
It is difficult for a Backbench MP to influence government policy if a government has a large majority in Parliament. The power of individual backbench MPs is reduced making it harder to challenge the government. Also, the PM has powers of patronage which demand loyalty; few MPs want to cause a general election by defeating the government. Thus accepting their fate as lobby
Which also allowed the federal government the opportunity for revenue. One of the main emphases for the Hamilton and the Federalist Party was that the federal government was too over power the states. They felt that leaving too much power in the hands of states would only create a weak type of government, with very little power to act. Citizen’s rights would be protected by the legislation, court systems, and of course the Bill Of Rights; distrusting the people with the vote. The federalist created the House of Reps which was directly voted by the people.
With reference to the source, describe two limitations on prime ministerial power. (5 marks) Prime ministerial power has strengths as well as limitations. One of the limitations to prime ministerial power is that the members of cabinet may turn against the Prime Minister, as happened in 1990 to Margaret Thatcher. The cabinet’s support for the prime minister is conditional on the prime minister being popular and successful. If he is not successful or popular, he will not have the cabinet’s support, making it harder for him to control the cabinet, therefore making his job as prime minister harder.
Unlike the American version, heads of government departments are not usually experts in their fields. Hence they are surrounded by experts from the Civil Service and what are referred to as 'special advisors'. The role of the cabinet is to discuss issues relevant to the country, registering and ratifying decision taken elsewhere in the cabinet system, discusses various points of view, weighs up arguments concerning whatever is being discussed and comes to a decision that is backed by the majority of the Cabinet. As such it becomes government policy, if supported in the House of Commons, and has the legitimacy of majority Cabinet support behind it. This means that decisions have collective responsibility behind them - all Cabinet members would be expected to publicly support and defend such policies.
A government with a minority of seats in the Commons might however lose a vote of No Confidence and would then have to resign - this last happened to the minority Labour government of Callaghan in 1979. Parliament does, however, have important SCRUTINY functions. In other words, the executive (the prime minister and all other ministers) have to explain and justify their policies and actions to parliament. Ministers (by rotation) answer questions by backbenchers during the daily Question Time (both orally and in writing), while the prime minister answers questions every Wednesday. The oral questions are sometimes dominated by loyal backbench government supporters, and it is often suggested that the media provide a more effective form of scrutiny than does parliament.