The Westminster Model and the “Indivisibility of the Political and Administrative Elite”: A Convenient Myth Whose Time Is Up?

This article argues that the principle of indivisibility in the relationship between political and administrative elites acted as a central convention of the Westminster system for much of the twentieth century. It explores how in more recent decades this principle has been challenged by the shift to a principal–agent approach. It considers the extent to which this shift diminishes the traditional Westminster model's understanding of the minister–civil servant relationship as one based on a symbiotic interdependent partnership. In its place has emerged a more universal command and control relationship that is seen as necessary to meet the demands of modern accountability and transparency. Such a change has fundamentally altered a long‐established power‐bargain between ministers and civil servants and undermined a core tenet of the Westminster model.     

Is the Westminster System Broken Beyond Repair?

Is Westminster dying as a useful conceptual encapsulation of a particular system of public administration? Scholarly critiques over the last decade have suggested Westminster civil services are evolving in ways that erode crucial Westminster “traditions.” Core elements including security of tenure, merit‐based selection, non‐partisanship, anonymity, and ministerial responsibility are all perceived as in decline or under attack. Influential commentators have proposed concepts such as “new political governance,” changing “public sector bargains,” “court government/politics,” and “presidentialization” to document and interpret these allegedly paradigmatic shifts in public administration. This article places these in context by canvasing different accounts of what Westminster is, before assessing the critiques about what it has become. The article argues that Westminster is not broken beyond repair, but rather it has been remolded to suit the needs of contemporary governance.     

An Invidious Position? The Public Dance of the Promiscuous Partisan

Public service mandarins were once largely anonymous, diligently wielding their great power behind the scenes while their political masters performed on the front stage. Things have changed. Today, civil service leaders are appearing publicly more often, in more places and to a wider range of audiences than ever before. This article examines the extent to which this decline in anonymity impacts on traditions of civil service impartiality within the Westminster system. It draws on the late Peter Aucoin's concept of ‘promiscuous partisanship’ to examine how contemporary mandarins in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia face accusations of having compromised their impartiality by advocating for the policy agenda of the government of the day. The article argues that what has changed is not that civil service leaders have suddenly become partisan, but rather that they have become more ‘public’, allowing for perceptions of partisanship to emerge.     

Revisiting Politicization: Political Advisers and Public Servants in Westminster Systems

In recent times much has been made of the threat some argue is posed by political advisers to the impartiality of the Westminster civil service. Drawing on survey of senior New Zealand civil servants, this article examines the degree to which political advisers are perceived as a threat to civil service neutrality and describes the form taken by that threat as variously perceived. On the evidence reported, it is suggested that traditional understandings of “politicization” need to be reconceptualized if they are to fully account for the nature of the relationship between political and civil service advisers. To existing conceptions of politicization, therefore, the article proposes adding another: “administrative politicization,” allowing for different gradations of politicization to be identified, and enabling a nuanced assessment of the nature and extent of a risk to civil service neutrality that, the data suggest, is not as great as is sometimes alleged.     

Abortion Law and Scotland: An Issue of What?

In recent years, several decisions have been made regarding the devolution of abortion laws from central government at Westminster to the devolved regions of the United Kingdom. This article considers the decision to devolve abortion law to Scotland. It addresses Westminster debates from the time, employing a discursive analysis to examine the arguments made for this legislative move. It argues that the debate was largely a proxy argument for the broader question of Westminster–Edinburgh relations and Scottish independence. It further argues that utilising abortion in this way is problematic, and politicises an area which is better seen as an issue solely of women's rights.     

Old and New Labour Narratives of Whitehall: Radicals,Reactionaries and Defenders of the Westminster Model

This article argues that throughout its history, the leadership of the Labour Party has chosen to embrace a benign view of the Civil Service, as part of a wider acceptance of the constitutional status quo reflected in the Westminster model. There has nevertheless been a long tradition in the wider Labour movement that has questioned whether Whitehall is capable of working for a government with radical aspirations. This article examines Labour's historical approach towards Whitehall, before reflecting on the extent to which the present Administration, while appealing to radical and reforming rhetoric has, like its predecessors, continued to embrace the status quo. It concludes by arguing that a contemporary and credible narrative capable of challenging the Westminster model has yet to emerge from the broader movement.     

Prime Ministers, Presidentialism and Westminster Smokescreens

This article asks, 'how do practitioners understand the relationship between the prime minister, ministers and the rest of Westminster and Whitehall?' We focus on three topics. First, we review tales of a Blair presidency. Second, we explore the governance paradox in which people tell tales of a Blair presidency as they recount stories of British governance that portray it as fragmented with several decision-makers. Finally, we argue that this paradox reveals the distorting influence the Westminster model still exerts on many accounts of British politics. It acts as a smokescreen for the changes in executive politics.     

Responsibility to Be Enthusiastic? Public Servants and the Public Face of “Promiscuous Partisanship”

Contemporary public service leaders are no longer the anonymous mandarins of Westminster folklore. Whether giving public speeches to outside organizations or communicating directly with the media, senior public servants are emerging from anonymity to become public actors in their own right. This article undertakes a comparative study across four Westminster jurisdictions—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—to examine the formal rules and guidelines that apply to public servants when making public statements in their official capacity. Drawing on the late Peter Aucoin's notion of “promiscuous partisanship,” the article argues that public servants are expected to demonstrate a new level of enthusiasm when explaining or justifying government policy to the public. This has implications for the extent to which nonpartisanship can continue to effectively function within Westminster systems.     

Studying civil society across the world: Exploring the Thorny issues of conceptualization and measurement

Abstract

The debate about the usefulness of the civil society concept for social analysis has reached a critical stage and calls for its abandonment are mounting. To prove its relevance for policy, practice and research, better operational concepts and more rigorous empirical research on civil society are required. This article examines the possibilities and pitfalls of cross-national civil society research as a crucial area of empirical civil society studies. It explores the definition, conceptualization, operationalization and measurement of civil society through a critical examination of existing international efforts at comparative civil society analysis. A functional approach to defining civil society and a two-dimensional operational concept of civil society, according to its (1) structural and (2) cultural features, are proposed as suitable tools to study the phenomenon cross-nationally. The article also reviews the Civicus Civil Society Index as an innovative tool to assess the state of civil society and discusses the insights and challenges emerging from its current application in more than 50 countries. The paper concludes that international comparative civil society studies are both possible and necessary, but cautions that more attention needs to be paid to the development of appropriate operational concepts and measurement models.     

Accountability: Is Westminster the Problem?

The outcome of the Symposium reported in AJPA 58(1) is said by the convenors to be that there are many different kinds of accountability and that there may be clashes between them. This paper suggests one possible reason is that the Westminster label hides the potential tensions between the increasing demands for accountability, more responsiveness and responsibility, the new public management and the institutional framework. Everyone wishes to cover perceived unmet demands and expectations, providing we remain with basic Westminster as our starting point. The paper suggests that commitment to what we call Westminster is the problem. It restricts understanding of the reality of Australian governance because it is not an uncontested term. Westminster is made to mean whatever the normative stance of the commentator requires. The paper argues that it is an opportune time to answer some basic questions about responsible parliamentary democracy in Australia.     

The dilemmas of pursuing ‘throughput legitimacy’ through participatory mechanisms

Under pressure to open up the ‘black box’ of governance, technocratic bodies are increasingly seeking to include civil society participation in the policy process. This article draws on empirical cases from the European Commission and NHS England to assess the extent to which the participatory mechanisms pursued by these institutions have been successful in eliciting ‘throughput legitimacy’. It is shown that though these mechanisms have taken very different forms – the former a classic instance of ‘window dressing’ participation, the latter closer to ‘best practice’ in this field – they nevertheless share a number of ongoing vulnerabilities. The article outlines the shared organisational, operational and existential dilemmas that technocratic bodies face when eliciting civil society participation, and highlight their reliance on backstage negotiation to sustain stakeholder buy-in. It concludes by highlighting the prospect that the pursuit of throughput legitimacy for technocratic bodies entails inherent limitations and contradictions.     

Reforming the Westminster Model of Agency Governance: Britain and Ireland After the Crisis

Conventional understandings of what the Westminster model implies anticipate reliance on a top‐down, hierarchical approach to budgetary accountability, reinforced by a post–New Public Management emphasis on recentralizing administrative capacity. This article, based on a comparative analysis of the experiences of Britain and Ireland, argues that the Westminster model of bureaucratic control and oversight itself has been evolving, hastened in large part due to the global financial crisis. Governments have gained stronger controls over the structures and practices of agencies, but agencies are also key players in securing better governance outcomes. The implication is that the crisis has not seen a return to the archetypal command‐and‐control model, nor a wholly new implementation of negotiated European‐type practices, but rather a new accountability balance between elements of the Westminster system itself that have not previously been well understood.     

Secrecy,Security and Digital Literacy in an Era of Meta-Data: Why the Canadian Westminster Model Falls Short

The purpose of this article is to undertake a critical assessment of the governance of Canada's national security apparatus and, more specifically, the growing digitization and data-driven dimensions of such an apparatus. Over the previous decade, since 9/11, the advent of electronic government (e-government) and its emphasis on horizontality and interoperability became intertwined with the security apparatus of the public sector: the recent Snowden affair in the US has once again brought such discussions to the forefront. It is within such a context that the rise of ‘big data’ (or meta-data) as an identifiable term denotes a confluence of forces and contradictory tensions between openness and secrecy for the public sector both operationally and democratically. We examine Canada's Westminster insularity in this regard, how Canadian reforms meant to augment oversight and review capacities of security agencies have been stunted in recent years, and why such stalled actions matter to the privacy and safety of Canadian citizens. Conversely, a case for more openness and governance innovation is put forth premised on two main and inter-related directions: more political oversight and public dialogue on the one hand, and a greater emphasis on privacy as a responsibility on the other hand. Together these directions emphasize a more activist and participative civil culture that is central to ensuring societal resilience in an increasingly virtual and complex security environment.     

Selecting women candidates: obstacles to the feminisation of the House of Commons

Abstract. Despite concern by the major British political parties to increase the number of women at Westminster, progress has been slow, yielding only just over 5 per cent of women MPs. This article presents the results of an investigation of party selection procedures designed to determine whether selection practices were themselves the explanation for the poor showing of women. The study consisted of interviews with party officials and a survey of the candidates in the 1987 General Election. It was found that selection procedures were in a process of change which included efforts by central leaderships to promote women's candidacies. But local selectorates were not always cooperative. Although women did not appear to be selected in the proportions in which they were coming forward, no evidence of direct discrimination against aspirant women candidates was found. But indirect discrimination may have taken place. Both the way in which the role of a candidate is defined and the qualities selectorates seek produce ideal candidate profiles which may penalise many women. The article concludes that if women are to be better represented at Westminster, parties must go beyond procedural change and the introduction of positive action to a reconsideration of the criteria for choosing candidates.     

Arend Lijphart and the Transformation of Irish Democracy

This article assesses the extent to which institutional change has produced a consensus democracy in the Republic of Ireland. It measures this change over time, examining each of the variables Lijphart associates with the distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy. We show that the Irish system is moving away from its Westminster roots, but some variables on the executive–parties dimension have hardly changed at all. Hence, we relate the Irish preference for ‘divided power’ forms of consensus democracy to the strong British imprint on the state's core legislative institutions.     

Commentary on Keane: “Eleven theses on markets and civil society”

The article analyses the evolution of civil society in Eritrea. It has two sections. The first section critically analyses the notion of civil society. It argues that the Eurocentric or conventional perception of the notion of civil society fails to capture the reality in Africa. The second section, the case of Eritrea (the empirical part), deals with a specific type of civil society. The Eritrean civil society is an outcome of colonial-, liberation- and post-liberation-induced societal reality. The article traces the emergence of civil society in Eritrea in its diverse forms through the historical trajectories of pre-colonial, colonial, liberation and post-liberation eras. It maps out the development of civil society in Eritrea.     

Between Devolution and Direct Rule: Implications of a Political Vacuum in Northern Ireland?

It is over a year since the collapse of the devolved administration at Stormont, which left one region of the United Kingdom without a functioning executive. Reluctance to introduce direct rule from Westminster reduced Northern Ireland to a desiccated form of governance. This article examines the nature and form of government in this political vacuum. The consequences of this system are examined in terms of the absence of legislation, mechanisms for scrutiny, and participation in intergovernmental relations. In the absence of devolution and direct rule, the potential for greater involvement of the Irish government in the affairs of Northern Ireland is also considered.     

Electoral Registration: Time for Change

Electoral registration is the key building block for the administration of elections. It is the gateway to voting: people cannot vote at elections in the UK if their name is not on the register. In recent times there has been much debate in media and Westminster circles about current arrangements for electoral registration and the related issue of the future of postal voting.
This article presents new research published by the Electoral Commission in September 2005 investigating non-registration and its causes. It reviews the case for reform, considers the current policy debate and outlines some of the challenges involved in maximising registration rates. It summarises the Commission's policy recommendations and the reasoning behind them, focusing in particular on the suggested move from the current household-based system of registration to a system of individual registration     

Civil society activism,strategic alignment and international public policy making for spectrum

Academic work has noted a growth in the prominence of civil society in international political-economic life, yet the conditions under which such civil society presence is developed, the ways in which it is manifest and their implications are still incompletely understood. The recent international policy debate on the allocation of spectrum provides a useful case for research aiming to close this gap in knowledge and is the focus of this article. It provides evidence of a significant – though ultimately highly contingent – civil society presence in the spectrum debate. It explains this through the construction of a framework of international civil society strategic alignment. This is used to illustrate and explain the conditions that allowed civil society to articulate its voice and the means through which and how this was achieved. The article contributes to the literature on civil society activism in communications by illustrating both its capacity for action – but also the highly significant limitations placed on it – in utilizing strategic alignment to engage in international public policy making debates.     

Territorial Finance and the Future of Barnett

This article traces the changing funding relationships between Scotland and the UK government. Beginning from the Barnett Formula, it examines how the changing support within Scotland for greater political autonomy from Westminster has influenced the mechanisms that have determined Scotland's fiscal structure. Increasing support for the SNP, and then for the Yes campaign in the September 2014 independence referendum, has led to a mixture of new powers being granted to the Scottish Parliament. The Scotland Act 2012 extends the Scottish government's control over income tax and some other small taxes. Although independence was rejected by the Scottish people in September 2014, the ‘Vow’ made by the Westminster parties immediately before the vote is leading to far‐reaching changes in the UK's fiscal structure. This will cause a very substantial change in intergovernmental relations within the UK, which the Barnett Formula may not survive.