PRIME MINISTERS AND THE COMMONS: PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR, 1868 TO 1987

Since 1868 nineteen Prime Ministers have answered parliamentary questions, made statements, given major speeches, and intervened in debates in the House of Commons. This article presents a comparative and quantitative analysis of PMS' behaviour patterns on these four dimensions. Key findings include: the importance of 1940 as the critical break between a traditional and a modem form of parliamentary activity, in which Prime Ministers make fewer contributions to Commons proceedings altogether, fewer speeches and far fewer interventions in debates than in the pre-1940 period, but more statements; the emergence of question time as the absolutely dominant form of prime ministerial activity in the Commons, especially from the mid-1970s onwards; and the distinctiveness of Thatcher's minimalist Commons activity, when set against other post-1940 PMs.     

BRITISH FARCE, FRENCH DRAMA AND TALES OF TWO CITIES: REORGANIZATIONS OF PARIS AND LONDON GOVERNMENTS 1957–86

Comparing the evidence of London and Paris reorganizations in the last three decades confirms that political interventions are often autonomous of administrative or class logic. Reorganizations are not mere registers of the subterranean workings of socio-economic forces. However, the reorganizations show that these political interventions are not autonomous from the characteristics of their respective political systems.