The role and powers of the Prime Minister

Written evidence submitted by Professor Ludger Helms, Chair of Comparative Politics, University of Innsbruck

1. Is there sufficient clarity as to the Prime Minister’s role and powers?
   1a. Should the Prime Minister’s role and powers be codified in statute or otherwise?

Yes, I think there is sufficient clarity as to the Prime Minister’s role and powers – at least among those, who have a more than superficial or casual interest in the subject, that is, politicians and academic experts as well as most journalists. Of course, some voters may have certain ideas about what a prime minister can/should or cannot/should not do, which may be more or less far away both from political reality and reasonable normative definitions of prime ministerial power. But a codification of the Prime Minister’s role and powers would not appear to be of any use in terms of providing voters with a more reliable yardstick for evaluating the political performance of a prime minister.

Comparative inquiries also suggest that in most countries the executive territory is the arena with the largest number, and the greatest political relevance, of informal rules which are characteristically not codified anywhere. In countries known for their particularly detailed set of written rules concerning the head of government’s role and powers, such as Germany, the tension between formal legal stipulations and the living constitution has been particularly marked.

A brief additional remark to the statement from p. 1 introducing this question:

“The Prime Minister’s role is peculiarly British in two ways. The first is that as the Head of Government, he must control the House of Commons to remain in office, but he is not chosen by the House or directly elected by the British people as a whole.” – This combination is less peculiarly British than it may seem. The indirect election of the head of government is a structural characteristic of any truly parliamentary system of which there are more than a dozen in Western Europe alone. In some countries the prime minister is formally elected by the parliament before being appointed by the head of state (for example in Ireland or Germany), but this marks an exception rather than the rule. In other countries, prime ministers and their newly formed governments need to secure a formal approval by parliament after the prime minister and the other ministers have assumed office (for example in Italy). Yet there are countries where parliament is not in any way formally involved in the process of creating a government (for example in Scandinavia). Political scientists refer to this latter category of cases as ‘negative parliamentarism’ (that is prime ministers and their governments can stay in office as long as parliament makes no move to remove them from office.)

Apart from this, any head of government in a parliamentary system must control the parliament, that is, he or she must be politically in command of a given parliamentary majority or must at least enjoy the general trust and support of this majority in order to be able to govern effectively. Also, in any parliamentary system governments can be ousted from office by a no-confidence vote, which has to be carried by an absolute parliamentary majority. In some countries (including Germany, Spain and Belgium) there is a ‘constructive vote of no-confidence’ (that is, a majority seeking to topple the head of government must agree on a direct replacement candidate, which makes it considerably more difficult for a split opposition to unseat the Prime Minister). But this is not more than a variation of the general rule that prime ministers and their governments can be ousted from office by even the smallest possible absolute parliamentary majority.

The real British peculiarity rather relates to the requirement that, by constitutional convention, a candidate for the office of prime minister must be chosen from the pool of members of the House of Commons. However, even this aspect is less peculiarly British, if one looks at the constitutional practice in different parliamentary democracies. Whereas many prime ministers outside Britain lack the long parliamentary experience of most British Prime Ministers, many candidates do have a parliamentary track record or seek to secure a parliamentary seat when entering the race for the office of head of government.

2. How has the role of the Prime Minister changed in recent years?
   2a. How has this process of change been brought about and controlled?

In many countries, the mediatisation of politics (the ubiquity of personality-focused mass media in the political arena and the encroachment of media logics on politics) and the rise of international summitry (EU summits, G-8 etc) have significantly increased the public visibility of political ‘chief executives’. This has been considered an important new power resource of presidents and prime ministers even in the domestic arena. Given the traditionally exposed position of the British Prime Minister, change at this level has remained more moderate in Britain than elsewhere.

A related recent development concerns the role of prime ministers as party leaders. The relationship between prime ministers and their parties is of course a flexible one that is re-defined with every new incumbent (and again often during an incumbent’s term). This said, there have been marked differences not only at the level of individual prime ministers / party leaders, but also between countries. In Britain the relationship between prime ministers and their parties has traditionally been exceptionally close. Still, even in the UK, there have been signs of what some scholars have labeled ‘presidentialisation’: more recent prime ministers (such as Tony Blair in particular) have tried to govern ‘past their parties’ rather than ‘through their parties’. From that perspective, it would appear that the prime minister’s role as party leader has changed, and probably become somewhat less central than it has been in the past.

One other element of change that has been more conspicuous in Britain than in many other parliamentary systems is the decreasing role of prime ministers as legislative leaders or executive leaders in the parliamentary arena (which is to some extent just a reflection of the traditionally strong parliamentary anchoring of prime ministerial power). Early signs of ‘de-parliamentarisation’ can be traced back to the Callaghan premiership, but change has not been confined to the political behavior of different incumbents, but also been driven (or at least accompanied) by several institutional reforms, such as the introduction of the Prime Minister’s regularly held press conferences in 2002. In the course of these developments, the mass media have gained much of the power to check the executive that has traditionally rested with Parliament, and recent prime ministers have responded to this challenge by a host of media-related activities. As in many other parliamentary democracies, ‘managing the media’ has become an important new task of prime ministers seeking to keep control of the public agenda to the greatest possible extent.

The increasing ‘personalisation’ of British general elections (the 2010 general election was the first one in which leaders were exactly as important as policies in how people voted, according to Ipsos MORI) has also contributed to important changes within the executive territory. The virtually enhanced personal mandate of prime ministers has provided them with more power and greater leeway, as there is a broad understanding among their fellows that the party’s electoral performance (which usually means the party’s electoral success) is to a significant and increasing extent influenced by the personal electoral appeal of the Prime Minister / Prime Ministerial candidate. (However, it should not be overlooked that this enhanced room for maneuver of ‘highly personalized prime ministers’ has to be paid for by an increased electoral vulnerability – which marks perhaps the single most substantive aspect of the so-called ‘presidentialisation’ phenomenon.)

There have been also growing expectations that the Prime Minister should provide more policy leadership from the centre (in contrast to just ‘keeping things together’ and securing the government’s general political capacity to act). The institutional basis for an increased policy-making role of the Prime Minister has been developed since the premiership of Harold Wilson, and while there has been no strictly linear trend, more recent prime ministers have had considerably more institutional resources at their disposal than prime ministers before the 1970s.

The general trend towards centralization of power at the centre of the governing machine can, however, only in part be attributed to public pressures (or in some cases personal ambitions of recent prime ministers). There are important other structural reasons, perhaps the single most important of which is the changing nature of many government policies that increasingly tend to cut across departmental portfolios and are in need of co-ordination from the centre.

One last observation largely follows from the developments described above: Whereas the classic role of the Prime Minister as the natural leader of the Cabinet has not been challenged, the Cabinet itself (or at least the full Cabinet) has lost ground to other actors within and outside the core executive territory. That said, coalition government may, possibly work to revitalise more traditional forms of cabinet government. Evidence from comparative analysis of coalition governance would suggest, though, that informal decision-making bodies (such as coalition rounds or committees) are more natural arenas of intra-executive decision-making in coalition governments than cabinets.

3. What is the impact of coalition government on the role and powers of the Prime Minister?

Coalition government obviously tends to constrain the room for maneuver of a prime minister, as it adds one crucial political constraint on prime ministerial power. This already starts with the Cabinet-building process and successive reshuffles (where it clearly limits the patronage and decision-making power of the Prime Minister), but effectively overshadows most of the governing process. Yet, comparative inquiries suggest that there are both constraints and positive resources involved in coalition governance from the Prime Minister’s point of view. In particular, prime ministers may (try to) justify obvious diversions from their party’s electoral manifestoes with the unwillingness of the coalition partner to support their original agenda – even in those cases where backbenchers from the Prime Minister’s own party are chiefly responsible for not letting have a prime minister his or her way. Also, the existence of coalition government may make it easier for prime ministers to keep their own troops together.

It would also appear worth noting in this context that there are several examples of prime ministers from different West European countries opting in favor of forming a coalition government even though they and their parties would have enjoyed a parliamentary majority sufficiently large to form a single-party government. One of the key reasons for this has been the desire to expand the government’s political basis for large-scale constitutional and other major policy reforms.

All other things being equal, coalition government unquestionably puts greater emphasis on the Prime Minister’s role as inter-party consensus-builder. It should be noted however that consensus-building (if not within a coalition, but within the Prime Minister’s own party) has always been one of the key tasks of many British Prime Ministers. In fact, dealing with intra-party quarrels may to some extent be considered a functional equivalent to leading a coalition government.

4. Are there sufficient checks and balances on the powers of the Prime Minister?
   4a. If no, what additional or improved checks and balances are required?
   4b. Is any further change required with regard to specific powers currently exercised under the royal prerogative, by transferring them to statute or otherwise?

Yes, I think there are sufficient checks and balances, even though such a positive and unqualified assessment is probably tenable only for a country like Britain. A similar construction of the office of prime minister would have to be considered highly problematic in countries with a less mature political culture than the British. Apart from that, it should be noted that some recent developments will effectively be limiting the Prime Minister’s power. The Fixed-term Parliaments Bill will bereave the Prime Minister of his important resource of calling a snap election in the mid of a parliament (which has been considered by many foreign observers a critical office power both in terms of punishing the opposition parties and disciplining the Prime Minister’s own troops).

5. Is the Prime Minister sufficiently accountable personally to the electorate, to Parliament, and otherwise?
   5a. If no, how should his accountability be improved?

In terms of accountability of the political ‘chief executive’, Britain has long been considered a role-model with a particularly great amount of personal accountability of the Prime Minister to Parliament and the electorate. In fact, few parliaments have an institutional device quite like the Prime Minister’s Question Time. The British Prime Minister’s personal accountability to the electorate has traditionally been secured through the two-party system – a mechanism that could and would be significantly weakened by a more complex party system and hung parliaments. But even this would only introduce standards that have been considered normal in most other parliamentary democracies with coalition government where the decision about the candidate for the office of head of government is made by the parties only after the election, and usually behind closed doors.

6. Are structures of power beneath the Prime Minister sufficiently clear and accountable?

6a. If no, how should this clarity and accountability be improved?

I am afraid I am not qualified to answer this question.

7. Should the Prime Minister be directly elected by the British people?

No, definitely not. There is limited but clear-cut empirical evidence (from Israel) demonstrating what devastating effects a direct election of the Prime Minister in a parliamentary democracy may have. It would introduce a structural danger of divided government and deadlock at the very heart of government that is hitherto unknown in British politics. Given the centrality of the parties’ top candidates for the office of prime minister in electoral campaigns, much of what supporters of this idea usually hope for (a greater say of the voters in choosing the ‘chief executive’) has effectively long been the case in Britain. Thus, there would appear to be much to lose and little to be gained from such a reform.

As mentioned under point 5, this traditional pattern may of course be challenged by developments at the level of the party system (a further and permanent departure from the two-party system). However, political solutions, such as pre-electoral coalition statements of the parties including a pledge for a particular prime ministerial candidate, would appear to be more appropriate a response to this than such institutional reforms as a direct election of the Prime Minister by the British people.

3 March 2011