Disjunctive Prime Ministerial Leadership in British Politics

From Baldwin to Brexit

Christopher Byrne, Nick Randall, Kevin Theakston

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030449100
• eBook ISBN: 9783030449117
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book illustrates the cyclical pattern in the kinds of dilemmas that confront political leaders and, in particular, disjunctive political leaders affiliated with vulnerable political regimes. The volume covers three major episodes in disjunction: the interwar crisis between 1923 and 1940, afflicting Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain; the collapse of Keynesian welfarism between 1970 and 1979, dealt with by Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan; and the ongoing crisis of neoliberalism beginning in 2008, affecting Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May. Based on this series of case studies of disjunctive prime ministers, the authors conclude that effective disjunctive leadership is premised on judicious use of the prime ministerial toolkit in terms of deciding whether, when and where to act, effective diagnostic and choice framing, and the ability to manage both crises and regimes.

© The Author(s) 2020

C. Byrne et al.Disjunctive Prime Ministerial Leadership in British PoliticsPalgrave Studies in Political Leadershiphttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44911-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Christopher Byrne¹ , Nick Randall² and Kevin Theakston³

(1)

Department of Politics and International Relations, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

(2)

School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK

(3)

School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Christopher Byrne (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Nick Randall

Email: [email protected]

Kevin Theakston

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This introductory chapter sets out the rationale and approach for this study of disjunctive prime ministerial leadership. In a brief review of existing models of prime ministerial power and performance, we observe that a persistent problem arises from the difficulties of reconciling structure and agency. Two principal research aims for the book follow. First, to demonstrate the potential of analysing prime ministerial performance by using a ‘political time’ approach informed by Stephen Skowronek’s work to examine ‘disjunctive’ prime ministers across the last century of British politics. Second, in acknowledging that this approach is often accused of a structuralist predisposition, we set out our second research ambition, to establish a framework in which prime ministerial agency can be understood within the context of political time.

Keywords

Prime ministersStructure and agencyLeadership stylesStatecraftPolitical time

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

The prime minister, for good reason, is an object of fascination in British politics, and assessments of prime ministerial performance abound. Sometimes these take the form of detailed academic analyses (see Bennister and Heffernan 2011; Theakston 2002, 2007, 2011, 2012) or political obituaries following prime ministerial resignation or defenestration, but they also take place in real time across print, broadcast, and social media. Such assessments often draw upon public opinion polling which tracks not only the prime minister’s net ‘favourability’, but also perceptions of various, often bewildering, facets of their public persona. On the incumbent Boris Johnson’s YouGov (2019) pages, we find polling on what he ‘stands for’ as prime minister (number one item: ‘Wants tighter restrictions on immigration’), his trustworthiness, whether he is ‘Strong’ or ‘Weak’, ‘Decisive’ or ‘Indecisive’, ‘Competent’ or ‘Incompetent’, ‘Authentic’ or ‘Putting on an act’, ‘In touch’ or ‘Out of touch’. We even discover which Hogwarts house he would be placed in if he were part of the Harry Potter universe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most respondents chose Slytherin. Prime ministers also face continual assessment on social media platforms such as Twitter (currently 1.2 million followers) and Facebook (740,000 likes), with each bit of content created generating thousands of comments from members of the public.

However, the vast majority of non-academic assessments, from social media commentary to newspaper opinion pieces, are idiosyncratic, in that the criteria they employ are often implicit and dispossessed of a theoretical framework that would permit rigorous comparisons between prime ministers. This is less often a problem for academic studies. Rather, here the greater problem is the frequently unsatisfactory manner in which the structural contexts of prime ministerial action are incorporated into analysis (Byrne and Theakston 2019). This speaks to the central rationale of this study. It is clear that the prime minister is worthy of study by virtue of the fact that the holder of that office is ‘powerful’. They are not only important symbolic figures in the nation’s life, they ‘have an effect’ on the contexts that condition the possibilities open to other political agents (Hay 2002: 50). However, existing accounts of prime ministerial leadership rely on excessively parsimonious conceptions of the structural contexts in which prime ministers operate.

There are at least four distinct models of prime ministerial power and leadership in the existing literature: the leadership style model, the power resources model, the statecraft model and the political time model (Byrne and Theakston 2019). The leadership style model is based on Greenstein’s work on the US presidency (2005, 2009) which has been applied to British prime ministers (Theakston 2007, 2011, 2012). This advances a highly agent-centred account of leadership, focusing on the personal qualities and skills of individual incumbents. On this model, prime ministers need to communicate effectively. They must possess organisational capacity, including abilities to effectively use advisors and the government machine. They require political skills such as persuasion, conciliation, manipulation, and brokerage. This is complemented by a policy vision to provide coherence and direction. Fifth is their ‘cognitive style’—how they process advice and take decisions. A final factor is ‘emotional intelligence’, their ability to manage their emotions and employ them for constructive purposes.

The power resources model of prime ministerial power and leadership advanced by Heffernan (2003, 2005, 2013) offers a corrective to the strongly agent-centred leadership style model. Heffernan argues that prime ministers can gain ‘predominance’ within British government only when ‘institutional power resources’ are accompanied by a range of ‘personal power resources’ (Heffernan 2003: 347). These institutional resources are found in the legal prerogatives accessed by the prime minister as the head of government, their control over Cabinet and its committees, command of the organisational resources of their Downing Street office and the Cabinet Office, and ability to set a political agenda via the news media. These resources are coupled with personal power resources of reputation, skill and ability, prime ministerial association with actual or expected political success, and the public popularity and intra-party standing of the incumbent.

The shortcoming of these two approaches is their failure to explore in sufficient detail the structural preconditions of political leadership. The leadership style model says little about the broader context in which political leadership takes place. For example, it is not clear which personal qualities need to be ‘activated’ by structural contexts of various kinds in order for political leaders to effectively wield power. Heffernan (2003: 349) does acknowledge structures (institutions and networks) and context (economic and social environments) but provides little detail on how these develop temporally and how they interact with the other aspects of the power resources model (see Byrne and Theakston 2019).

A third approach is the statecraft model, originally developed by Jim Bulpitt (1986) and subsequently applied and refined by Jim Buller and Toby James (2012, 2015). The statecraft model situates prime ministers in a context in which electoral imperatives and constraints loom large. Developing a winning electoral strategy by constructing an image and policy prospectus to mobilise a majority coalition of voters is the first component of successful statecraft. Second, prime ministers must demonstrate and maintain their reputation for governing competence. Third, they must secure support in their parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties. Fourth, they must win the battle of ideas and establish ‘political argument hegemony’ by dominating, if possible, the terms of political argument about policy agendas, problems, and solutions.

Buller and James’ iteration of the statecraft model (2012, 2015) directly confronts the structure-agency issue by adopting a morphogenetic approach. This allows prime ministerial action to be understood not just in respect of personal leadership styles, or factors linked to the immediate institutional environment, but also in terms of broader structural factors such as the dynamics of the capitalist economy. They incorporate a fairly wide array of structures which interact with each other as well as with agents. However, incorporating the temporal selectivity of particular structural contexts into prime ministerial action remains challenging in this account (Byrne and Theakston 2019).

A final approach is to adopt a ‘political time’ method, rooted in Stephen Skowronek’s (1993, 2008) analyses of American political development. This, as we show in this book, needs adjustments for constitutional, institutional, and political differences between the US and the UK. Not least the character of Cabinet government, the fusion of powers, the presence of more significant and relatively disciplined parties, and the role of an institutionalised Opposition need recognition in the UK (Laing and McCaffrie 2013: 84–89; Byrne et al. 2017: 205–206). However, we set as our first research aim in this book to show how prime ministerial leadership can be better understood and evaluated by using a ‘political time’ perspective.

Skowronek’s framework proposes that the authority and power of political leaders is related to the stance adopted towards the political regime and the position of that regime in political time. A regime comprises a coalition of interests sharing a common legitimising ideology, pursuing a set of ideas, values, policy paradigms, and programmes within a particular institutional framework. Skowronek describes the dynamics of these regimes in terms of the rhythm of ‘political time’, in which regimes are established, maintained, decay, enter crisis, and are replaced. He argues that the power presidents have is a function not merely of the resources (both formal and informal) they inherit, but also of their authority—that is, the public perception of what it is legitimate for a president to do given the state of the existing regime. On this basis, he posits four broad types of political leadership: ‘the politics of articulation’, used to describe political leaders affiliated to a resilient political regime, who may attempt ‘orthodox innovation’ but never fundamental reform; ‘the politics of disjunction’, used to describe political leaders affiliated to a vulnerable political regime; ‘the politics of reconstruction’, which refers to political leaders opposed to a vulnerable regime and who therefore have the most effective authority warrant of all; and, finally, ‘the politics of preemption’, which refers to political leaders intent on reconstructing a resilient political regime, but who encounter great difficulty because they lack the necessary authority warrants to fashion a coalition of interests capable of supporting such a reconstruction.

In adopting such a political time perspective, the range of structural contexts considered in analyses of prime ministerial power is broadened out significantly, which, we aim to show, helps us to understand the potentialities of the office through a series of case studies of the politics of disjunction. The book therefore considers three crucial junctures in modern British politics in the form of the extended political and economic crisis of the interwar years, the crisis of Atlantic Fordism experienced throughout the West in the 1970s, and the still-unfolding crisis of neoliberalism triggered by the 2008 global financial crisis.

However, as Milkis (1995: 488) argues, the title of Skowronek’s book (The Politics Presidents Make) can be considered a misnomer, because he arguably allows too little scope for presidents to actually ‘make politics’: they either accept the role history has marked out for them as reconstructor, articulator, or disjunctor, or fight against it in vain as a ‘preemptor’. Skowronek (1995: 523) counters this accusation of quasi-structuralism by insisting that political agency is at the centre of the political time model: presidents are not ‘assigned’ roles, but fashion them themselves, within particular structural contexts, and faced with the dilemmas presented by political time. This is to caution against viewing the political time model as a purely ‘cyclical’ theory: the crucial thing, Skowronek suggests, is to acknowledge that ‘similar roles tend to be recreated at will over vast stretches of history’ and that political leaders have performed these roles in ways that were not pre-determined, leading to meaningful secular time changes that, in turn, form part of the structural context encountered by subsequent political leaders. This is unobjectionable, but it should also be reaffirmed that all structural contexts, including the structural...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Disjunctive Leadership in Interwar Britain: Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, and Neville Chamberlain
• 3. The Collapse of Keynesian Welfarism 1970–1979: Heath, Wilson, Callaghan
• 4. The Collapse of the Neoliberal Consensus 2008–2019: Brown, Cameron, May
• 5. Conclusion: Evaluating Disjunctive Prime Ministerial Leadership
• Back Matter