by Peter Joyce
THE CONTINUED VITALITY OF CABINET GOVERNMENT
However, the argument that cabinet government has declined in the UK is not universally accepted. The style or character of individual prime ministers has a bearing on the extent to which they wish to exercise initiative or resort to the teamwork of cabinet government to decide major policy issues. Further, prime ministers need to be wary of conduct that can be viewed as overbearing by their cabinet colleagues. Resignations can have a significant impact on the prime minister’s hold on office. Sir Geoffrey Howe’s resignation from Prime Minister Thatcher’s government in November 1990 had a major impact on the vitality of her administration and her replacement by John Major later that year.
It is also alleged that although the role of the cabinet has changed, it retains an important role in the affairs of modern government. It provides a mechanism for leading members of the government to be made aware of key political issues and provides the semblance of a unified government involved in collective decision making. The cabinet may also act as a final court of appeal to arbitrate disputes between ministers.
Question
Assess the importance of cabinet government in any country with which you are familiar.
The power of chief executives
It is often assumed that chief executives occupy a dominant position in the political system, from which they are able successfully to advance initiatives designed to achieve their objectives or those of the government they head. In this section we consider the difficulties that chief executives in the United Kingdom and America may encounter when seeking to advance their political aims and which thus serve as constraints on their power.
THE UK PRIME MINISTER
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Insight
The power of the UK prime minister is not absolute and his or her position may be undermined by a number of factors that include possessing a majority of votes in the House of Commons and being able to maintain control over the parliamentary party.
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It is frequently asserted that the prime minister possesses considerable control over the conduct of political affairs in the United Kingdom. However, while there are few formal restraints on this office, the prime minister is subject to a range of informal pressures which may greatly limit that person’s power. These are discussed in the sections that follow.
Control of parliament
The parliamentary situation may restrict the ability of a prime minister to achieve political objectives. The prime minister is the leader of the majority party in parliament, which means that the chief executive’s ability to exercise control over political affairs is potentially greatest when that party has a sizeable majority in the House of Commons. A government with a small, or no, majority may have to rely on members drawn from other parties to sustain it in the regular votes which occur. In this circumstance, the prime minister may have to agree to demands made by other politicians or parties on whom the government is forced to rely.
Unity of the parliamentary party
A prime minister’s power may also be affected by the unity of his or her parliamentary party. Internal divisions may exercise considerable influence on the composition of the government and a prime minister may be constrained to ensure that party balance is reflected in its make-up. A disunited parliamentary party may make it difficult for the prime minister to secure the passage of policies through the House of Commons. Discontented members may abstain, vote against their own party or even defect to the opposition. This may increase the government’s reliance on other parties to secure parliamentary victory. While a prime minister may seek to quell revolts by threatening to dissolve parliament and hold a general election, this is a double-edged sword and is rarely a credible sanction which can be deployed.
Public opinion
Public opinion may also affect the power of the prime minister. Prime ministers may find it easiest to assert themselves when there is a demonstrable degree of support from the electorate for themselves and the governments which they head. When the level of this support declines (tested in opinion polls, parliamentary by-elections or local government elections) a prime minister is in a weaker position. Accordingly, the ability to manipulate the media is of crucial importance to a contemporary prime minister. Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham, performed a major role between 1979 and 1990 in bolstering the power of the prime minister and, as Chapter 7 has argued, the Labour government, elected in 1997, subsequently made considerable use of ‘spin doctors’ in order to maximize the appeal of its policies.
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Cabinet reshuffles
Cabinet reshuffles involve a prime minister sacking ministers when a government is experiencing unpopularity within the electorate. The implication of this action is that the ministers who have been dismissed are responsible for the government’s difficulties and reshuffles have traditionally been used by prime ministers in many liberal democracies in an attempt to increase the level of public support for themselves and the governments which they head. In September 1995, the French prime minister, Alain Juppé, dismissed 13 ministers in an attempt to reverse the decline in popularity experienced by his government, and in 2006 the British prime minister, Tony Blair, dismissed a number of ministers, including the home secretary, in the wake of poor local government election results.
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The loss of public support may not necessarily affect the conduct of the prime minister. This to a large extent depends on that person’s nerve as to whether to ignore the loss of support and continue with existing policies or whether to bow to public pressure and make changes in either the personnel or the policy of the government.
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT
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Insight
The power of the American president is influenced by a number of factors, including relationships with Congress.
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The American Constitution placed the executive branch in the hands of a president who is now directly elected. The president serves a term of four years and may be re-elected on one further occasion. The power exercised by a president depends to some extent on personal choice. Presidents may view themselves as officials who should merely enforce the laws passed by Congress, or they may see themselves as dynamic initiators of public policy. These views are further flavoured by popular opinion.
The belief that American presidents should be strong and assertive in the conduct of public affairs was bolstered by the need for decisive presidential action to cope with the Depression in the 1930s. But this view has subsequently been revised by the perceived failings of strong presidents as revealed by the outcome of the Vietnam War (which was associated with presidential initiative) and the belief that strong executive action could lead to abuse of power, as was evidenced in Watergate and the subsequent forced resignation of President Nixon in 1974. Such factors have tended to make the public suspicious of presidents who wish to exercise dynamic leadership. Their ability to initiate actions was further weakened by the size of the budget deficit, which grew enormously during the Reagan–Bush years (1981–93) and served as a constraint on policies involving state intervention.
Such considerations have greatly affected the climate within which contemporary presidents operate. But even within such a climate, presidents retain a considerable degree of manoeuvre. They possess a range of formal and informal powers and may also exploit their position as the only national unifying force to secure the attainment of their objectives. We shall now consider a range of factors that have a bearing on the power of a modern president.
The president’s mandate
The mandate that a president obtains in a general election may greatly influence subsequent behaviour. A president may feel it is legitimate to exercise the initiative in public affairs when the outcome of an election provides a clear statement of public support for a stated programme. When the outcome of an election is less clear (for example, the president fails to secure a majority of the
popular vote) or it appears that the result was more concerned with the rejection of one candidate than with the popular endorsement of the winner, the president may find it more difficult to promote policy vigorously, especially when this involves initiating radical changes. The initial power of President George W. Bush was undermined by the lack of a mandate. He secured victory in the 2000 presidential election by the very narrow margin of five electoral college votes. Not only did his Democratic rival in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, secure over 500,000 more popular votes nationwide, but considerable concern remained regarding the legitimacy of Bush’s victory in the key state of Florida. However, a surge of patriotic fervour triggered by the terrorist attack in September 2001 and the determination of Bush to pursue military action against Iraq enabled the Republicans to regain control of both Houses of Congress in the 2002 mid-term elections and provided Bush with a mandate to pursue a right-wing policy offensive.
Clearly focused policy goals
Presidential success in initiating public policy may be most easily realized when policy goals are clearly focused. This suggests a limited set of key objectives which enable both Congress and public opinion in general to appreciate the president’s fundamental concerns. The president’s state of the union address provides an opportunity to specify key policy goals. It has been argued that President Carter (1977–81) put forward too disparate a range of proposals at the outset of his presidency, which presented a confusing statement of presidential objectives. Accordingly, President Reagan (1981–89) presented a programme which included fewer key issues and emphasized the reform of the economy and moral concerns. Subsequently, relations with Congress were fashioned around achieving these. Presidents do not, however, have complete freedom to set their policy agenda. The initial efforts of President Clinton (1993–2001) to focus on domestic policy issues was impeded by the emergence of defence and foreign policy issues (including the Bosnian crisis) which demanded attention at the expense of the original objectives.
President Obama entered office in 2009 with a very wide-ranging agenda that at home embraced the reform of education and the healthcare system and the need to effectively counter the recession, and abroad included the desire to negotiate with Iran and organize an orderly withdrawal from Iraq. The inevitable lack of progress in attaining all of these policy objectives led to accusations that the new administration was good at launching new policy initiatives but less effective in translating them into effective action.
Relations with Congress
A president’s relations with Congress have a fundamental bearing on that official’s power. The president (unlike the UK’s prime minister) has no direct connection with the legislature and Congress may not be inclined to follow the presidential lead. Congress has become more assertive since the 1970s, which has been to the detriment of presidents seeking to exercise a dominant role in both domestic and foreign affairs.
In domestic affairs, legislation such as the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act introduced innovations designed to enable Congress to compete with the president in the preparation of the budget. In foreign affairs (which had been traditionally dominated by the president) legislation such as the 1973 War Powers Act and the 1976 National Emergencies Act limited the scope of presidential initiative. Congress’s control over appropriations was used to stop aid to the Nicaraguan rebels in 1987. The end of the ‘cold war’ has further influenced Congressional involvement in foreign affairs, one example of this being the vote of both Houses of Congress in 1995 to overrule the president’s policy of an embargo on the sale of arms to Bosnia.
Theoretically, the party system might secure a degree of support for the president from within Congress, but this does not operate in the same way as it does in the United Kingdom. Changes to the process by which presidential candidates are nominated and the manner in which presidential election campaigns are financed has been to the detriment of the relationship between a president and established party organization. Further, parochialism exerts considerable influence over the conduct of members of Congress. Members of Congress may be more willing to follow the president’s lead when they feel this will bring personal political benefits to them, but be inclined to distance themselves from the administration if they feel that association with the president constitutes an electoral liability.
Thus, even when the president’s party controls both Houses of Congress, this is no guarantee that all members of that party will support the president on every major policy initiative. President Carter, for example, did not construct good working relationships with his own party, which controlled both Houses of Congress throughout his presidency, and in March 2010, 34 Democrats voted against President Obama’s flagship Health Care Reform Bill when it was debated in the House of Representatives.
However, the position of the president is weaker when the opposition party controls either or both Houses of Congress. A position of ‘gridlock’ may arise (in which president and Congress refuse to give way on key policy issues) and the majority party may also utilize its control of key congressional committees to vigorously scrutinize the policies pursued by the president by the use of their ability to mount investigations underpinned by the power to subpoena. Opposition control of one or both Houses of Congress was a situation that early post-war Republican presidents frequently had to endure and which President Clinton had to suffer for much of his presidency following the loss of Democrat majorities in both Houses in the November 1994 Congressional elections.
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‘Divided government’ in America
In a situation of ‘divided government’ there is no onus on the Congressional majority to aid the passage of the president’s programme and their own leadership might attempt to seize the initiative in policy making. In the period after November 1994 (when the Democrats performed badly in the mid-term Congressional elections) the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, and the Republican majority leader in the Senate, Robert Dole, exercised a role in policy initiation which seemed to eclipse that exerted by President Clinton.
In this situation, presidents may seek to bargain with Congress in order to retain some influence over the legislative process. If Congress puts forward legislative proposals, the president is able to veto them. Although Congress may be able to override this veto, the threat or actuality of using it may trigger off a process of bargaining between the president and Congressional opposition. In 1997, co-operation between President Clinton and the Republican majority in Congress enabled the first nominally balanced budget to be achieved since the late 1960s.
However, divided government may result in neither side being willing to give way to the other. The inability of President Clinton and Congress to resolve disagreements on the budget in 1995 led to a shutdown in government in which federal employees were sent home when conditions attached by Congress for the approval of government expenditure were rejected by the president.
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Conclusion – how presidents may achieve their goals
Contemporary presidents may seek to overcome the difficulties which impede the attainment of their goals in a number of ways. In situations of ‘divided’ and ‘unified’ government, a president is required to build coalitions within Congress to secure the passage of key legislation. It is a process which has been complicated by Congressional reforms initiated after Watergate, especially in connection with the committee system, which have tended to disperse power within Congress. This has made it harder for a president to manage this body through relationships forged with a relatively small number of senior, influential members of Congress.
This process of coalition building often involves securing support from politicians of different political allegiances by lobbying, persuading or even coercing them to support the president. The importance attached by presidents in working with their political opponents was evidenced in 2001 when President George W. Bush took the unprecedented step of addressing Democratic m
embers of the House of Representatives at their private annual retreat. Presidents may need to construct coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis, which has become a key feature of the so-called ‘no win’ presidency. Presidents such as Lyndon Johnson were able to conduct this ‘wheeling and dealing’ successfully, especially in connection with his ‘Great Society’ programme. Others whose political experience was different (such as President Carter, who was elected as an ‘outsider’ to Washington politics) were less successful coalition builders and found problems in persuading Congress to implement their programmes.
Relations with the media may also influence a president’s power. A popular president is likely to find it easier to secure support within Congress for the administration’s policies and traditionally presidents went to great lengths to ensure that they received favourable treatment by the media. However, in the post-Watergate period the media have become prone to subjecting the president to critical analysis. There are ways to counter this, in particular by seeking to ensure that the president’s message is not mediated by the media but is heard (or received) directly by the people. This technique was particularly developed by President F. D. Roosevelt (1933–45) whose ‘fireside chats’ enabled him to address his message directly into the homes of the American people. Such tactics may enable a president to circumvent obstacles which threaten to impede the progress of key policies. Nonetheless, the ability of the media to subject the president to critical analysis is an important force which may weaken the president in the eyes of the population.