Dennis C Grube

• Professor of Politics and Public Policy at University of Cambridge

In the study of policy and administration, emotions are largely conceived as an exogenous factor that impacts on institutions and processes. Still ignored are the emotions felt and performed not just individually by civil servants, but collectively within government organizations. This article turns to insights on emotions from organizational studi...

The chapter explores the practices and conventions of cabinet government. Consistent and predictable processes are seen as underpinning good government. They can illustrate how governments solve the core dilemmas: the need for predictability, a process to allow the negotiation and conciliation of differences, and means for determining hard choices....

Danish cabinet government is founded on consensus, a multi-party coalition government with a negotiative style of decision making, where changes are small and there are few ideological divisions within the polity. It has a system of ministerial government, with ministers meeting in cabinet. However, the core business was normally undertaken in two...

The chapter stresses the ‘polder’ tradition that emphasizes the importance of cooperation in government. The Netherlands has a long tradition of consociational government. Within a parliamentary structure where a system of proportional representation ensures that no one party will hold a majority, coalitions and collaboration are essential. The pri...

Cabinet government is party government; members of cabinet are there because they are members of a majority or a coalition party. The position of the party and its potential future are always significant in determining policy decisions. The concept of collective responsibility for decisions of cabinet government is common to all systems, even if in...

The Federal Council is the executive government in Switzerland. The membership of the council has remained at seven since 1849; they are elected by the Federal Assembly and, by an agreed ‘magic formula’, represent the four largest parties in the assembly. There is no coalition agreement; the federal councillors must reach agreement on items as they...

The chapter considers the dilemmas that underpin policy debates: the civil service argument for evidence-based policy, the need for ministers to balance good policy and good politics, and the advisers’ challenge to manage the politics of issues. Friction is an inherent part of the policy dilemma in all cabinet systems as evidence-based assessments...

How leaders develop cohesion and direction within a cabinet will depend on institutional and conventional traditions. All leaders will necessarily work through persuasion but there are also levers that can be pulled. There are several imperatives: the need to survive electorally; vulnerability to internal revolt; the means by which ministers can be...

This chapter introduces the idea of cabinet government as a way of doing business in executive government. Even though often written off as no longer functional, it still survives, even if there is no single job description. This chapter introduces the three key questions of the book: ➢ What dilemmas do cabinet governments face? ➢ In what way do th...

The chapter describes the conventions and practices of Australian government. A variant of the Westminster system, it has a number of characteristics that define its workings and conventions: a written constitution, a federal system with potentially powerful state governments, and a High Court that can interpret that constitution. It also has a bru...

This chapter examines the traditions that underpin government in the United Kingdom, with its traditional stress on strong prime ministers dominating their cabinets which control the parliament. Some of these traditions may be myths, but they still create expectations about the way that cabinet government should work. The chapter examines the relat...

Why is cabinet government so resilient? Despite many obituaries, why does it continue to be the vehicle for governing across most parliamentary systems? This book answers these questions by examining the structure and performance of cabinet government in five democracies: the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia. The...

This chapter explains the different forms of accountability: whether blame sharing or formal constitutional. In all cases, holding ministers to account involves the assessment of processes that are often shrouded in secrecy and in which facts are contested. Like so many aspects of cabinet government, accountability processes remain flexible and ope...

The chapter summarizes the findings, first in a series of empirical observations drawn from the five countries. It looks at the impact of party alignments, access to parliament, the benefits of stability, and finally the usefulness of comparative lessons. Then it revisits the theory to show how an interpretivist, agency-centred account can provide...

The Chilcot report set out in detail its finding that the Blair Government had been prone to groupthink in its decision-making processes when leading Britain into the Iraq War. Subsequent British prime ministers have been in no hurry to change their style of governing in ways that might broaden decision-making circles and introduce the ‘challenge’...

How do bureaucracies remember? The conventional view is that institutional memory is static and singular, the sum of recorded files and learned procedures. There is a growing body of scholarship that suggests contemporary bureaucracies are failing at this core task. This Element argues that this diagnosis misses that memories are essentially dynami...

The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics is a comprehensive collection that considers Australia’s distinctive politics—both ancient and modern—at all levels and across many themes. It examines the factors that make Australian politics unique and interesting, while firmly placing these in the context of the nation’s Indigenous and imported heritag...

A permament public service is expected to act as a repository for lessons of past policies and programmes. Public management scholars regularly lament the decline of institutional memory over the past thirty years. Recent literature proposes a distinction between static institutional memory, an archive of the past, and dynamic institutional memory,...

A permament public service is expected to act as a repository for lessons of past policies and programmes. Public management scholars regularly lament the decline of institutional memory over the past thirty years. Recent literature proposes a distinction between static institutional memory, an archive of the past, and dynamic institutional memory,...

The ability of the civil service to act as a reservoir of institutional memory is central to the pragmatic task of governing. But there is a growing body of scholarship that suggests the bureaucracy is failing at this core task. In this article, we distinguish between two different ways of thinking about institutional memory: one “static” and one “...

Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi-faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant sc...

The ability of the civil service to act as a reservoir of institutional memory is central to the pragmatic task of governing. But, there is a growing body of scholarship that suggests the bureaucracy is failing at this core task. In this article we distinguish between two different ways of thinking about institutional memory: one “static” and one “...

Why are voters in advanced democracies turning away from established mass parties to take their electoral chances elsewhere? This article draws on concepts from marketing scholarship, specifically branding and brand equity, to apply a ‘consumer’ lens that assesses the major parties in Australia as failing ‘brands’ being left behind by disillusioned...

Why are voters in advanced democracies turning away from established mass parties to take their electoral chances elsewhere? This article draws on concepts from marketing scholarship, specifically branding and brand equity, to apply a ‘consumer’ lens that assesses the major parties in Australia as failing ‘brands’ being left behind by disillusioned...

Questions about the definition, meaning and limits of marriage have become a topic of fierce political debate in advanced Western democracies over the past decade as political leaders have sought to grapple with the issue of same-sex marriage. The rhetorical choices of leaders as they have made the case for or against moving away from traditional d...

Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi-faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant sc...

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...

Public servants in Westminster countries are being drawn into the limelight by demands from their political masters that they publicly defend policies. Critics suggest these conditions undermine the capacity and willingness of senior public servants to manage the enduring Westminster tension between serving elected governments and remaining nonpart...

A renewed interest in aspects of high politics among historians who subscribe to the ‘new political history’ has coincided with the embrace by some political scientists of interpretivism as a method for understanding how beliefs and traditions impact on British political life. In order to examine the potential synergies between these two developmen...

Speech matters. Political actors are defined by what they say as much as by what they do but, with each rhetorical choice, they also narrow the range of rhetorical options open to them for the future. This paper examines the idea of path dependency, a well-established concept in the field of policy studies, and applies it to the study of political...

Under the conventions of the Westminster system, civil service mandarins of the twentieth century were expected to be discrete, impartial and anonymous as they unobtrusively carried on the business of government. Times have changed. The pressures of modern governance and a 24/7 media cycle are pulling contemporary public service leaders further int...

The reach of social media is prodigious. Its ubiquitous nature has reshaped the ways in which government agencies can communicate with citizens. But amidst the rush to embrace the opportunities of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, governments have had to lay down rules to govern how and when public service departments should use social media....

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 ex...

DavidCraig and JamesThompson, eds. Languages of Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 255. $95.00 (cloth). - Volume 53 Issue 3 - Dennis Grube

In theory, within Westminster systems the buck stops with the minister. Ministers are responsible for the actions of their departments and accountable for policy outcomes. In practice, it is often senior public servants rather than their ministerial masters who face the fierce questions of parliamentary committees when things go wrong. This article...

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 We...

US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma – of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framewo...

Democratic governments have spent much of the last two decades attempting to recalibrate their governance systems around a single focal entity: the citizen. The all‐pervasive rhetoric of citizen‐centred governance has seen policies conceived, delivered and evaluated in terms of the satisfaction levels achieved by individual ‘citizens’. This article...

Illustrations Acknowledgements 1. The Mutual Delusion 2. Extra-Parliamentary Rhetorical Leadership - from Gladstone to Blair 3. The Rhetorical Prime Minister in Comparative Perspective 4. Persuading Voters - Cycles of Election Defining Rhetoric 5. Prime Ministers and Policy Narratives 6. Policy Intervention in Sub-National Jurisdictions 7. Defining...

Under the traditions of the Westminster system, prime ministers and ministers give countless public speeches each year, while their loyal public service quietly and anonymously carries out the daily business of public administration. Current practice suggests that this traditional picture no longer holds true. In the 21st century, bureaucratic lead...

Many Westminster jurisdictions face the challenges of multi-level governance, as different levels of government vie for the public’s affections in what is often labelled a ‘blame game’. Particularly prevalent between national and sub-national governments in federations — like Canada and Australia — these are essentially rhetorical political battles...

As we have seen, the rhetorical prime ministership has led to institutionalised patterns of rhetoric that help to frame the way government works. This ‘rhetorical governance’ relies on the stakeholders that contribute to the shaping of public policy responding to the parameters set by prime ministerial rhetoric. In other words, if a prime minister...

Democratically elected leaders seeking to propose policy change are faced with a difficult question: how can we explain why we’re doing this in a way that people actually understand? It’s a question asked and answered — often in great haste — in the offices of prime ministers across the Westminster world. The question is in fact more significant th...

In his 2010 autobiography, Tony Blair reflected on the level of public expectation that had accompanied his arrival in office in 1997. He looked back on a force that was both ‘unstoppable’ and yet ‘delusional’.

There has to date been no body of scholarship that has sought to systematically interrogate the workings of the ‘rhetorical prime ministership’, and analyse where it sits within the institutional architecture of the Westminster system. There have been some important beginnings and some excellent individual studies. As discussed in Chapter 1, the co...

‘As if it matters how a man falls down.’ The line comes from the movie The Lion in Winter, from the scene where the future King Richard the Lionheart is imprisoned with his brothers Geoffrey and John, fearing execution at the hands of their father Henry II. Richard is determined to be brave and meet his end without flinching or begging for mercy. I...

The resilience of the political speech remains a marvel. In the age of Twitter, where attention spans are short and political disenchantment great, politicians with something important to say invariably still turn to the oldest method we know — the speech. Aristotle and Plato — or senators at the Roman Forum — were they magically transported into t...

Prime Ministers never seem to stop talking. From the floor of the parliament to the factory floor; from seven-second grabs on the television news to the challenges of talk-back radio — the modern prime ministership is an institution built on communication. As discussed in the opening chapter, the content of prime ministerial communication is what g...

Leaders of government within Westminster democracies undertake a key rhetorical task on the day an election is called. Following a visit to the monarch or the vice-regal representative, leaders emerge to give their opening speech of the election campaign. These are moments of definition, moments when leaders rhetorically frame the battle to come. T...

Political narratives play a central role in modern governance. They explain a government's driving principles, and underpin their ability to implement policy change. Rhetoric is the tool that Prime Ministers use to articulate and frame political narratives to support their policy prescriptions. This article examines four case studies of how Prime M...

Senior bureaucrats in central agencies in Westminster jurisdictions frequently give keynote speeches as a part of their official function. What are these administrative leaders talking about, and to whom, and why does it matter? This paper will seek to answer those questions through the lens of public value theory by considering whether ‘public rhe...

Modern Britishness is widely seen to be based on shared values like ‘fair play’, ‘tolerance’, and respect for ‘diversity’. Can such a ‘values-based Britishness’ be effective as a national binding agent in an era of devolution and globalisation? The idea that a uniquely ‘British’ character is based on shared values of some kind is not new. The conte...

Every year, senior departmental secretaries in Australia deliver keynote speeches to a range of audiences. What are these secretaries talking about, and to whom are they directing their comments? This article will examine keynote addresses by the secretaries of the two key central agencies in Australia – the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet...

Leaders of government within Westminster democracies undertake a key rhetorical task on the day an election is called. Following a visit to the monarch or the vice-regal representative, leaders emerge to give their opening speech of the election campaign. These are moments of definition; moments when leaders rhetorically frame the battle to come. T...

When prime ministers speak, the nation usually listens. In the Australian federation, prime ministers have consistently used the power of their political pulpit to launch policy interventions into areas of traditional State responsibility. This article suggests that there is an emerging rhetorical pattern to the way these policy interventions are p...

The British parliament in the nineteenth century reflected the increasingly democratic stability of the British state in a century that saw numerous convulsions on the European continent. It embodied the majesty of British law, the idea that all adult males who dwelt in Britain shared the universal rights of a true-born Englishman, including the ri...

This case study demonstrates the benefits of engaging content and pedagogical specialists in collaborative efforts to critically evaluate and improve postgraduate coursework offerings. Through this collaboration, it was possible to take a whole-of-program approach to validating assessment by using mapping as a guide to focus critical questions abou...