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Core Executive (core + executive)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	60%

Selected Abstracts

ORGANIZING THE CORE EXECUTIVE FOR EUROPEAN UNION AFFAIRS: COMPARING FINLAND AND SWEDEN

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2010
KARL MAGNUS JOHANSSON
Examining core executive organization for EU affairs in Finland and Sweden, this article uncovers how change agents used European integration deliberately to strengthen their role in the domestic settings through taking control of EU policy co-ordination. In both countries, EU membership was an exogenous factor that enabled the offices of the PM to secure a more powerful position and advance their own institutional agendas. This strengthened their leadership role and weakened the respective foreign ministries, whose legitimacy in EU co-ordination was undermined by the discourse that matters pertaining to this co-ordination should be treated as domestic policy instead of foreign policy. This discourse proved instrumental in the organizational reforms and core executive restructuring. Both countries also provide evidence of intra-Nordic organizational learning since the Finnish co-ordination system was based on lessons drawn from Denmark whereas the subsequent Swedish reform was inspired and legitimized by changes in Finland. [source]

The Tangled Webs of Westminster and Whitehall: The Discourse, Strategy and Practice of Networking Within the British Core Executive

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2000
Colin Hay
In this paper we identify and seek to resolve a certain paradox in the existing litera-ture on networks and networking. Whilst earlier policy network perspectives have tended to emphasize the structural character of networks as durable, dense and relatively static organization forms, the more recent strategic network literature emphasizes the flexible, adaptive and dynamic quality of networking as a social and political practice. However, neither perspective has yet developed a theory of network formation, evolution, transformation and termination. In this paper, we seek to rectify this omission, advancing a ,strategic relational' theory of network dynamics based on a rethinking of the concept of network itself. We illustrate this perspective with respect to the policy process centred in and around Westminster and Whitehall, drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with ministers and officials from four departments. [source]

The Prime Minister and the Core Executive: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Reading of UK Defence Policy Formulation 1997,20001

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2005
Robert Dover
This article explores the domestic formulation of UK European defence policy 1997,2000 through the intergovernmental meetings at Pörtschach and Saint Malo which set in train the development and codification of a common European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in 2000, through a Liberal Intergovernmentalist (LI) framework. This research leads to five conclusions: first, that the Saint Malo initiative was a tactical shift of government policies rather than core preferences; second, that the prime minister centralised European defence policy-making within the core executive; third, that the prime minister was crucial to the development of the initiative; fourth, that the presentation of the initiative was made on lowest common denominator grounds; and, lastly, that the ,successive limited comparisons' framework provides an effective corrective to LI's domestic policy formulation hypotheses. [source]

Unequal Plurality: Towards an Asymmetric Power Model of British Politics

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 3 2003
David Marsh
Until recently, Rhodes's ,Differentiate Polity Model' (DPM) has been the most analytically-developed model of the British political system, but it is not without its problems. Here, we argue that the DPM over-stresses the diffuse nature of power in Britain and the extent to which the state has been hollowed out. Instead, we contend that the British political system is more closed and elitist than the DPM acknowledges; rather than being hollowed-out, the state has been reconstituted and the core executive still remains the most powerful actor in the policy process. These themes are reflected in our own ,Asymmetric Power model'. [source]

Between Hermes and Themis: An Empirical Study of the Contemporary Judiciary in Singapore

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2001
Ross Worthington
Drawing upon interviews in 1995 and 1998 and analyses of judicial appointments from 1975,1998, the article offers a new explanation of judicial-executive relations in Singapore. It attempts to explain how the judiciary in Singapore actually functions, partly by using the concept of the core executive to locate the judiciary more accurately within its political context. The study demonstrates that the judicial system has been hegenomized by a number of political and bureaucratic strategies, and interprets its role in terms of the overall goals of the political executive. The lower judiciary is an amateur judiciary and forms part of the executive government. Despite this, the contemporary superior judiciary is not wholly a creature of the political executive, as is often postulated, but rather the result of a compromise which balances the need for a reputable judiciary with the requirement by the political executive for the judicial system to assist with the control of political opposition. This negotiated balance is qualitatively different from the relationship that characterized that between the Lee Kuan Yew governments and their Supreme Courts until 1991 and reflects the maturing of hegemonic control strategies under Goh Chok Tong. The analysis was completed in 1999. [source]

Re-assessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 2 2000
David Marsh
The study of the core executive has been dominated by discussion of the Prime Ministers and Cabinet with only limited serious treatment paid to ministers. However, ministers and departments are crucial actors in the core executive. This article examines the multiple roles and varying impacts of ministers. More particularly, we initially develop a classification of ministerial roles, which builds upon, but develops, work by Headey, James and Norton. Subsequently, we use this classification to pose two key questions. Which roles do particular ministers stress? In what ways has the balance between these roles changed in the last twenty-five years? [source]

The Prime Minister and the Core Executive: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Reading of UK Defence Policy Formulation 1997,20001

Learning, governance and economic policy1

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2003
Hugh Pemberton
This article examines the relationship between economic policy networks and policy learning during the 1960s, using recently released files to flesh out the operation of both networks and learning. It finds that policy failure in the 1950s brought into being a new policy network which was able to secure a radical shift in the economic policy of the core executive in the early 1960s. However, it then proved impossible to craft, implement and sustain a coherent and enduring set of new policies within the new policy framework due to the ability of competing networks to resist central control. This leads to three conclusions. First, peripheral actors may obtain influence over policy-making in the core executive by means of a policy network. Second, policy learning does not necessarily generate policy change of a similar order because, whilst networks may facilitate learning, competing networks may block the translation of this learning into effective policies. Third, ,governance' is not solely a phenomenon of the years since 1979: in the 1960s the British core executive was already operating within a polity characterised by fragmentation, inter-dependency and self-organising policy networks. [source]

Hollowing out or filling in?

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2000
Taskforces, the management of cross-cutting issues in British government
This article considers the problem posed by the need to build policy coherence across the levels of government but with a focus on the strategic role of the centre in the hollow state. It considers the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) as an example of a structure, the taskforce, designed to meet the demands of coherence-building. It concludes that, far from the centre being hollowed out, resulting in a permanent loss of capacity, there is a growing emphasis in the core executive on strategic co-ordination and the emergence of institutions such as the SEU indicate a counter-tendency to hollowing out: filling in. [source]