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Strengths
- Govt before 2010 normally strongly unified - clear PM & Cabinet control, strong ministerial roles within Whitehall departments - features briefly visible in 2015-17 but not in the other 6 years since 2010 under hung parliaments
- Cabinet govt & extended cabinet committee system provide checks on power of PMs & 10 D.S. office - deliberation before policy commitments made - different departments represent diverse stakeholders' interests & wider public reactions
- CE decisions normally made on more than simple majority rule (51% agreement) - initial search looks for high level of consensus across ministers/depts
- Collective responsibility binds cabinet ministers to to publicly back every agreed govt policy - wider ministerial solidarity requires junior ministers to follow the govt line (e.g. resigning if they don't vote the govt line in HoC)
- Policy-making can take place swiftly when needed - Whitehall's resilience in crisis-handling & its capacity to respond to demanding incident generally high
- UK institutions long-lived & draw on tradition of effective govt, confident & immediate administrative implementation of ministerial decisions & high levels of public acceptance/legitimacy
- Expected govt will consult affected interests on major policy changes
- All ministers sit in parliament & are accountable for their actions - FOI Act secures public transparency - modern media, interest group & social media scrutiny = intense
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Weaknesses
- PM's '3 A's' powers extensive - appts cabinet ministers, allocates their portfolios & assigns policy issues across depts - most ministers highly dependent on PM's patronage & access for influence
- PMs often rejig ministerial roles by pushing through reorganisations (for political advantages) - costly, short-termist & disruptive- reached peak under Blair/Brown govts
- Cabinet decision-making no longer operates with effective shared responsibility - PMs control routing of issues through committees & can bypass them via bilaterals/sofa govt
- UK still has 'fastest law in the West' syndrome - fewest checks & balances of any lib democracy on PM/CE (especially in 1-party govts with secure Common majorities) - May made her EU negotiating position weaker by triggering Art 50 to leave with only 2-year period to go
- Recurring 'groupthink' episodes have produced major policy disasters - UK's involvement on false grounds in 2003 Iraq invasion
- Little evidence of much substantial policy-learning capacity within CE - all PMs have been forced to retire by election defeats, coups against them or illness
- 'Policy fiascos' occur when PMs & govts choose to ignore credible warnings of foreseeable policy disasters
- Ministerial decision-making operates in climate of secrecy - ministers often withhold info from parliament, reject FOI requests on questionable grounds & manipulate the flows on information to their own advantage
- Long-running power conflicts have occurred between PMs & key ministerial colleagues (esp Chancellor/Foreign Sec) - main exceptions to PM dominance - a powerful minister can get enough power to exercise 'blocking veto' on what PM wants to happen in key policy areas (e.g. Blair-Brown public spending conflicts 1997-2007)
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Opportunities
- UK leaving EU - many lost central govt competences need to be rebuilt to 'take back control' of trade & eco policy - post-Brexit refocusing may encourage ministers/Whitehall to ease up on trying to fine-control public services that are best run at regional/local levels
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Threats
- Brexit will remove whole set of checks/balances on UK decision-making that have operated for 43 years at EU level in Brussels - enhanced stability in policymaking - organisational culture of short-termist & failure-prone models of decision-making may reinvade key parts of UK policy (esp in economic regulation, innovation & environmental policies)
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