The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (30 page)

 
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(1729–97)
Whig politician who sat in parliament, apart from a brief interlude, from 1766 until his death. He espoused the cause of his native Ireland in many ways, by opposing absentee landlordism, by pressing the case of Ireland's commercial rights, and by advocating steps towards Catholic emancipation. He was also sympathetic to the cause of the American colonies, being London agent of the state of New York and writing on the injustice of the taxation of the colonies and in favour of reconciliation with them. As a supporter of Lord Rockingham , he opposed the revival of the influence of the King, George III, in Parliament. He was also concerned with maladministration by the East India Company and was involved in the impeachment of Warren Hastings.
It is a great irony that a Whig politician and one who might (anachronistically) be said to be associated with a variety of progressive causes, should come to be regarded as one of the supreme articulators of conservative thought and sentiment, producing what some have seen as the definitive statement of such thought. The reason for Burke's status in this respect lies in his reaction to the events of 1789 in France, contained in his
Reflections on the Revolution in France
(1790). Burke was most of all opposed to the assumption by the revolutionaries that they could redesign a system of government on abstract and universal principles. His book was directly stimulated by the support of one of his old adversaries, Richard
Price
, for the principles of revolution.
In opposing the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Burke drew upon arguments about social practice and political constitutions which he had developed in relation to other issues. Custom and practice define society; they have developed over a long period and can be changed only slowly. Law comes out of custom and must be in tune with it. Reform of all sorts is possible, but it must preserve and extend the harmony between established social practice and policy. Revolution, in the sense of a new system of government and social relations, based on principles not well founded in the society in question, can only end in chaos or tyranny. Real rights are prescriptive: that is, they are established by the laws of a society and based on its customs. ‘Natural’ rights, based on abstract principles about the human condition, are nonsensical and dangerous.
Burke sounds his most reactionary in bemoaning the fate of France in general and Marie Antoinette in particular: ‘The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded: and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.’ Tom
Paine
commented, ‘He pities the plumage, but sees not the dying bird’ and Mary
Wollstonecraft
beseeched him to acknowledge that if he were a Frenchman he would be a revolutionary. After all, he was not a supporter of absolutist, unparliamentary, and inefficient government in Britain and its colonies, so it was perverse to be sentimental about the
ancien régime
.
These reactionary sentiments were probably real, but certainly untypical. Burke believed in a commercial society. He thought government rested ultimately on popular sovereignty and should seek to maximize the general well-being. However, these beliefs are doubly obscured in his writings. First, he was much more politician than philosopher, concerned more to develop his arguments in a passionate rhetorical style and to a practical purpose than to examine their premisses. Second, he believed in the obfuscation of principles, because he thought that principles like popular sovereignty and utility might prove dangerous and counterproductive if made too explicit; he was a kind of ‘blinded utilitarian’ who thought that custom and our sense of moderation were better guides to utility than the (abstract) principle of utility itself.
One important application of these principles was Burke's theory of the role and duties of a parliamentary representative, most famously expressed in a speech at Bristol when he was elected there in November 1774. He intended, he said, to put ‘great weight’ on the wishes of his constituents and accord their opinions ‘high respect’. Even so, he did not intend to be instructed by them, but by his reason and conscience, for ‘Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement’. Only to a limited degree was it a representative's job to protect the interests of his constituents; the more important role was to play a part in ‘a deliberative assembly of
one
nation with
one
interest, that of the whole’ (Burke's italics). This ‘Burkean’ doctrine of representation has had resonance wherever there have been elected parliaments and has had supporters and opponents inside parties of the ‘left’ as well as those of the ‘right’.
It may be ironic that Burke is seen as definitively conservative, but the perception is also accurate and revealing. Burke's stance against the French Revolution and the ‘abstract’ ideas arising out of the Enlightenment is prototypically conservative; the importance he attributed to local and national traditions, his capacity to support reform, and his belief in putting custom and moderation before absolute principle, have all contributed to the style and outlook of conservatism.
LA 

 
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Term popularized in Great Britain during the 1950s, coined in
The Economist
by merging the names of two successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, Labour's Hugh Gaitskell (1950–1) and the Conservative R. A. Butler (1951–5). Both favoured a ‘mixed economy’, a strong welfare state, and Keynesian demand management designed to ensure full employment.
DC 

 
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(1) A regular meeting of ministers, chaired by a head of government, with authority to make decisions on behalf of the government as a whole. Such a cabinet is common in parliamentary forms of government, including that in the United Kingdom.
(2) A regular meeting of ministers which is consultative to a head of government, not sharing responsibility for final decisions. Such a cabinet is exemplified in the American presidential system.
(3) (In this meaning often spelt in italics and pronounced as in French, to indicate its origins and the distinction from senses 1 and 2.) A group of political advisers which is consultative to an individual minister. Ministerial
cabinets
exist in a number of European executives.

The term ‘cabinet system’ relates to sense (1), which is discussed in the remainder of this entry.
Cabinet systems of government share two common principles. First, they observe the principle of
collective responsibility
. Cabinet ministers share in the process of making cabinet decisions and are duly bound to defend those decisions in public irrespective of private opinion. Secondly, they observe the principle of parliamentary
accountability
. However, whilst the principles of cabinet government are universal, the structure, membership, and operations of cabinet in practice are open to considerable variation.
Cabinets vary in size between roughly ten and forty members. Size is principally a function of absolute levels of public expenditure and the amount of governmental business this engenders. However, it is also determined by decisions taken on the proportion of government ministers to be included in the cabinet. In Canada virtually all ministers are included as a result of the need for territorial as well as departmental representation in the cabinet, meaning that there are between thirty and forty cabinet ministers at any one time. By contrast, the United Kingdom, which has generally over a hundred government ministers, has only a fifth of them in the cabinet.
Cabinets also vary according to their use of committees. Cabinet government in Luxembourg, Iceland, and Sweden under the Social Democrats is notable for making no use of committees. In the first two cases the extent of government business is sufficiently limited to allow it to be dispatched by the meetings of full cabinet. In other cabinet systems delegation of cabinet business to committees is commonplace. It is usual that there are standing committees on foreign affairs, defence, economic policy, and budgetary policy. Beyond this there is considerable variation in both standing and
ad hoc
committees.
Membership of full cabinet and of cabinet committees is formally determined by the prime minister. In practice many prime ministers face many constraints. Much is made of the case of Labour governments in Australia and New Zealand, where cabinet membership is determined by parliamentary party election, the power of the prime minister being limited to the apportionment of specific cabinet portfolios. However, it is also commonplace in countries which are federal, or have strong regional government, for prime ministers to have to ensure appropriate territorial representation, and in coalition governments for each of the coalition partners to have bargained representation in cabinet and cabinet committees. Small parties which are nevertheless crucial to the forming of any government can dictate continuous control of particular cabinet portfolios, as is the case with the Free Democrats in Germany. Even where single party majority control is long-standing, the apportionment of cabinet positions may have to be sensitive to intra-party factionalism, as with the Liberal Democrat governments in Japan.
Differences in the operation of cabinet government reflect differences in structure and membership, and the role of the prime minister that they incorporate. In multiparty coalition governments a prime minister's ability to control the cabinet agenda, use cabinet debates as a means to arbitrate between ministers in dispute, and coordinate the overall policy of the government is very weak. Even in more consensual cabinets derived from more than one party, or based on diverse territorial representation, decision-making can be slow and chaotic. This has led to the charge that cabinet government is managerially inefficient.
In the United Kingdom the Cabinet is generally drawn from parliamentary members of the single majority party. As a result cabinet government is based upon relative cohesion in purpose. In addition, the leading role of the Prime Minister as
primus inter pares
(‘first among equals’) is not questioned. Ever since the modern cabinet system evolved during the First World War, when formal cabinet meetings were convened with written agendas, resulting in written minutes, and staffed by a cabinet secretariat, the Prime Minister has had clear powers of agenda control. The Prime Minister has also had power to appoint cabinet committees and determine their terms of reference, allowing their recommendations to become effectively the policy of the government. This has led to the charge that in Britain cabinet government has fallen prey, not to chaos and inefficiency, but to an overriding power of the Prime Minister. The thesis of prime ministerial government gained credence with the publication of the Crossman diaries detailing the practice of the Wilson governments 1964–70, and with the apparent contempt for collective decision-making shown by Mrs Thatcher during her premiership 1979–90.
Over time there is considerable evidence of prime ministers bypassing cabinet and potential cabinet opposition on economic and defence-related issues by resort to carefully selected cabinet committees. This was as true of Attlee's approach to framing policy on an independent nuclear deterrent immediately after the war as it was of Mrs Thatcher's determination to concentrate economic policy in the hands of monetarist ministers in the early 1980s. Beyond this, however, the practice of full cabinet has been more contingent on prime ministerial style, which has often preferred collective decision-making or, if not at least shown some respect for it. Attlee delegated considerable power to the collective efforts of his ministers working on cabinet committees; Churchill and Macmillan prided themselves on a patrician style which allowed full debate in cabinet of all key issues; Callaghan is noted for his full respect of the processes of cabinet decision-making in relation to the financial crisis in 1976; even Mrs Thatcher relented on a number of policy ideas against cabinet opposition to the chagrin of her own supporters in the Conservative Party. In addition, the secrecy surrounding cabinet government has been eroded. In May 1992 the Major government first published
Questions of Procedure for Ministers
, which is the nearest thing Britain has to a constitution for cabinet government, and disclosed the names, membership, and purposes of sixteen standing cabinet committees and ten cabinet subcommittees. The secretary to the cabinet made it clear that while only Treasury ministers had the right to challenge committee decisions in full cabinet, any alliance of five or more ministers could effectively do likewise and have a chance of success. The ‘prime ministerial government’ thesis looks weak during the Major government.
JBr