The British Presidency

There has been a ploriferation of books on the the UK prime minister form British political scientists in recent years. Unfortunately most of them are atheoretical and just a small jump up from journalism.

In this book Foley writes about the individualisation in the media of politics in the UK and US. he makes osme effort to show that it has happened, and why it happened (because 'outsiders' of government are more popular)

Leadership stretch refers to the prominence of party leaders in the media. According to this idea leaders are 'no longer party spokespeople, but ostentatious flagships of their respective fleets'. The dependence of television on having people to deliver a message, as opposed to the print media which a press release will suffice, means that the person who is good on television becomes leader. Television makes the leader, and others suffer. The other prominent members of the government no longer get the coverage, everything goes through the leader/ prime minister. By having the message go through her, the prime minister can control the message.

This perpetuates itself because the party becomes to depend on the leader's popularity for support, and the leader cannot be popular unless he is seen to be in control. Another aspect of his idea is that the party leader performs best when he presents himself as an outsider, distancing himself from the established party hierarchy. However, Foley fails to define what he terms 'spatial leadership' fully, so when one prime minister is successful, such as Margaret Thatcher (although he neglects to define success), she is a successful 'outsider', while when another is unsuccessful, such as John Major, his leadership is 'dysfunctional'. When the Conservatives were successful, Major was their only positive in the 1992 general election- 'it was Major's image as a man apart from the pack that for long periods provided the Conservatives not only with a form of redemption but with the only strategy for survival'.

These ideas seems reasonable enough, but they could hardly account for the whole alleged conflation of power in one person in the UK. Television is as much an issue in Italian elections as in the UK, but Italian prime ministers have not accumulated power in recent years.

One of the problems with the recent presidential literature is that it has no explicit research design. Nowhere is it clear what the thesis is exactly. One picks up new ideas along the way, but you can never be sure if this is incidentally interesting or if it is central to the whole question. Key concepts such as 'presidential' and 'power' are brushed aside.

Because of this, the 'theory'(not that it is ever made explicit) has no way of being refuted. If for instance Tony Blair loses an election, all we have to do is argue that he was becoming too 'establishment', and that he was not distancing himself enough. Our proof could be a few photographs of Blair with the Queen and Blair with business leaders! Each effect (i.e. losing an election) could have many more explanations, but these are not investigated.

Michael Foley

Reader Reviews:

interesting ideas, but fails to define or prove a theory (5/6 people found this helpful)

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