Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive.

The stress under which the traditional model of British governance now operates threatens its very survival. This situation is admirably illustrated by Campbell and Wilson's book, which is based, impressively, on some 300 interviews of senior politicians and civil servants. By the 1990s the stress was evident in a number of quarters: ministers had come to look elsewhere for sources of policy advice, the Next Steps agencies appeared to fragment the erstwhile service-wide ethos, and there were accusations that the integrity of the higher civil service was threatened by politicization. Campbell and Wilson's comparative perspective looks at executive leadership in a minimalist age. The legacy of neo-liberalism -- with its antagonism towards the conventional institutions of governance -- has left uncertainties, particularly under the passive leadership style of John Major. The comparative approach evaluates the consistency of policy making in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in order to test the effectiveness of the British Cabinet and Whitehall system. This reveals that the historical justification of the system -- its clear provision for democratic accountability -- is eroding. But this in turn reflects wider confusion in the whole of the British political system. Even if the Whitehall model survives in default of any fundamental constitution change, its claim to moral supremacy has gone.

Rhodes and Dunleavy's edited book moves beyond the conventional studies of the Westminster and Whitehall model centred on Prime Minister, Cabinet and bureaucracy to emphasise a more eclectic theoretical and …