Nicholas Allen

'Off With their Heads': British Prime Ministers and the Power to Dismiss

The British prime minister’s power to appoint and dismiss ministers is probably his most important single power. This article explores how prime ministers from Macmillan to Blair have used that power. The article considers the criteria that prime ministers use when choosing to appoint or dismiss individuals from office before examining the calculations and miscalculations that prime ministers have made in practice. Finally, the article analyses the way that prime ministers have exercised, in particular, their power to dismiss and finds that Thatcher was far more likely than others to sack cabinet colleagues on ideological or policy grounds. The article emphasizes that prime ministers’ relationships with especially powerful ministers – ‘big beasts of the jungle’ – are crucial to an understanding of British government at the top.

The role of political trust in conditioning perceptions of corruption

Political trust and corruption have both elicited considerable academic and popular commentary in recent years. Much attention has been focused on the extent to which corruption has contributed to citizens’ increasing distrust of their politicians. But little attention has been paid to the possibility that distrust may condition responses to alleged corruption, and no work has hitherto demonstrated the veracity of this relationship in a mature democracy. Drawing on data from the United Kingdom, this paper finds that less trusting individuals are consistently more censorious of politicians’ misbehaviour and more likely to perceive the presence of corruption than are their more trusting peers. The paper further demonstrates that people who are less trusting become relatively more critical (compared with the more trusting) as the generally perceived corruptness of a certain scenario declines. It also demonstrates how trust increases in importance as a predictor of ethical judgements when behaviour is generally reckoned to be less corrupt. Further analysis suggests that this effect is partly connected to uncertainty. Less obviously corrupt acts are associated with higher levels of uncertainty, which appears to open up a space for trust to play an even more significant role in shaping individuals judgements of politicians’ behaviour.

Reputations and Research Quality in British Political Science: The Importance of Journal and Publisher Rankings in the 2008 RAE

Research Highlights and Abstract The article seeks to make a contribution in the following areas: Departments that submitted a large proportion of books published with a top university press tended to do much better in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), especially in respect of their 4* rating. Departments that submitted large numbers of top-10 journal articles as a proportion of their outputs tended to get higher 4* ratings than departments that submitted only a few. Departments that had a member of staff on the RAE sub-panel saw their 4* rating jump considerably, all other things being equal, suggesting inadequate communication by the sub-panel of its working methods and criteria. The RAE sub-panels judgements about research quality broadly reflected the judgements of the profession. This article analyses the results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It demonstrates that the reputations of political science journals and scholarly publishers can explain the performance of institutions submitted to the RAEs Politics and International Studies sub-panel, and that there were also clear relationships between types of output and research quality. Outputs in top journals and with top presses were strongly associated with 4* quality and research excellence. Moreover, press and journal reputations appeared to have a greater impact than the type of publication. These findings should encourage policy makers to consider more cost-effective and efficient ways of evaluating research.

‘Moves on a Chess Board’: A Spatial Model of British Prime Ministers' Powers over Cabinet Formation

We use an institutional rational choice approach to help us understand how prime ministers in the UK make cabinet appointments and the implications for prime ministerial power. Assuming that prime ministers attempt to form a cabinet so as to get an overall package of policies as close as possible to their ideal, we show why the trade-offs they face are so complex, why apparently common-sense rules for making appointments might not always work well and why apparently strange choices made by prime ministers might actually be rational. Acknowledging the power prime ministers derive from their ability to appoint, we argue that the literature commonly fails to distinguish between power and luck, where lucky prime ministers get their way because they happen to agree with colleagues.

No Sex Scandals Please, We’re French: French Attitudes towards Politicians’ Public and Private Conduct

The notion of distinct ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres underpins much normative and practical engagement with political misconduct. What is less clear is whether citizens draw distinctions between misdemeanours in the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres, and whether they judge these in systematically different ways. This paper explores attitudes to political misconduct in France. French citizens are often said to be particularly relaxed about politicians’ private affairs, but there has been little empirical evidence for this proposition. Drawing on original survey data, this paper demonstrates clearly that French citizens draw a sharp distinction between politicians’ public and private transgressions, and are more tolerant of the latter.

Keeping MPs Honest?: Ethics Reforms in the British House of Commons

This article examines a series of ethics reforms instituted by the British House of Commons in 1995 (the Nolan reforms) and compares them with further changes introduced in 2009. Drawing on a range of sources, it describes the impact of the Nolan reforms on the practice of ethics regulation at Westminster, and, placing the reforms in the broader context of British legislative ethics, it reflects on some of their consequences. It concludes by noting three enduring features of ethics regulation in the House of Commons: an institutional reluctance to change structures, the importance of party politics, and the continuing emergence of new ethical challenges.

Finding a niche? Challenger parties and issue emphasis in the 2015 televised leaders’ debates

Do leaders of ‘challenger’ parties adopt a ‘niche’ strategy in national televised debates? This article answers this question by analysing the content of the two multiparty televised leaders’ debates that took place ahead of the 2015 British general election. Using computer-aided text analysis (CATA), it provides reliable and valid measures of what the leaders said in both debates and develops our theoretical understanding of how challenger-party leaders make their pitches. It finds that the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Green Party, Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru leaders all demonstrated a degree of ‘nicheness’ in their contributions in comparison with the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour leaders. It also finds that the challenger-party leaders placed a greater emphasis on their core concerns. Nevertheless, the debates covered much policy ground. Their structure obliged all party leaders to talk about a broad range of issues.

Experiencing gender in UK political science: The results of a practitioner survey

Does gender matter in the way in which we ‘perform’ academia? Drawing on the results of a practitioner survey, we argue that gender does matter, culturally and structurally, and can be institutionalised so that women are disadvantaged. This is not to deny women’s agency or the advances that they have made. Rather, we highlight the inequality of the playing field in which the academic endeavour is conducted. Uniquely, we ask UK political scientists about their perceptions of the impact of gender in their working lives and explore their views on recommendations for change.

'In it together'? The political consequences of perceived discommunions of interest in British politics

The presence of shared interests between politicians and citizens is central to many accounts of political representation, yet there has been little empirical research into how citizens perceive these interests and whether they think a ‘communion of interests’ exists between them and their elected representatives. Using new survey data, this paper explores the extent to which Britons think their Members of Parliament share the same everyday experiences as they do. It further explores the relationship between these perceptions and indicators of specific and diffuse political support. We show that British citizens generally say that politicians are less affected by social and economic conditions and less reliant on public services than they are. The size of this perceived ‘discommunion’ affects voting behaviour and satisfaction with democracy.

Tempests and Teacups: Politicians’ Reputations in the Wake of the Expenses Scandal

This chapter examines the impact of the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal on public attitudes towards politicians and politics. Drawing on data from a three-wave representative panel survey fielded between early 2009 and spring 2010, the chapter probes citizens’ evaluations of MPs. It reports the immediate response to the scandal before exploring its impact over the medium term. The chapter finds that, contrary to expectations, the scandal’s impact was surprisingly limited. If anything, respondents were less critical of politicians six months after the scandal than immediately before the media frenzy first broke. The chapter discusses various psychological and structural factors that may account for this finding and locates the public response to the scandal within the broader mood of disenchantment that currently pervades British politics.