This article contributes to the developing literature on prime ministerial performance in the UK by applying a critical reading of Stephen SkowronekÕs account of leadership in Ôpolitical timeÕ to evaluate David CameronÕs premiership. This, we propose, better understands the inter-relationship of structure and agency in prime ministerial performance than existing frameworks, particularly those based on GreensteinÕs and BulpittÕs approaches. We identify Cameron as a disjunctive prime minister but find it necessary to significantly develop the model of disjunctive leadership beyond that offered by Skowronek. We identify the warrants to authority, strategies and dilemmas associated with disjunctive leadership in the UK. We argue that Cameron was relatively skilful in meeting many of the challenges confronting an affiliated leader of a vulnerable regime. However, his second term exposed deep fractures in the regime which proved beyond CameronÕs skills as a disjunctive leader.
Research highlights
This article:¥ Contributes to the debate about the best theoretical frameworks for evaluating prime ministerial performance in the UK. ¥ Argues that an historical institutionalist framework is able to address the major shortcoming of existing frameworks, namely evaluating prime ministerial performance in the structural context of the political environment in which holders of that office act. ¥ Adapts Stephen SkowronekÕs account of the performance of US presidents to the constitutional, institutional and political circumstances of the UK polity and significantly develops SkowronekÕs account of regime vulnerability and the characteristics and constraints of disjunctive leadership ¥ Applies this adapted model for the purposes of a systematic evaluation of David CameronÕs premiership. This identifies that although Cameron was relatively successful in negotiating the challenges and constraints of disjunctive prime ministerial leadership in his first term he made commitments which, in his second term, exposed key fault lines in the regime and proved beyond CameronÕs skills as a disjunctive leader to manage.2
Theresa May’s premiership is widely acknowledged to have been a failure, but political commentators and the scholarly literature have, thus far, tended to focus on May’s misuse of her agency. This article argues that May’s premiership presents a particularly powerful example of the need to disentangle structure and agency when assessing prime ministerial performance. Drawing upon the work of Stephen Skowronek, it sets out a framework of evaluating prime ministerial agency in ‘political time’. This is then used to show how the conditions and circumstances in which May governed limited the feasibility, increased the costs, and compromised the effectiveness of her actions in office. We argue that this confirms that May was a victim of circumstances as much as a victim of her own agency.
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