Political leadership as statecraft? Aligning theory with praxis in conversation with British party leaders

Abstract

How should prime ministerial and party leadership be understood and assessed? One leading approach posits that we should assess them in terms of whether they achieve statecraft, that is, winning and maintain office in government. This article supplements and then assesses that theory by drawing from Pawson and Tilley's (1997) concept of the realistic interview, in which practitioners are deployed as co-researchers to assess and revise theory. Unprecedented interviews with British party leaders were therefore undertaken. The article provides new empirical support for the framework because many of the key generative mechanisms identified within the neo-statecraft model were present in an analysis of the interviews. The interviews also allowed the limitations of the model to be demarcated. Statecraft focusses purely on cunning leadership where the aim is to maximise power and influence. This differs from leadership by conscious where the aim is to achieve normative goals.

Objectivity and falsehood: Assessing measures of positional influence with members of David Cameron’s cabinets

“…We did so through a combination of face-to-face interviews and written correspondence. Our approach was thus consistent with what Pawson and Tilley (1997: 155) call 'realistic interviews': we used the respondents as 'co-researchers' to help us confirm, falsify or refine our measures, not as subjects of study in their own right (see also James, 2018). More specifically, we sought feedback on three particular aspects of Dunleavy's measures: first, the assumptions surrounding the relative importance of committees and sub-committees and the plausibility of their weighted influence scores; second, the assumptions surrounding the division of committees' influence scores, in particular the nominal equality of members and the special positions enjoyed by chairs and deputy chairs; and finally, the plausibility of the resulting scores.…”

“…We did so through a combination of face-to-face interviews and written correspondence. Our approach was thus consistent with what Pawson and Tilley (1997: 155) call ‘realistic interviews’: we used the respondents as ‘co-researchers’ to help us confirm, falsify or refine our measures, not as subjects of study in their own right (see also James, 2018).…”

“…This paper makes several contributions to the existing literature. Its principal contribution is as a methodological case-study of using insiders as ‘co-researchers’ (James, 2018) to validate measures, in this instance positional-influence scores derived from cabinet committees. To this end, we first applied Dunleavy’s measures to successive lists of committees covering the entirety of Cameron’s premiership, relating our findings, where appropriate, to a range of other sources, including memoirs, newspaper reports and other insider accounts.…”

Assessing the policy effects of political leaders: a layered framework

“…One broad approach has been to assess the impact of leaders in terms of their electoral outcomes. The (neo-)statecraft approach, for example, maps and evaluates leaders in terms of whether they maintain office and establish a degree of governing competence in office (Buller and James 2012;James 2016James , 2018. In the broadest sense, Trump had mixed fortunes here.…”

“…In seeking to achieve re-election, they might develop policies which have a profound effect across a variety of areas. Leaders may also enter politics trying to achieve more altruistic goals than pure power pursuits rather than just re-elections (James 2018). A more holistic evaluation of the effects of leaders is therefore needed.…”