Why it Is Indeed Time for the Westminster Model to Be Retired from Comparative Politics

Abstract

The term ‘Westminster model’ is frequently used by political scientists and practitioners. But our recent examination (Russell and Serban 2021), published in this journal, uncovered wide variation in how it is defined – demonstrating that it is more ‘muddle’ than ‘model’. This sparked a response article from Flinders et al. (2021), which we in turn respond to in this piece. We briefly revisit our initial research questions, methodology and findings, before reflecting on their analysis. We emphasize that, notwithstanding the critics’ negative tone, we and they agree on certain fundamentals. In particular on our original central point, that the ‘Westminster model’ is an ill-defined term with a long history, which mostly makes it unsuited to positivist comparative political science research. While the ‘Westminster model’ may have some valid vestigial uses, within the UK political system, or as an object of study for interpretivist political science, it does not provide a rigorous basis for case selection and comparative political science analysis.

Understanding the Modern Election Campaign: Analysing Campaign Eras through Financial Transparency Disclosures at the 2019 UK General Election

“…Despite the ubiquity of this approach, this mode of analysis has been criticized for becoming easily abstracted from any practical reality (Russell and Serban 2022) and for creating an impression of 'faux precision' (Russell and Serban 2021: 761) by drawing attention to some features whilst overlooking others. For scholars of party communication, it is well recognized, as Magin et al contend, that actual campaigns 'will hardly ever meet these ideal types.…”