CABINET GOVERNMENT

The most surprising aspect of the recent fall of the Dutch Government was not that it fell (the Government was a left-right coalition and such combinations are often unstable), nor that it fell because of disagreement over extending the Dutch military mission to Afghanistan (wars are likely to give rise to differing views), but that it took place after an inconclusive Cabinet meeting that lasted for 16 hours! That is in sharp contrast to the evidence emerging from the U.K. inquiry to the Iraq War, where the Cabinet decision to invade seems to have been taken almost on the nod. The Attorney General was present in order to answer questions about his advice that the invasion was legal; but nobody asked him any.

Cabinet Government has been around since the 18th century. The idea is that decisions are taken and defended collectively by all Government Ministers, the Prime Minister being merely "primus inter pares"; he/she has the same single vote as all of the others. The reality is somewhat different. All Ministers rely to a greater or lesser extent on the Prime Minister's patronage, first to obtain the job and then to keep it. A Minister who continually disagreed with their Prime Minister would find it hard to remain in Cabinet.

The exception is in a coalition, where the dissent can come from one of the parties, as in the Dutch case, rather than from an individual. The stakes are higher, since the end of the coalition may well spell the end of the Government. But the standard of Cabinet debate is probably rather better.

Commentators are often lamenting the decline of Cabinet Government and the concomitant rise of Presidential Prime Ministers. That is likely to be most pronounced in countries such as the U.K. and U.S.A., where coalitions are rare.

Walter Blotscher