A cabinet government system exists where responsibility for directing the policies of a country (see executive) lies in the hands of a small group of senior politicians. Cabinet government originated in Britain during the 17th and 18th centuries, where the cabinet developed from the inner core of privy counsellors on whom the monarch relied for advice. As the monarch lost power and party government replaced personal authority, the cabinet came to be formed not from the monarch’s most trusted advisers but from the most senior members of the dominant political party.
The essence of cabinet government is that it is collective government by a committee of individuals who are theoretically equal and bound by their collective decisions. Fundamental to the way cabinet government operated in Britain until the early 1960s were the dual notions of collective responsibility and secrecy. The proceedings of a cabinet debate were secret and it was not permissible for a minister to publicize personal dissent from any decision of the cabinet and to remain a member of the cabinet thereafter. Collective responsibility also meant that if Parliament wished to remove a government from office it had to remove the whole administration; it could not remove part of it or pick ministers off one by one, although individual ministers have resigned for political and personal reasons.
The concept of cabinet government implies that power and responsibility will be shared equally between all members of the cabinet.
In fact the prime minister, as chairman of the cabinet and, in most systems which have cabinet governments, the person who appoints the other cabinet ministers, wields a power which is generally seen as superior to that of other members of the cabinet individually and even to that of the cabinet as a whole. In the last few years of Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministership, however, it was increasingly felt that the idea of ‘first among equals’, which restricts prime ministerial power, had been largely abandoned. Her successors in office may have initiated a return to a traditional form of cabinet government, but the dominant force in British politics is now indisputably the prime minister. In the British system of cabinet government, a great deal of decision-making and policy preparation is undertaken not by the full cabinet, but by cabinet committees which cover specialized areas of policy; membership of the most important of these committees, particularly the economic committee, is greatly prized among cabinet members. One of the reasons for the prime minister’s influence over the cabinet is indeed that he or she is the only member who is likely to be on all the important committees.
Britain’s system of cabinet government has been exported to other countries, notably those of the Commonwealth. However, the norms and practices of cabinet government may vary considerably from one country to another. When the Labor Party comes to power in Australia, for example, it elects the members of the cabinet, thus denying the prime minister one important source of power and patronage. Although there is a body in the US political system called the cabinet, which consists of the politically appointed heads of departments, it has no decision-making power and exists only to advise the president when the latter wants to be advised.
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