The prime minister emerged as a distinct figure in Britain in the early 18th century and Sir Robert Walpole is generally credited with having been the first prime minister. Originally the term was one of abuse since it carried the connotation that the politician in question was in some sense arrogating power that ought properly to belong to the monarch. As the 18th century passed the office became more defined and the prime minister became accepted as the channel for the communication of advice from the cabinet to the monarch, as the chairman of cabinet meetings and, in the 19th century as parties developed, as the leader of the government party.
In Britain the office of prime minister remained almost informal until 1937 when a Ministers of the Crown Act recognized the term in law for the first time. Otherwise the official style of the prime minister was ‘First Lord of the Treasury’. The older Commonwealth countries which modelled their constitutions on Britain’s—for example Australia, Canada and New Zealand—had little difficulty adapting the office to their own political systems. Some countries such as the first two of these, however, have allowed the office to develop slightly differently and in Australia, for example, there is a prime minister’s department which serves the prime minister alone and gives support in the central policy-making process.
In the United Kingdom such a department, although suggested from time to time, is thought to be a dangerous step towards the personalization of power and to undermine collective responsibility; indeed, confrontations occurred between cabinet ministers and prime minister Margaret Thatcher owing to her extensive reliance on personal advisers. In a genuine system of cabinet government like that of the UK the prime minister can, ultimately, only wield power with the acquiesence of their cabinet colleagues, and even the strongest individuals can, quite suddenly, lose their power and their office if they stretch the loyalty of those colleagues and of their party’s members of parliament, or even members in general, too hard, as was demonstrated by Thatcher’s sudden fall from power in 1990. The governments headed by the Labour leader Tony Blair from 1997 were regarded as suffering from too much detailed intervention by the prime minister and his immediate circle in the day-to-day running of the separate departments; the problem was not so much a clash between the prime minister and the ministers, who were largely Blair loyalists, but a clash between Blair’s political appointees and the established civil service.
Many countries in continental Europe adopted the term during the 19th century. Here, however, the powers of the prime minister have sometimes been at odds with the claims of the president. In France, for example, where the office of prime minister emerged after the restoration of the monarchy, the balance of power between prime minister and head of state has fluctuated. In the present French polity (see Fifth Republic) it is clear that the prime minister is subordinate to the president who is the real determinant of government policy, as became apparent during the period of cohabitation. In earlier republics, however, the president had occupied a much weaker role, akin to that of a constitutional monarch, and the prime minister had accordingly been the true head of the executive.
This is the complete article, containing 544 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
