The Hollow Crown: Countervailing Trends in Core Executives [Hardcover]

The first volume in a series of comparative studies within the ESRC's Whitehall Programme focuses on core executives in five parliamentary democracies comparing the Westminster model as in Australia, Canada and Britain with the continental democracies of Germany and the Netherlands showing how political leadership is shackled by a vast array of constraints, from globalisation to internal fragmentation and rationalisation, making a heroic model of decisive political leadership hard to sustain.List of Figures - Preface - Acknowledgements - Contributors - The Hollow Crown: Coherence and Capacity in Central Government; Patrick Weller and Herman Bakvis - In Search of the Hollow Crown; Michael Saward - Political Parties and the Core Executive; Patrick Weller - Collegiality and Collectivity: Cabinets, Cabinet Committees and Cabinet Ministers; Rudy Andeweg - Advising the Executive: Think Tanks, Consultants, Political Staff and Kitchen Cabinets; Herman Bakvis - Executive Coordination Mechanisms; Glyn Davis - Managing Budgets; John Wanna - Decentralization and Public Management Reform; Peter Aucoin - 'Shackling the Leader?': Coherence, Capacity and the Hollow Crown; R.A.W.Rhodes - Bibliography - Index