If the Right People Don’t Have Power

From Yes, Prime Minister (BBC)

Run time:  2:45

Clip Description:  Sir Humphrey makes the case for why decisions should rest with the permanent civil service rather than with elected ministers, in the series’ characteristic register of perfect courtesy and complete self-interest.

Comparative Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To:  Permanent bureaucracy versus temporary political leadership; the principal-agent problem in government; the difference between neutral competence and entrenched preference; ministerial responsibility and what it does and does not deliver.

Possible Uses in Classroom:  The best two and a half minutes available for the question of who actually governs. Works as an opener for a bureaucracy unit and equally well late, as a text to read closely — the argument has a respectable version and a self-serving version and they are deliberately hard to separate, which is the assignment.

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Discussion Questions

1. Sir Humphrey’s argument has a respectable version and a self-serving version. State both, then say which one the scene is actually making.
2. British ministers arrive without a team and usually depart within a few years; their officials stay for decades. What does that do to who sets policy, and how does the American arrangement differ?
3. What mechanism, if any, lets a minister get their way over an unwilling department? Name one and say what it costs to use.

Assignment

Compare how the top of the executive branch is staffed in the United Kingdom and the United States: how many posts change hands when the government changes, who appoints them, and what qualification is required. Two pages, using official sources on both sides rather than commentary. Close on the trade-off, which is real in both directions: what each system gains in continuity and what it gives up in responsiveness. Name the failure mode of each.

Clip hosted on YouTube, posted by BBC Studios.

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For AP Students

AP Comparative Government and Politics
Unit 2: Political Institutions

Topics: 2.3 Executive Systems; 2.5 Removal and Accountability; bureaucratic institutions and policy implementation

The United Kingdom is a core country and the relationship between ministers and the permanent civil service is directly examinable. This is the cleanest statement of the tension available anywhere.

Discussion questions

1. Define a merit-based bureaucracy and explain how it differs from a patronage system. Which of the six course countries has moved furthest in each direction in the past two decades?
2. Explain what is meant by the principal-agent problem, using a minister and a permanent secretary as the two parties. What information does the agent hold that the principal does not?
3. Bureaucratic power is usually described as a threat to accountability. Make the opposite case: name two ways a permanent civil service protects citizens from an elected government.

Short activity

Who survives the election (15 minutes). Draw an executive branch on the board as a column of boxes from head of government down to a mid-level administrator. Have the room mark every box that changes hands when the government changes, first for the United Kingdom and then for one other course country. The two columns rarely look alike, and the difference is the lesson.