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In the first two chapters of the book the author explains in a verbose manner his general theories without providing any example of how they could be applied. His failure to contextualise makes the first chapters of the book abstract and difficult to comprehend. The ideas behind his argument become more clear from the fourth chapter when he begins to apply them to the Conservative Governments of 1979-97 and the present Labour government. The presence of some examples or case studies in the first chapters would improve the readability enormously.
Later in the book the author generously contextualises his arguments and regularly provides the reader with examples from the the Thatcher, Blair, Major and Callaghan Governments. The author uses Margaret Thatcher's resignation to illustrate his theory of interdependence: he argues that Thatcher failed to realise 'that the exercise of power depended, not on destroying colleagues, but on maintaining their support'. This is particularly valuable since Thatcher's style of government is often used in arguments that the British government is becoming presidentialised.
One weakness in the argument of the book involves Smith's perception of the level of dependency of the Prime Minister. For the most part the book argues that the Prime Minister is simply another dependent actor (albeit a relatively resource rich actor) and early in the book it states 'the starting point is that all actors within the core executive have resources, with no actor, or institution, having a monopoly'. However, the author contradicts this when says that the balance of resources changed 'with the Prime Minister taking on more of a leading role and having the resources to overrule ministers'. In order to have enough resources to overrule another actor surely the Prime Minister would have to secure a virtual monopoly of resources? Even though he would remain dependent on actors to an extent the fact that he can stop other actors from achieving their goals devalues the argument that Government works through alliance and not command.
Despite this contradiction The Core Executive in Britain provides a comprehensive introduction to the processes and agents at the centre of British government. While the book suffers from dry introductory chapters it improves later with its engaging examples of how the author's theory of interdependence and resource sharing applies to contemporary British politics.
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