Setting Choices, Controlling Outcomes: The Operation of Prime Ministerial Influence and the UK's Decision to Invade Iraq
| Published date | 01 February 2007 |
| Date | 01 February 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00260.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Setting Choices, Controlling Outcomes:
The Operation of Prime Ministerial
Influence and The UK’s Decision to
Invade Iraq
Eoin O’Malley
The prime minister’s role in policy-making is paradoxical in that, although seemingly very
powerful, prime ministers in fact have few rights to set policy unilaterally. It is then important to
discover how prime ministers exercise influence over policy. Some studies suggest that it is through
using resources within policy networks. From agenda-setting theory, this article proposes that prime
ministers influence other actors by structuring the choices they face. This is illustrated using an
example of a highly contested policy: the decision in the UK to support the US-led invasion of Iraq
in 2003. It is shown that to influence two crucial actors, parliament and the cabinet, the prime
minister, Tony Blair, and his office selectively released and withheld information in order to
structure the choice facing these actors.
Introduction
The decision to go to war in Iraq was one of the most controversial policy decisions
made by the Labour governments under Tony Blair. It was a somewhat unusual
decision for a Labour government to take. One might have expected that it would
not have wished to commit billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to a war that
seemed to be driven by a right-wing US administration’s desire to install a friendly
government into power against the wishes of the United Nations and in probable
contravention of international law. Despite this, a majority in the UK cabinet and
Labour’s parliamentary party supported the prime minister’s decision to go to war.
This episode lends great credence to the contention by political scientists and
commentators that Britain has a predominant prime minister (Heffernan 2003),
and maybe even a ‘presidential’ prime minister (Foley 1993; Foley 2000).1
However, unlike US presidents, the UK prime minister has few unilateral policy-
making prerogatives. Prime ministers cannot change policy without reference to
other groups, such as cabinet, parliament or departmental ministers. As proponents
of the policy network model of UK government point out, policy-making power is
divided among interdependent and interlocking actors, each with resources that are
exchanged (Rhodes and Dunleavy 1995; Rhodes 1997; Smith 1999). Therefore,
Tony Blair needed the (political and legal) support of both parliament and cabinet
in order to commit British troops to Iraq.2It was also politically necessary to have
the support of a majority of Labour MPs. To fail to achieve this would have called
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00260.x BJPIR: 2007 VOL 9, 1–19
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
into question Blair’s leadership of the party. Given Labour’s historical antipathy to
military action, it is puzzling as to how this policy was accepted.
The inability of the UK prime minister to set policy unilaterally makes it likely that
prime ministers would need to use resources to achieve policy gains and lends
credence to the network analysis. To be true, however, one would expect that
where a prime minister achieves his or her policy goals and appears dominant,
network scholars would expect either policy compromise to ensue or control of
policy to be ceded in other areas. This does not seem to have happened in this case.
Blair seemed dominant on this issue, but did not have to concede on the conduct
of war or its aftermath or on other controversial issues such as foundation hospitals
and university tuition fees in order to get his way. Network analyses allow that ‘the
balance of exchange rests heavily in favour of the powerful executive’ (Marsh et al.
2001, 9) but it is not clear that the policy network approach is more than a
descriptive model; it does not show why one actor dominates another. As a descrip-
tive model it provides a much more nuanced view of UK policy-making than
institutionalist or pluralist analyses provide. However, this approach does not, a
priori, explain how prime ministers influence policy-making. A theory of prime
ministerial power is proposed here which, following E. E. Schattschneider (1960,
68) who argued that ‘the definition of alternatives is the supreme instrument of
power’, contends that prime ministers can achieve policy dominance by defining
the alternatives from which other actors in the policy-making process must choose.
Thomas Romer and Howard Rosenthal (1978) have shown how the formal ability
to structure the choices facing others gives the agenda setter control to determine
policy. WilliamRiker (1986) has offered real examples of the effect of agenda setting
on political decisions. Others have shown the impact of how issues are ‘framed’ on
how people form judgements (Kahneman and Tversky 1984). Essentially framing
an issue in a different way causes a choice to be structured differently.
The need to set difficult choices for parliament was explicitly recognised by Harold
Wilson. He instructed one of his ministers that to avoid defeat in the Commons,
where between 1964 and 1966 his government had a wafer-thin majority, he was
to structure the opposition’s choices:
My strategy is to put the Tories on the defensive and always give them
awkward choices ... They have an awkward choice voting for or against
the pension increase. We have given them an awkward choice on office
building and, Dick, you’ll be giving them an awkward choice with your
Bill for preventing evictions. Whatever we do we must keep the initiative
and always give them awkward choices (Crossman 1975, 50).
Prime ministers, and especially UK prime ministers, have some important institu-
tional prerogatives that allow them to set ‘awkward choices’ for others: the right to
call confidence motions; to dissolve parliament; to dismiss ministers. This article
studies these and places a unified theoretical framework on previous approaches to
prime ministerial power. More specifically, I offer a case study to illustrate how
setting choices might be important for determining policy outcomes. It is argued
that through the selective use of information Tony Blair was effectively able to
define the alternatives from which other actors chose. It was this that made this
unlikely decision possible.
2EOIN O’MALLEY
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2007, 9(1)
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