The Agenda of British Government: The Speech from the Throne, 1911-2008
| Date | 01 March 2011 |
| Author | Peter John,Shaun Bevan,Will Jennings |
| Published date | 01 March 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00859.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 1 VO L 5 9 , 7 4 – 9 8
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00859.x
The Agenda of British Government: The Speech
from the Throne, 1911–2008post_85974..98
Will Jennings, Shaun Bevan and Peter John
University of Manchester
This article considers how UK governments use the Speech from the Throne (also known as the Gracious Speech and
the King’s or the Queen’s Speech) to define and articulate their executive and legislative agenda. The analysis uses the
policy content coding system of the Policy Agendas Project to measure total executive and legislative attention to
particular issues. This generates the longest known data series of the political agenda in the UK, from the date of the
first Parliament Act in 1911 right up to the end of 2008, nearly a century of government agenda setting. Using these
data, the article identifies long-run institutional and policy stability in this agenda-setting instrument, and variation in
its length and executive–legislative content due to the focusing events of world wars and party control of government.
It assesses the degree to which the policy content of the speech is persistent (autoregressive) over time and identifies
long-term trends in the total number of topics mentioned in each speech (scope), and the dispersion of government
attention across topics (entropy). It also identifies important variation over time that indicates change in the
agenda-setting function of the speech and evolution of the agenda in response to policy challenges faced by modern
British governments in the period since 1911. Overall, the analysis demonstrates the robustness of the speech as a
measure of the policy agenda and executive priorities in the UK.
Agenda:
‘... the list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials, and people outside of
government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any
given time’ (Kingdon, 1984, p. 3).
Agenda Setting in British Politics
At any moment in time, government faces an abundance of information about the state of
the world as issues compete for space on the political agenda (Carmines and Stimson, 1989;
Jones and Baumgartner, 2005; True et al., 2007). Such information ranges from domestic
policy to international affairs – on topics such as the economy, education, immigration,
public services, defence, crime and climate change. This array of issues requires processing,
prioritisation and action as elected officials attempt to make sense of and respond to
electoral mandates and the demands of political parties, bureaucrats, interest groups, public
opinion and the media. The critical questions for the study of agenda setting (see the
seminal studies of Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; Cobb and Elder, 1983; Kingdon, 1984;
McCombs and Shaw, 1972) are how and why a particular issue is elevated on to the political
agenda ahead of other issues.
Not much is known about agenda setting in British politics. Indeed, systematic analysis of
the agenda of executive government is rare in comparison to studies of issue competition
© 2010 The Authors. Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association
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by political parties during election periods (e.g. Budge and Hofferbert, 1992; Budge et al.,
2001; Klingemann et al., 1994; McDonald and Budge, 2005). Recent studies, however,
consider dynamics of political attention in Britain ( Jennings and John, 2009; John and
Jennings, 2010) while others undertake comparative analysis of executive agendas, focusing
on issue stability ( Breeman et al., 2009a; 2009b), opinion responsiveness (Hobolt and
Klemmensen, 2005) and issue diversity ( Jennings et al., 2009). The agenda of executive
government matters both because incumbents tend to be the focus of the media and public
agendas, and because the policy priorities of government are integral to political compe-
tition outside election campaigns. It also matters because the day-to-day business of
government necessitates rapid responses to problems and demands from the external world.
Climate change, the credit crunch and pension deficits are all examples of problems thrust
on to the agenda through no direct choice of governments or political parties. Elections and
parties matter, but events matter too.
With this multitude of pressures and problems, the executive needs to explain how it
intends to allocate its precious time and resources to respond to them – through either
executive or legislative action. Such an expression of the executive agenda can be aimed at
a number of different audiences – ranging from members of parliament to government
departments, the grass-roots membership of the governing party, the media and the public
in general. The annual executive speech is a measure of such attention, providing a window
into the nature of executive politics and policy making. This is a platform through which
government aims to set the national agenda, outlining general priorities and specifying
proposals for parliamentary debate and enactment. The speech is one of the many agenda-
setting institutions of British government, such as budgets or Acts of Parliament. This article
therefore seeks to improve understanding of the Speech from the Throne, a prominent
formal signal of the executive agenda and a long-standing means of setting the agenda. In
particular, what differences are there in the composition of the speech and its use by
different governments over time and what aspects of the speech have remained relatively
stable over the last hundred sessions of parliament?
Why does the study of the executive’s priorities matter? Over the past couple of decades,
much of modern British political analysis has become preoccupied with the claim that
power has become fragmented from the centre, with the hollowing out of the core
executive and the rise of networked governance (e.g. Bevir and Rhodes, 2003; Rhodes,
1997). However, such accounts remain silent on the influence that the executive retains
through its ability to set the national agenda and fix the terms of debate – through its
prioritisation of problems, the creation of institutional structures and definition of issues.
The presidentialisation of British politics (e.g. Foley, 1993) highlights the specific power of
the prime minister and the core executive to set the agenda despite this shift from
government to governance. E. E. Schattschneider (1960, p. 68) argues that ‘the definition of
alternatives is the supreme instrument of power’, meaning that the framing of an issue
determines its mobilisation of support. Theories of agenda setting and issue evolution are
essential to understanding processes of political change in the US (e.g. Baumgartner and
Jones, 1993; Carmines and Stimson, 1989; Kingdon, 1984). There is a lacuna, then, in the
British context regarding the agenda of executive government – expressed through
© 2010 The Authors. Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association
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W I L L J E N N I N G S, S H AU N B E VA N A N D P E T E R J O H N
institutions such as the Speech from the Throne – and the degree to which it has remained
stable despite erosion of the institutions of central government and abdication of its
powers. The analysis here presents empirical data from the UK Policy Agendas Project
(www.policyagendas.org.uk) on the agenda of British government, generated through
systematic coding of policy content in agendas such as the Speech from the Throne,Acts of
Parliament, budgets, media and public opinion. This coding system is adapted from
the original US Policy Agendas Project (see Baumgartner et al., 1998; www.policyagendas.
org), enabling analysis with other countries that have also implemented this approach
(www.comparativeagendas.org).
The Speech from the Throne
The Speech from the Throne – also known as the Gracious Speech and the King’s or the
Queen’s Speech – is an integral feature of the State Opening of Parliament when the
sovereign addresses the chamber of the House of Lords with members of the House of
Commons watching from the galleries. This institutionalised ritual is characteristic of what
Bagehot (1872) described as the dignified part of the British constitution, in which political
custom and tradition perform a stabilising function in contrast to its functional efficient
aspects. Such a convention in which the head of government or the head of state delivers
a formal annual statement, on behalf of the executive, setting out its priorities for the year
ahead is found across a range of political systems. In countries such as Canada, Denmark,
France, the Netherlands, Spain and the US this summarises issues or policies that are of
interest to government, including legislative proposals and executive priorities (e.g.
Breeman et al., 2009a; 2009b; Cohen, 1995; 1997; Hobolt and Klemmensen, 2005; 2008;
Jennings and John, 2009; Jennings et al., 2009).1 Since 1901, the Speech from the Throne has
been a permanent fixture of the political calendar in Westminster, occurring at the start of
the parliamentary session.2 The speech highlights matters of importance to the government
and details the legislative programme that government intends to enact in the forthcoming
year. By highlighting certain issues and ignoring others, this provides an annual platform for
government to shape the national agenda.
The unification of executive and legislative powers in the British political system, combined...
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