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The 1991 Child Support Act pp 93–131Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Policy Formation: The Imbalance of Power Within the Core Executive

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the role of power within of the core executive and its impact on the formation of the 1991 Child Support Act. It stresses that in the drafting of the 1991 Child Support Bill there were two strands of thought and that these conflicting perspectives reflected the objectives pursued by different Government Departments and Ministers. It assesses the imbalance of power, looking at how divergent agendas gained position within the single policy. It evaluates the power resources (that of direct, indirect, and misdirected power) that Thatcher and the Treasury utilised to successfully push through their Treasury-driven agenda. The chapter also discusses the power relations and ‘battles’ that occurred within the core executive, showing why Newton introduced a policy despite not entirely agreeing with the details. This chapter states that while the policy proposal of Newton and Lord Mackay was maintained, the detail inside the Bill was controversial, ill-judged, and contradictory to the original aims, due to the involvement of Thatcher and the Treasury. The chapter ends by advancing upon Kingdon’s idea of ‘policy windows’ (1984), demonstrating that Thatcher and the Treasury were aware that their approach would be unlikely to obtain support and lead to the desired policy change, and so they concealed their ‘problem stream’ and ‘policy stream’ within that of Newton and Mackays’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be acknowledged that many power resources are covert, indeed their success often depends on them being so. As Hill highlights, this can often raise issues for those studying the policy-making process. Due to much of the process being unobservable we are frequently required to engage in research that involves inferences from that data that is obtained. In connection with this, analysts of the policy-making process (or indeed social scientists more generally) frequently find themselves in situations that they are unable to validate their findings by revealing the source of their information. This leads them to be particularly vulnerable to accusations that their work is predisposed to a particular interpretation of the data and the event (2013, 10). However, this empiricist critique as to the invalidity of unobservable data is itself invalid. As suggested above (and previously in Chapter 1) by adopting an interpretivist epistemological approach it is possible to utilise the unobservable, in fact it is necessary to analyse the nature of policy-making. We just need to iterate that this is one frame, or many, which we can use to view the world.

  2. 2.

    Institutional power resources are those that are attached to the role of the Prime Minister and their central role within the core executive . Personal Power resources are those that are based on the characteristics of the individual in question.

  3. 3.

    This will be referred to in more depth later in the chapter.

  4. 4.

    See also Hugo Young in The Guardian, 26 March (2012).

  5. 5.

    This can be largely seen in the degree, nature, and tone of news pieces which debated the retrospective element.

  6. 6.

    It can be argued that the ‘downfall of Thatcher’ came as a result of her changing which power resources she used, and the strategy in which she deployed those resources. She moved from misdirected power to direct power (direct power was actually less powerful and easier for ministers to resist and denounce).

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  1. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Leanne McCarthy-Cotter

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McCarthy-Cotter, L. (2019). Policy Formation: The Imbalance of Power Within the Core Executive. In: The 1991 Child Support Act. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98761-3_5

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