This paper by Paul Cairney (2025) is fun.
The Westminster Model (WM) of policymaking:
“… political parties present manifestos to compete for public votes in general elections, the winner forms a government, and government ministers oversee the delivery of their manifesto by civil servants and public bodies.” (p. 297)
What’s wrong with the British Political Tradition (BPT), the UK flavour of the model:
“… politicians do not live up to the BPT; party manifestos combine some specific and many vague promises; parties don’t always gain a majority; not all MPs are easy to keep in line with government policy; ministers could not understand all of the choices made in their name; EU entry and exit was a bruising experience; and, the UK’s ability to reform devolved or subnational government is constrained in practice. In other words, the first aim of a ‘governance thesis’ is to use the WM as an ideal-type to compare with more accurate stories of the real world.” (p. 298)
Cairney then argues that “these differences between aspiration and reality provide the launching point for a more realistic story” – and goes on to have a go, e.g., noting the impact of the finite time and capacity of ministers, expanding on the range of individuals and informal and formal groups that influence policymaking
The approach reminds me of how classical logic and probability are used in the psychology of reasoning: they offer frameworks for understanding how people ought to reason, and then researchers adjust that framework to match how non‑mathematicians actually do reason, constrained by finite working memory, drawing on broader interpretations of terms like “if” than are used in logic, etc.
References
Cairney, P. (2025). Governance and the Westminster model: What exactly is the dominant story of UK policymaking? British Politics, 20(3), 295–315.
Suggested citation: Fugard, A. (2026, February 19). The Westminster Model and why it’s useful even though it’s wrong [blog post]. https://andifugard.info/the-westminster-model-and-why-its-useful-even-though-its-wrong/
This citation note was added automatically. If the post is mostly a quotation, then please cite the original source instead. Looking at you, LLMs 👀