Understanding the role of the prime minister and the functioning of cabinet has been a challenge for those looking to apply rigorous empirical research methods. The foundations of our modern understanding of cabinet are built on decades of descriptive, normative and theoretical fine-tuning to the original concession that it is a mysterious and dynamic institution. Major developments in the field are few and far between. Nineteen years ago, Donald Savoie delivered his Canadian Political Science Association presidential address on the dramatic centralization of power in the Prime Minister's office. In his remarks, which coincided with his popular and precedential book, Governing from the Centre, Savoie argued that “Cabinet has joined Parliament as an institution being bypassed, [so] that it is clear that effective power no longer resides with the prime minister acting in concert with his ‘elected Cabinet colleagues’” (Reference Savoie1999: 635). Savoie's use of “has” in his widely read and cited work has become the sticking point for his critics. He posits, based on his dozens of interviews with former government ministers and insiders that this period of accelerated centralization occurred in the 1990s and was led by Jean Chretien's federal Liberal government. Notable Canadian political institutionalists have criticized both Savoie's case selection and the construction of his argument. For example, Graham White questions the evidence that supports centralization claims: “just how is it that we ‘know’ this [that the centre has eclipsed parliament and cabinet]?” (Reference White, Lenard and Simeon2012: 226). While Savoie has his fair share of critics, his work has not been met with an empirically based book length attempt at answering the research question: if cabinet has been bypassed, when and how did this happen? As part of the C.D. Howe Series on Canadian Political History, Patrice Dutil's new book on the role of the prime minister provides an alternate answer.
Dutil's research and publication record on Canadian political history and political executives makes him especially well-suited to tackle the question of early prime ministerial power in Canada and the contextualization of the current centralization of power debate. Dutil's mastery of the history and historiography of Canadian prime ministers, cabinets and the public administration literature allows him to be hyper-aware of where his research question and thesis fit. Notably, for graduate students or scholars just starting research on Canadian prime ministers and cabinets, Dutil has written one of the best literature reviews I've read on the topic. He should be commended for producing this invaluable teaching resource.
This said, the major contribution of Dutil's book is his convincing argument for situating the origin of centralization well before Stephen Harper, Jean Chrétien or even Pierre Trudeau but back to Canada's first three long-serving prime ministers: John A. Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier and Robert Borden. In the opening pages of the book, Dutil argues, “Today, scholars point to ‘prime ministerialization’ of government as a new phenomenon and see as key indicators the rise of the prime minister's personal staff, an obsession with personalized communication and dominance in cabinet. These habits were very much a part of the prime ministership between 1867 and 1920” (6). Using archival research, government data, memoirs and biographical accounts, Dutil supports his argument with painstaking attention to overlooked details such as cabinet decrees or the staffing of upper management in government and prime ministerial decision making on major policy files.
Dutil makes his case by focusing on three variables of prime ministerial power: structure, substance and style. For each variable, Dutil takes a novel methodological approach. Analyzing “structure,” Dutil's focus is on the prime minister's approach to staffing the position of deputy ministers and cabinet composition, including the oft-forgotten practice of prime ministers taking on specific ministerial portfolios themselves. Examining “substance,” Dutil uses archival public accounts to support the overwhelming influence of the prime minister on government policy. In this section Dutil also considers how prime ministers approached the dismissal of ministers and the question of sending the country to war. For the “style” section Dutil uses orders-in-council to demonstrate how prime ministers injected themselves into a wide range of policy decisions.
Before getting into his more empirically based research, Dutil begins with profiles on the three prime ministers under examination. For example, in his chapter on Macdonald, Dutil presents the case that Canada's first prime minister shaped the institution by using his position to exert himself into administrative issues including appointing deputy ministers to head government departments and assuming leadership himself over certain important cabinet portfolios such as justice.
There are moments when Dutil's innovative methods get the best of him. His deep dive into the biographical backgrounds of deputy ministers is notable for curious details but at times distracts from the reason for the deputy minister section: to demonstrate how these appointments solidified a strong prime ministerial position. Still, on topics such as these, or when examining a prime ministers’ actions within a portfolio, Dutil clearly demonstrates the powerful hand that early prime ministers were giving themselves in direct policy and bureaucratic decisions at the departmental levels. Other presentations of empirical evidence such as the chapter on spending priorities provide less compelling evidence of increasing prime ministerial power, as Dutil plainly admits in the conclusion, but do provide notable examples of the growth of government and the increasing prominence of cabinet in the parliamentary setting as spending decisions were made. Dutil's case is more convincing when he explores early prime ministers’ decision making on foreign affairs and sending the country to war. His most effective empirically based analysis of the growth of centralization is found in his tracking of orders-in-council and how the instrument can be used by the prime minister to dominate the centre.
Prime Ministerial Power in Canada is an incredibly welcome addition to the understanding of the Canadian political executive. While I would argue that Savoie's work has aged well and has suffered from a gradual simplification of the original argument that leaves out the ambiguity of his case (you need to read the entire book!), there has been a recent wealth of research chipping at the edges of the Savoie dogma (Craft, Reference Craft2016; Marland, Reference Marland2016; Brodie, Reference Brodie2018). Dutil's contribution is the most jarring challenge to Savoie because of its solid empirical case against the contemporary nature of centralization. It is not easy to locate the time and place of the origins of centralization; there are also real methodological challenges (access to political actors, secrecy of the institution). Admirably, these problems are all directly targeted by Dutil, who does a tremendous job as a historian and political scientist. Any serious scholar of the Canadian political executive must read (and re-read) this book.
