ABSTRACT
In examining the respective roles of the Prime Minister, departmental ministers, the Cabinet and its committees in making policy, it is important to re-emphasise the great flexibility within the system. A single pattern of relations will not suit all circumstances or all personalities: there are too many variables, human and political, to permit that. Consequently it is possible only to describe the bounds within which the various actors usually operate and identify working rules which hold true in most cases. Given these limitations, six principles seem generally to hold true: 1 The decision-making process is segmented: that is, different patterns of
policy-making operate in different policy areas. The Prime Minister is deeply and continuously involved in foreign and economic policy, less deeply and more sporadically in other areas.1
