The Power of Prime Ministers: Results of an Expert Survey

Abstract

Prime ministers are self-evidently important actors in the politics of parliamentary democracies. While there has been an ongoing debate about prime ministerial power in the political science literature, progress has been slow in a debate dating from the 1960s. This lack of progress is because of two connected factors. One is the lack of a theoretical framework to study prime ministerial power. A framework is less likely to be developed because of the lack of data on which hypotheses could be tested. This article reports in detail the methodology and results of an expert survey that was conducted to measure prime ministerial power. These data will provide a significant resource for the future study of prime ministers, cabinets, and the core executive.