Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Marija Taflaga
Key terms/names
accountability, bureaucracy, centralisation, chain of delegation, crown authority,
executive, governor-general, ministerial responsibility, ministerial selection,
parliamentary system, partisan, politically appointed staff, presidential system, prime
minister, Prime Minister and Cabinet, principal–agent problem, responsible
government, responsible party government, semi-parliamentarism, semipresidentialism
The executive is one of the three branches of government, alongside the legislature
and the judiciary. As the name suggests, its function is to execute laws and
regulations. In Australia, the executive is the part of government containing the
prime minister, Cabinet, ministerial offices and the head of state, the governorgeneral.
Thus, while our first thought might be that the executive is ‘the prime
minister’, it is in fact a collection of institutions that are bundled together, with
complementary, and sometimes competing, responsibilities.
Inamodernstate,the‘executive’cannotgovernalone–itisboundtoother
institutions. Depending on the exact nature of the regime (democratic/authoritarian
or presidential/parliamentarian), the executive may be constrained by some institutions
(e.g. the judiciary), dominant over others (e.g. the bureaucracy) and possibly
even co-equal with some (e.g. the legislature in a presidential system). However,
the principal relationship that defines how political scientists classify regimes is
Taflaga, Marija (2019). Executive government. In Peter J. Chen, Nicholas Barry, John R. Butcher,
David Clune, Ian Cook, Adele Garnier, Yvonne Haigh, Sara C. Motta and Marija Taflaga, eds.
Australian politics and policy: senior edition. Sydney: Sydney University Press. DOI: 10.30722/
sup.9781743326671
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