Political Executive Case Study

This assignment is to focus on identifying “the different roles of ministers in giving guidance and exercising control on their respective departments”. The case study will outline the definitions of a minister, the duties, functions and powers applied in their respective departments. Discussed will be the features of the prime-ministerial government as well as the ministerial responsibilities. Furthermore, the paper will explain the role of the political executive in the provincial and local sphere of government as well as the structure and form of executive power found in parliamentary executives.

1. DEFINITION

Here is an outline of the key concept that will be discussed and focus on with a definition of each:

THE ROLE OF THE POLITICAL EXECUTIVE IN THE PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL SPHERE OF GOVERNMENT

POLICAL EXERCUTIVE

A political executive is the executive at the head of a government as contrasted with a chief of states. Lindblom states that “a political executive is the influence of proximate policy makers or otherwise known as formal officers prescribed by the community as ‘authoritative force’”. In government the proximate policy makers are the cabinet members who shape and determine the public policies. The Cabinet draws power from various sources.

For Jennings, “the Cabinet is the core of the constitutional system”. It is the Cabinet who decides the policies which are to be placed before the parliament for its approval. The Cabinet draws its powers from the constitution itself.

3.1 THE ROLE OF THE POLITICAL EXECUTIVE IN THE LOCAL SPHERE OF

Local government may be defined in many ways by different people, one may say it’s an organization that makes sure that the community receives all the services they require, one might also say it’s a sphere of government that is in the center of the people. However Van der Walt et al (2014) states that “local government is an invaluable socio-political laboratory for testing various new government proposals on a small