2. Leadership from the Top

This chapter examines the general issue of leadership in the British political system and the stresses and strains of this task, examining the role of the prime minister. As well as being leader of the largest party in the House of Commons, able to command a majority, and potentially able to get government business through Parliament and into law, the prime minister has executive powers, which helps keep this focus. Despite the power of the position and its importance in the British system of government, there are fundamental weaknesses in the role that come from the instabilities of party politics. Overall, the picture of prime ministerial and core executive power and capacity is a mixed one that is changeable over time. In recent years, over Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, the prime minister's fate can change dramatically, even week-by-week.

Core Executive Politics in the Cameron Era, 2010–16: The Dynamics of Whitehall Reform

By the early 1990s, the core executive was established as the ‘new orthodoxy’ in the study of British government at the centre. Thirty years on, this article avers that its main assumptions are increasingly questionable in the light of more recent empirical evidence. The core executive approach may well have outlived its usefulness. This claim is derived from analysis of the Cameron premiership from 2010 to 2016. The focus is on how Whitehall reform radically altered the relationship between politicians and civil servants, reshaping prevailing public service bargains and rules of the game. Ministers identified mechanisms to rebuild political capacity, augmenting partisan control of the bureaucracy. They drew on resources from outside the core executive while politicians increased their sway over civil service appointments. As a result, officials felt they should be ‘responsive’ to ministers. The cumulative effect was to replace interpersonal and institutional resource dependency with a ‘them and us’ model. Consequently, the risk of policy disasters and fiascos grew.

Concurrent Performance of Executive Function during Acute Bouts of Exercise in Adults: A Systematic Review

The purpose of the study was to systematically review the evidence on the effects of an acute bout of exercise on concurrent performance of core executive function (EF) during exercise in adults. Four electronic databases (i.e., PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and SportDiscus) were searched from inception dates to 30 December 2020. The literature searches were conducted using the combinations of two groups of relevant items related to exercise and executive function. Articles were limited to human studies in adults. The search process, study selection, data extraction, and study quality assessments were carried out independently by two researchers. A total of 4899 studies were identified. Twenty-two studies met our inclusion criteria. Of the 42 reported outcomes in the 22 studies, 13 (31%) of the 42 outcomes showed that core EF performance was enhanced during exercise and 14 (33%) found that core EF performance did not differ from control conditions. Fifteen (36%) found that core EF performance was impaired. Notably, improved EF performances tend to be observed during moderate-intensity exercise, whereas impaired EF performances were more likely to be observed at vigorous-high intensity. The review suggests mixed findings regarding the effects of an acute bout of exercise on concurrent performance of core EF. Exercise intensity seems to influence the effects. The underlying neural mechanisms remain to be elucidated.

Non-Partisan Advisors in the Minister’s Office—Ghosts in the Core Executive Machine?

The ‘core executive’ is conceived of as the collection of organisations and procedures that coordinate executive government. Two approaches to core executive studies are: the resource dependency approach, which focusses on how roles interact and resources are utilised; and the functional approach, which focusses on how roles change over time. Both approaches are applied to non-partisan advisors (private secretaries) in ministerial office settings, actors which to date core executive studies have ignored. It reveals the resources that non-partisan advisors apply to contribute to policy coordination and maintain political neutrality; and that their role has changed since the increased presence of partisan advisors in ministers’ offices in the past 20 years. Six distinct roles describe how non-partisan advisors respond to and meet the needs of both minister and public service in the core executive. When compared with political advisory roles, five of the roles appear strongly aligned in function.

A Novel Tool to Assess Basic Activities of Daily Living in Spanish Preschoolers

Background: Basic activities of daily living (BADLs) are those related to self-care. Their performance depends on the development of sensorimotor and cognitive skills, as well as social and environmental aspects. A good performance in BADLs is required for independence and social participation, so they play an important role in early education and early care. We aim to create a tool for BADLs assessment for Spanish preschoolers. Methods: The tool was administered to 303 participants (48.5% boys and 51.5% girls) between three and six years of age. Analyses to find out the factorial structure and internal consistency was carried out. Results: The instrument was composed of 84 items in four scales (eating, personal hygiene, dressing, and daily functioning) with nine factors (oral sensitivity, good manners, manual dexterity, brushing teeth, toilet management, hygiene and grooming, dressing, higher-order and core executive function). Reliability values were from acceptable to preferred (0.74–0.94). Conclusions: The instrument could be useful and shows preliminary good indicators in construct validity and reliability.

Response inhibition deficits are positively associated with trait rumination, but attentional inhibition deficits are not: aggressive behaviors and interpersonal stressors as mediators

Previous findings on relationships between inhibition that is a core executive function, and trait rumination have been inconsistent. This inconsistency could be overcome by investigating the association between rumination and the two subcomponents of inhibition: response inhibition and attentional inhibition. This study examined whether and how response inhibition and attentional inhibition were related to rumination as well as worry. University students in Japan (N = 213) conducted the Go/No-Go Task and the Modified Stroop Task. They also completed self-report measures of depression, trait rumination, trait worry, stressors, and aggressive behaviors. Results indicated that response inhibition deficits were positively associated with trait rumination, and this association was mediated by increases in aggressive behaviors and interpersonal stressors. The associations between these variables remained significant even after controlling for depression level. There were no significant direct or indirect associations between attentional inhibition deficits and rumination. These results suggest that response inhibition deficits, among the subcomponents of inhibition, have an indirect positive association with rumination through interpersonal processes. Results also showed nonsignificant differences between rumination and worry in the magnitude of correlation coefficients with the two subcomponents of inhibition. Therefore, it remains unclear whether the positive association with response inhibition is unique to rumination.

Can inhibition or shifting training enhance cognitive abilities in emerging adults?

Executive functions enable and support most of our daily cognitive functioning. Within the number of executive functions proposed, updating, inhibition and shifting are most often considered as the three core executive functions. Cognitive training paradigms provide a platform for a possible enhancement of these functions. Since updating training has been studied to a greater extent, we wanted to investigate the effectiveness of inhibition and shifting training in this study. Emerging adults (psychology students) were randomly assigned either to the inhibition training (based on the Simon task; n = 36) or to the shifting training (based on the task switching paradigm; n = 35). Both groups underwent twelve 20-minute sessions distributed over four weeks. Measurements before and after the training included criterion tasks (i.e. the training tasks), near-transfer tasks (i.e. tasks that address the trained functions but use different types of stimuli or rules to respond), and far-transfer tasks (i.e., tasks that address untrained cognitive functions). The control participants (n = 36) were tested with a combination of these tasks. Both training groups improved their criteria task performance over time, while convincing training-related gains were not found in either near- or far-transfer tasks. This study raises some conceptual questions for the training of executive functions with respect to a sample of emerging adults with above-average cognitive abilities, motivational elements of training, and the role of executive functions in more complex everyday cognitive activities.

Development of directed global inhibition, competitive inhibition and behavioural inhibition during the transition between infancy and toddlerhood

Inhibitory control (IC) is a core executive function integral to self-regulation and cognitive control, yet is itself multi-componential. Directed global inhibition entails stopping an action on demand. Competitive inhibition is engaged when an alternative response must also be produced. Related, but not an executive function, is temperamentally-driven wariness of novelty, known as behavioural inhibition. Understanding early development of these components has been hampered by a shortage of suitable measures. We combine established and novel measures to capture directed global inhibition (Toy Prohibition, Touchscreen Prohibition), competitive inhibition (A-not-B, Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task; ECITT) and behavioural inhibition (Touchscreen Approach) in 113 10- and 16-month-olds (73 seen longitudinally). Pre-registered analysis of ECITT switching performance shows good 1-week test-retest reliability at 10 months (r=.60). Ten-month performance on directed global inhibition measures shows little stability to 16-months, and may be primarily influenced by behavioural inhibition. Performance on measures targeting similar IC components shows greater coherence at 16 months (r=.23-.59) compared with 10 months (r=.09-.35), and developmental progression across this period. Exploratory analyses (requiring replication) indicate possible reciprocal associations between behavioural and competitive inhibition across infancy into toddlerhood, yet limited cross-sectional associations. Probing of ECITT condition effects indicates that for 16-month-olds prepotencies may be more influenced by recency than repetition, whilst also interacting with side biases; important considerations when assessing early IC with tasks with a spatial component, as is common at this age. The study findings are informative for theoretical models and measurement of IC development across the transition between infancy and toddlerhood.