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⁴ These countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and West Germany. Our original intention was simply to explore the extent to which these countries made information about cabinet committees easily available, and in particular whether Britain was unusually secretive. Our finding was that Britain is much more secretive than other countries, though the announcement of the names and chairmanship of four standing committees in 1979 marked a greater though still limited degree of openness; see House of Commons Debates, 24 05 1979Google Scholar. We asked the embassies or high commissions of the countries concerned whether they had cabinet committees and, if so, to provide us with a list of them. Almost all of them provided this information willingly, and in a number of cases provided us with considerable additional information. It was this which led us to tackle the more ambitious project of comparison of the composition and operation of cabinet committees. For fuller information on the composition of cabinet committees see the tables in Mackie, Thomas T. and Hogwood, Brian, ‘Cabinet Committees in Executive Decision-Making: a Comparative Perspective’ (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, Centre for the Study of Public Policy, Studies in Public Policy, No. 111, 1983)Google Scholar. The data on which this article is based are patchy, with full information available on some aspects for one set of countries and information on other aspects for a different set of countries. In particular lack of information means that we do not attempt to cover the roles of cabinet committees consisting only of officiais or of a mixture of ministers and officials such as exist in the United Kingdom and Canada. Similarly the important roles of cabinet secretaries are not covered in this paper.

⁵ A table setting out cabinet committee structure in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, West Germany, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom is available from the authors.

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⁴⁰ New Zealand Cabinet Office Manual, Chapter D, para. 4.1.

⁴¹ New Zealand Cabinet Office Manual, Chapter D, para 3·3; emphasis added.

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