The term ‘Westminster model’, widely used in both the academic and practitioner literatures, is a familiar one. But detailed examination finds significant confusion about its meaning. This article follows Giovanni Sartori's advice for ‘reconstructing’ a social science term whose meaning may be unclear through review of its use in the recent literature. It finds that many authors in comparative politics use the term ‘Westminster model’ without definition, while those providing definitions associate it with a large (and sometimes conflicting) set of attributes, and a set of countries often not demonstrating those attributes. Some have sought to respect this diversity by proposing variants like ‘Washminster’ or ‘Eastminster’, while others suggest that the term should be seen as a loose ‘family resemblance’ concept. But on examination it no longer meets even the – relatively weak – requirements for family resemblance. To end the muddle, and the risk of flawed inferences and false generalization, comparative scholars should drop this term, and select cases based on more precise attributes instead.

This chapter examines how accountability is carried out in the UK Parliament through various questioning procedures which enable ministers and the government to explain and defend their decisions. Questioning the government provides an important means for Members of Parliament (MPs) and peers to hold the government, the prime minister, ministers, and departments to account. There are two main types of parliamentary questions: oral questions and written questions. Oral questions are both asked and answered on the Floor of the House of Commons or the House of Lords, whereas written questions are ‘often used to obtain detailed information about policies and statistics on the activities of government departments’. The chapter first explains these two types of parliamentary questions before discussing their purposes. It also considers debates over the issue of reforming parliamentary questions, and more specifcally Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs).

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This paper compares the practice of holding prime ministers to account in four case studies: Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Using text analysis, as well as research on prime ministerial responsibilities, it investigates oral questions asked in parliamentary procedures where prime ministers are questioned together with ministers (Question Period in Canada and Question Time in Australia) versus procedures where they are questioned individually (PMQs in the United Kingdom and Oral Questions to the Taoiseach in Ireland), and explores the degree to which they are questioned for matters that are within their remit. It argues that the practice of prime ministerial accountability is decisively shaped by procedural features such as whether written notice is required for questions, as well as by the broader role of the questioning mechanism in the political system, and less by the collective or individualised nature of questioning.

The term ‘Westminster model’ is frequently used by political scientists and practitioners. But our recent examination (Russell and Serban 2021), published in this journal, uncovered wide variation in how it is defined – demonstrating that it is more ‘muddle’ than ‘model’. This sparked a response article from Flinders et al. (2021), which we in turn respond to in this piece. We briefly revisit our initial research questions, methodology and findings, before reflecting on their analysis. We emphasize that, notwithstanding the critics’ negative tone, we and they agree on certain fundamentals. In particular on our original central point, that the ‘Westminster model’ is an ill-defined term with a long history, which mostly makes it unsuited to positivist comparative political science research. While the ‘Westminster model’ may have some valid vestigial uses, within the UK political system, or as an object of study for interpretivist political science, it does not provide a rigorous basis for case selection and comparative political science analysis.