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Won the 2011 Prize for best publication on Conservatives and Conservatism awarded by the specialist group 'Conservatives and Conservatism' of the UK Political Studies Association.
The Conservatives are back - but what took them so long? Why did the world's oldest and most successful political party dump Margaret Thatcher only to commit electoral suicide under John Major? Just as importantly, what stopped the Tories getting their act together until David Cameron came along? And what did Cameron do that William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard couldn't or wouldn't? Has the Tory leader changed his party as much as he claims? Or has his leadership involved more compromise - and more Conservatism - than we realise? The answers, as this accessible and gripping book shows, are as intriguing and provocative as the questions. Based on in-depth research and interviews with the key players, Tim Bale explains how and why the Tories got themselves into so much trouble - and how and why they were eventually able to rediscover their winning ways. The answer, he suggests, lies in the people, the power structures, the ideas, and the very different interests of those involved. The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand what makes the Tories tick.
Using data collected from one of the most comprehensive quantitative surveys of its type, "Conservative party politicians at the turn of the 20th/21st centuries" offers an authoritative insight into the behaviour, background and attitudes of Conservative politicians in England, Scotland and Wales at all levels from local councillors to MPs, Peers and MEPs.
After two decades of disappointment with the neo-liberal experiment, Europeans have been turning back to social democrats since the middle 1990s, but within the European Monetary Union regime that the money interests constructed during the interval. Political scientists from across Europe, and some
Christianity and Party Politics aims to discuss and evaluate the contemporary relationship between party politics and religion. The book focuses on the important role of the Church in both electoral politics and public policy formulation in the twenty first century, and argues that contrary to the established secularisation argument generally applied in Europe, religion continues to be a powerful influence, particularly within British politics. Providing a valuable and long overdue contribution to the field, this work will provide readers with a detailed knowledge of how the worlds of politics and religion interact.
What kind of Europe do social democratic parties prefer? What is the origin of their preferences? Are they shaped by interests, institutions or ideas? If so, how? Why do social democratic political parties respond differently to the crucial question of the future of the European Union? While many social democratic parties initially opposed European integration either in principle or because of the form it took, gradually they came to lend their full, though often critical, support to it. Despite this evolution, important differences between them have remained. This book examines the preferences of social democratic parties in Germany, France, the UK, Sweden and Greece towards European integr...
NATO has been a successful forum for managing European security policy. Yet European governments have repeatedly tried to build a new security institution in NATO's shadow. In this innovative book, Stephanie C. Hofmann asks why governments attempted to create an additional institution despite no obvious functional necessity and why some attempts failed while others succeeded. European Security in NATO's Shadow considers security cooperation through the lens of party ideologies to shed new light on these questions. She observes that political parties are motivated to propose new institutions by their multidimensional ideologies. Moreover, the success of efforts to create such institutions depends on the degree of ideological congruence among parties in power. In particular, the relationship between the values of multilateralism, sovereignty and Europe informed the impetus and success rate of the attempts made during negotiations for the Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice treaties to create a European security institution.
This book analyses the changing role of the British Foreign Secretary and presents biographical case studies of all the individual holders of that post, the policies they persued and the issues they faced, since 1974. The work of the British Foreign Secretaries from James Callaghan to Robin Cook is examined in the context of the foreign policy-making machinery, the changing environment of British foreign policy, and the internal and external political forces with which they had to contend. Using a biographical case study approach, the chapters examine the careers, personalities, policies and influence of successive Foreign Secretaries to increase our knowledge and understanding of the work of the government, and the development of British foreign policy over the last thirty years. British Foreign Secretaries Since 1974 casts light on the hitherto shadowy and understudied role of personality in international relations and on how ten very different personalities helped to shape the detail and the articulation of British foreign policy.
In this book, an international team of specialists reflects, more than a dozen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on the implications of that momentous conjuncture for the study of party politics in Europe. In particular, the authors and editors seek to address two inter-connected questions: To what extent is there evidence of convergence in patterns of party politics across Eastern and Western Europe? And how far has the theory of parties and party systems coped with the emergence of democratic politics in Eastern Europe? In a wideranging and stimulating set of essays, these issues are confronted in respect of themes such as the impact of institutional contexts like electoral systems and presidentialism, the evolving nature of cleavage structures, party organizational developments, and intra-party factionalism. This book will make a significant addition to any course reading list on comparative and party politics.
This book sets out to give a straightforward insider''s account of the current realities of European integration. It succinctly reviews the reasons and methods of European integration, analyses what the European Union (EU) really does, and examines how funds are spent. The whole range of current EU policies is critically reviewed: the Single market; the Euro; and the common policies on agriculture, fisheries, the regions, industry, competition, transport, the environment, social affairs, consumer protection, research, taxation, justice, trade, development, foreign affairs and defence.This book argues for a much slimmed-down European executive. It needs to become fully accountable in a democr...