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The Westminster parliament is a highly visible political institution, and one of its core functions is approving new laws. Yet Britain's legislative process is often seen as executive-dominated, and parliament as relatively weak. As this book shows, such impressions can be misleading. Drawing on the largest study of its kind for more than forty years, Meg Russell and Daniel Gover cast new light on the political dynamics that shape the legislative process. They provide a fascinating account of the passage of twelve government bills - collectively attracting more than 4000 proposed amendments - through both the House of Commons and House of Lords. These include highly contested changes such as...
While strong Armed Forces remain the bedrock in safeguarding national interests new kinds of power projection are now required, both to make the use of force ('hard power') more effective and in some instances to replace it with the deployment of what has been labelled 'soft power'. Soft power involves getting what a country wants by influencing other countries to want the same thing, through attraction, persuasion and co-option. The information and digital revolution has transformed international relations and foreign policy, meaning that the UK must win over new and wider audiences to its point of view. The UK must change the way it interacts with other nations and communities, and is well...
In this report the Liaison Committee conducts a brief review of House of Lords policy committees, in advance of the appointment of those committees in the new Parliament
In the event of a 'yes' vote in the Scottish independence referendum, MPs for Scottish constituencies, including ministers, should retain their seats in the House of Commons until the day of independence itself. However, they should not negotiate for the rest of the UK on the terms of independence, scrutinise the UK's negotiating team nor ratify a resulting agreement, as their first duty would be to their Scottish constituents rather than the interests of the rest of the UK. The Constitution Committee also says that the wider status of MPs for Scottish constituencies, in terms of their ability to take part in other Commons proceedings not relevant to Scotland, would have to be decided before...
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The Anthropology of Parliaments offers a fresh, comparative approach to analysing parliaments and democratic politics, drawing together rare ethnographic work by anthropologists and politics scholars from around the world. Crewe’s insights deepen our understanding of the complexity of political institutions. She reveals how elected politicians navigate relationships by forging alliances and thwarting opponents; how parliamentary buildings are constructed as sites of work, debate and the nation in miniature; and how politicians and officials engage with hierarchies, continuity and change. This book also proposes how to study parliaments through an anthropological lens while in conversation with other disciplines. The dive into ethnographies from across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific Region demolishes hackneyed geo-political categories and culminates in a new comparative theory about the contradictions in everyday political work. This important book will be of interest to anyone studying parliaments but especially those in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology; politics, legal and development studies; and international relations.
This unique textbook addresses the `big questions' of political science: how the state operates and how it has been conceptualised in the United Kingdom. By focusing on parliamentarism and the key institution of parliament, it analyzes and illuminates both the theory and practice of the state. The result is a refreshingly lucid antidote to drier studies of the British constitution. The book deals with the fundamental issues of modern British politics: the party system; the challenge of corporatism and interest groups; the organization and structure of the central state; the territorial debates around devolution and relations with the European Community; and constitutional reform
Modern slavery encompasses human trafficking, slavery, forced labour and domestic servitude. In 2012, the International Labour Organization estimated that there were 21 million victims of forced labour across the world. Our current understanding of the exact scale of the problem is limited. The only systematic means we have for collecting data is the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) to which potential victims of modern slavery are referred. 1,186 potential victims of modern slavery were referred in 2012 - a 25 per cent increase on the previous year. The Government will go forward in three ways: through legislation in this Parliament; through non-legislative action across the country; and th...
Enthusiasts look forward to a time when tiny machines reassemble matter and process information but is their vision realistic? 'Soft Machines' explains why the nanoworld is so different to the macro-world that we are all familar with and shows how it has more in common with biology than conventional engineering.