The Gordon Brown Problem: New Labour and the Two ‘Adam Smiths’

As is well known, New Labour is often presented as an alternative to the conventional preferences of the left and right in British politics. Less commented upon is Gordon Brown's self‐conscious appeal to the thought of Adam Smith in doing so. Brown claims to have rescued Smith from those on the right that interpret his ‘invisible hand’ metaphor from The Wealth of Nations to represent dogmatic advocacy of free markets. Rather than interrogate this view, Brown attempts to complement it with the ‘helping hand’ that Smith supposedly proffers in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in order to stress New Labour's resolution of ‘enterprise and fairness.’ I argue that Brown instead reiterates the academically discredited Adam Smith Problem, in which the moral ‘Smith’ is deemed subordinate to the economic ‘Smith,’ and that his use of these erroneous characterisations highlights his commitment to a set of preferences usually associated with the right.     

Profoundly Un‐Conservative? David Cameron and the UK Bill of Rights Debate

This article considers David Cameron's proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. Cameron's proposal has been heavily criticised by a range of political, academic and non‐state actors and was described by a current senior Coalition Cabinet member as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘legal nonsense’. This article takes a slightly different direction to those lines of attack and critique that have been developed of the Conservative's proposals. The central proposition of the article is that Cameron's proposal is profoundly un‐Conservative at two levels. Firstly, at the level of Conservative approaches to constitutional reform and secondly, at the level of Conservative political philosophy.     

Scotland's Future Political System

Debates on Scottish constitutional reform go hand in hand with discussions of political reform. Its reformers use the image of ‘old Westminster’ to describe ‘control freakery’ within government and an adversarial political system. Many thought that the Scottish political system could diverge from the UK, to strengthen the parliamentary system, introduce consensus politics and further Scotland's alleged social and democratic tradition. Yet the experience of devolution suggests that Holyrood and Westminster politics share key features. Both systems are driven by government, making policy in ‘communities’ involving interest groups and governing bodies, with parliaments performing a limited role and public participation limited largely to elections. The Scottish government's style of policy‐making is distinctive, but new reforms are in their infancy and their effects have not been examined in depth. In this context, the article identifies Scotland's ability to make and implement policy in a new way, based on its current trajectory rather than the hopes of reformers.     

Citizenship and the Constitution

The status of “British subjects”, the relationship between the individual and the State, and the concept of “rights” and “liberties” are relevant to the current political debate about “British identity”, citizenship, “multiculturalism”, a “British Bill of Rights”, and whether there is now a need for a written constitution. This article describes the confused contemporary understanding of what is meant by “British” citizenship and analyses the parallel developments of citizenship and our constitutional arrangements. The Human Rights Act, devolution and Gordon Brown's proposed constitutional renewal are important steps in setting out the ideas and principles that bind us together as a nation. Together with a coherent definition of the rights and obligations of British citizenship, constitutional reform would achieve a stronger sense of what it means to be British today.     

Ideas,spaces and ‘sovereigntyscapes’: Dramatising Scotland's production of a new institutional fix

Abstract

As part of a general endeavour to ‘modernise’ Britain for the epoch of globalisation, Britain's New Labour government has sought to integrate wide‐ranging constitutional reform with new structures for regional governance. Perhaps the most radical proposal concerns the attempt to align continued UK sovereignty with an elected parliament for Scotland in what has been called a ‘new covenant with the people’. This paper draws on Jane Jenson's neo‐Gramscian discourse‐regulation theory and its stress on social agency and the politics of representation, to explore the political, economic and socio‐spatial tensions and the related ideas, discursive forms and political processes that have given rise to this emergent institutional and representational ‘fix’. The author argues that rather than being perceived of solely as some ‘modernisation move’ on the part of a New Labour project, this reconfiguration of power and representation also needs to be traced to the political and representational style of Thatcherism, in particular, the latter's continuous ‘testing’ of the 1707 Treaty between Scotland and England as a negotiated settlement of economic and political union. The paper concludes with some reflections on the future prospects facing any future Scotland‐UK institutional settlement, including the question of sovereignty.     

The paths to citizenship: a critical examination of immigration policy in Britain since 2001

ABSTRACT

McGhee explores the Labour government's attempts to manage the challenges and protect against the ‘risks’ associated with a particular group of migrants to Britain: permanent immigrants. He examines how Gordon Brown conceives of his three-stage proposals for ‘earned’ British citizenship working with the wider managed migration strategy introduced by Tony Blair and Charles Clarke. At the same time, McGhee contextualizes the earned British citizenship proposals within the recent immigration policies and citizenship/integration strategies introduced by David Blunkett when Home Secretary. If the episodes of social disorder involving the second generation of settled immigrant communities in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the summer of 2001 were the events that triggered Blunkett's new integration/citizenship strategies, including the introduction of English classes and citizenship lessons for would-be citizens, then the 7/7 attacks by so-called ‘home-grown’ extremists were the events that influenced the emergence of what will be described here as the institutional racialization associated with Brown's recommendations. McGhee also explores the shift from Blunkett's model of civic assimilation, with its Cantle-esque emphasis on participation, to the Brown model of civic nationalism, with its post-7/7-fuelled emphasis on loyalty, shared values and responsibilities.     

MPs and web technologies: an untapped opportunity?

MPs have not previously been assigned a major role in electoral campaigning, being considered only one element of a political party's ‘marketing’ tools for winning votes. Evidence now suggests that the relationship between MPs and their constituents is changing. The concept of ‘constituency service’ implies that individual MPs can have a much greater influence on local voters and so possibly buck national trends. At the same time the concept of the ‘permanent campaign’ is transforming political campaigning whereby the political elite needs ever‐greater control of the tools used to provide messages to voters. The internet is a potential battleground between MPs who want greater control of their own local campaigning and the party elite who want to ensure a consistent, coherent and controlled message. The Internet is a new addition to the campaigning armoury, yet the focus so far has been on e‐government, e‐democracy and election campaigns. By concentrating on how and why MPs use their websites this paper considers whether MPs have fully understood and utilised this new medium. Key questions include whether their websites are ‘sticky’, interactive and a means of creating a targeted message. The findings of this detailed study of MPs' websites show that apart from a few pioneers, MPs have not progressed beyond using the Internet as ‘shovelware’ — the vast majority view their website as an electronic brochure and not a new form of two‐way communication. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Whose Mandate is it Anyway? Brexit,the Constitution and the Contestation of Authority

Over the past year, a seemingly relentless barrage of Brexit‐related challenges has besieged the British constitution, which together have called into question the legitimacy of the political system. Yet, although it is tempting to regard the decision to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union as precipitating an acute constitutional crisis, this article argues that political and democratic dilemmas arising from Brexit are symptomatic of a wider constitutional malaise, the roots of which extend far beyond 23 June 2016. Flowing out of this, the article contends that the current crisis is one of ‘constitutional myopia’, fuelled by decades of incoherent reforms and a failure to address adequately democratic disengagement; and that the EU referendum and its aftermath have merely exposed the extent to which the foundations of the constitution have been eviscerated.     

The social order of Chinese capitalism: socio-economic uncertainty,communist party rule and economic development, 1990–2000

China's financially repressed economy remains characterized by a distinctly resilient political structure (the Chinese Communist Party, CCP) that penetrates both increasingly rational ‘private’ (market) and ‘public’ (state) organizations. How are we to understand the financial system's role in this persistently illiberal yet marketizing political economy? This paper develops a theory of China's financial reform as the management of socio-economic uncertainty by the CCP. Since the early 1990s, the financial system has formed a locus of the CCP's capacity both to manage and to propagate socio-economic uncertainty through the path of reform. The unique path of financial reform in China should thus not be viewed solely in terms of ‘partial’ or ‘failed’ free-market reform, but rather as the product of a more concerted vision of how the financial system enabled a mode of economic growth that combined the drive for accumulation of capital with the distinctive legacies of China's post-1989 socio-political circumstances.     

The politics of institutional reform in Italy

This article reviews the recent Italian debate on possible constitutional and institutional reforms aimed at improving governmental decision‐making capacity. In the first section, the post‐war institutional developments are briefly discussed to show how the present problems have emerged. Various reform proposals affecting the electoral system, Parliament and government are then analysed, together with the political pre‐conditions and consequences linked to their possible adoption. With reference to these political considerations, the various kinds of reform are evaluated in terms of their capacity to achieve their goals and of their acceptability to the political parties.     

Parity Reform in France: Promises and Pitfalls

In the 1990s, a new social movement emerged in France to address the underrepresentation of women in elected bodies and to promote womens's and men's equal representation, in French called parité. On the eve of the twenty‐first century, the movement achieved its main goal—a constitutional reform. The purpose of this article is to present both the promises of the parity movement and the limits of the reform. During the 1990s, parity reform appeared as a tool to achieve sex‐based political equality, but it was also seen as an indicator of feminist movement renewal and of improving French democracy. The legal texts adopted in 1999 and 2000 did not keep the promises of the movement. While the legal obligations and financial incentives in the reforms established new mechanisms for achieving parity between the sexes in elected office, they have not yet translated into actual parity in electoral outcomes.     

Patrons against clients: Electoral uncertainty and bureaucratic tenure in politicized states

Why would incumbents undertake institutional reforms that constrain their discretion over state resources? Many studies point to electoral competition in response. They argue that incumbents who risk exit from office undertake reform to insure themselves against potentially hostile successors. This paper challenges this line of reasoning, arguing that it confounds two potential implications of electoral competition – potential and certain electoral losses – which yield contrary reform incentives. Certain exits from office may well incentivize reforms as insurance. Where elections are contested, however, incumbents face incentives to resist reforms that constrain discretion over state resources that provide incumbents with electoral advantage. This argument is developed and assessed with an institutional reform the literature has so far neglected: job stability protections (tenure) in politicized bureaucracies. A case analysis of the Dominican Republic and suggestive cross‐country data confirm theoretical predictions: electoral uncertainty dis‐incentivizes tenure reform. Electoral competition may thus be a double‐edged sword for institutional reform.     

The Crisis of German Social Democracy Revisited

This article analyses the dramatic electoral decline of German social democracy since 2003. It argues that the SPD's decision, under the leadership of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, to engage in welfare state retrenchment and labour market deregulation during the ‘Hartz reforms’ (2003–05) demoralised the SPD electorate. The SPD subsequently lost half of its former electoral coalition, namely blue‐collar voters and socially disadvantaged groups, while efforts to gain access to centrist and middle‐class voters have failed to produce any compensating gains. While the SPD's decline from a large to a mid‐sized party is part of a larger transformation of the German party system, no political recovery is possible for social democracy without a fundamental change of strategy, namely efforts to regain former voters by offering credible social welfare and redistributive policies. The SPD will not be able to delegate such policies in a ‘convoy model’ to other parties, such as the Left Party; nor will a modest ‘correction’ of the earlier course, such as has been attempted since 2009 under the leadership of current party chairman Sigmar Gabriel, be sufficient to recover lost electoral ground.     

South Korean views on Japan's constitutional reform under the Abe government

In this Special Section, this article reviews South Korean views on Japan's ‘peace’ Constitution and the Abe government's attempts at constitutional reform. It identifies three different understandings among South Korean academics on why Japan is escalating attempts to revise the Constitution under the Abe government. An in-depth analysis demonstrates that all three perspectives pay specific attention to Japan's constitutional reform in relation to security policy changes. However, they differ in assessing the impact of Japan's constitutional reform on South Korea as well as how South Korea should deal with such a change. A minority opinion considers Japan's ‘remilitarisation’ through constitutional revision as conducive to South Korean security interests by increasing deterrence against North Korea, whereas the dominant opinion is that any attempt to revise the Constitution could be in and of itself a potential threat to South Korea's security due to a lack of trust attributed to unresolved historical conflicts between Korea and Japan. However, all three approaches pay hardly any attention to the positive role of Japan's peace Constitution while Japan's peace Constitution might provide a regional peace model in Northeast Asia.     

The Postwar Premiership League

The article reports the results from the latest survey of academic experts polled on the performance of post‐1945 prime ministers. Academic specialists in British politics and history rate Clement Attlee as the best postwar prime minister, with Margaret Thatcher in second place just ahead of Tony Blair in third place. Gordon Brown's stint in Number 10 was the third‐worst since the Second World War, according to the respondents to the survey that rated his premiership as less successful than that of John Major. The article compares public and academic opinion and rankings of prime ministers and their performance, noting significant discrepancies in contemporary and retrospective evaluations. Academic respondents to the survey also provided detailed ratings and evaluations of the performance and policy impact of the four prime ministers since 1979: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.     

The centre holds: The 1986 Netherlands election

It is often argued that clientelism is a key feature of electoral mobilisation in southern European democracies. This article examines the evidence for clientelism in the Spanish case, assessing the recruitment, redistributive strategies and electoral performance of governing parties in the 1977–96 period. It finds little evidence of extensive clientelistic mobilisation; instead, political parties’ use of state resources is largely consistent with their programmatic and ideological positions. ‘Old’ clientelism from the pre‐democratic era mostly did not survive the change of regime, whilst ‘new’ clientelism based on the expansion of state employment contributed to the Socialist Party's organisational consolidation, but was not a significant feature of its strategy of electoral mobilisation.     

From dominion to republican status: dilemmas of constitution making in Sri Lanka

This article examines the main features of Sri Lanka's post‐war constitutional development from the independence constitution of 1946 that introduced Dominion self‐governing status through the First and Second Republican Constitutions of 1972 and 1978. During this transition, executive power fluctuated between a Westminster style Parliamentary Constitution (1946, 1972) and a Presidential type of Constitution (1978) with a centralised executive directly elected by the people. The general issues surrounding the current debate on constitutional reform in recent years have centred on the abolition of the executive Presidency, an overhaul of the electoral system and the available options for power sharing with the ethnic minorities. The system of proportional representation precludes any political party from either forming a stable government or from securing the super majoritarian requirement of two‐thirds of the members of Parliament for amending the constitution. This predicament necessitates the invoking of an extra legal measure of a Constituent Assembly process to adopt an altogether new constitution to settle fundamental issues such as the structure of the state and the mode of electoral representation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

State of the Field

Although scholars of West European politics have long debated whether the region's highly institutionalised party systems were becoming de‐aligned and electorally unstable, the political fallout from the post‐2008 financial crisis has lent a new sense of urgency to the debate. The threats posed to party systems by economic crises are hardly unique to Europe, however. The Latin American experience with the debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s suggests that party system upheaval was not simply a function of retrospective economic voting during the period of crisis. It was also attributable to programmatically de‐aligning policy responses to crises – namely the ‘bait‐and‐switch’ imposition of austerity and adjustment measures by labour‐based, left‐leaning parties that were traditional champions of statist and redistributive policies. Such patterns of reform made it difficult for party systems to channel societal resistance to market orthodoxy in the post‐adjustment era, setting the stage for convulsive ‘reactive sequences’ when such resistance arose outside and against mainstream parties through varied forms of social and electoral protest, typically on the left flank. This article explores the political fallout from the European and Latin American economic crises from a comparative perspective, arguing that it is essential to think beyond the short‐term political dynamics of crisis management to consider the longer‐term institutional legacies and fragilities of the different political alignments forged around crisis‐induced policy reforms.     

The Use of Force in British Foreign Policy: From New Labour to the Coalition

This article studies the ideational underpinnings of the UK Coalition government's ‘liberal conservative’ foreign policy. It begins by suggesting that an Iraq‐centric account of Blair's foreign policy suggests a grand vision on the prime minister's part that was lacking from his earlier foreign policy adventures, which relied on a more conventional form of British statecraft. The second section contends that the Gordon Brown years 2007–10 and, since the end of New Labour, Coalition foreign policy, can be seen as a response both to the substance and style of Blair's highly personalised stewardship of foreign policy post‐9/11. The war on terror and the invasion of Iraq were accompanied by a seemingly open‐ended democracy promotion around the globe which was quite out of character with past British practice. The article argues, therefore, that under Brown and Cameron cautious pragmatism has tended to win out over the proclamation of grand strategic ambition.     

The Left and Constitutional Reform,Gladstone to Miliband

Nineteenth‐century constitutional reformers focussed on parliament. Their central idea was citizenship, modelled variously on the democracy of ancient Athens, small communities like Switzerland, and especially the United States, a particular inspiration for Gladstone who admired its constitution. The 1911 Parliament Act marked the final triumph of the Victorian Liberals legacy, with a very different impetus coming from Lloyd George during his coalition. Labour focussed on class, not the constitution, though the ILP favoured localism and devolution, before succumbing to a centralising unionism. Tawney championed the idea of social citizenship, emphasising activism and education. After 1945, Labour did not prioritize constitutional reform until the dramatic changes that came after 1997. Gordon Brown then revived the notion of citizenship, and possible codification, in pursuing the values of Britishness. Labour's legacy was a confusing one. But Ed Miliband's policy revision could reclaim the idea of citizenship, an egalitarian concept to counter the inequalities of class.