The Name of the Rose

Party names have been collected since ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ meant ‘Scotch rebel’ and ‘Irish bandit’. ‘Conservative’ began as a catch‐all on the right when one did not use the word ‘right’ in politics, struggled with ‘Unionist’ until Ireland got away and was a euphemism for ‘Tory’ before the Americans used it to describe howling extremists. ‘Labour’ meant skilled men in best suits and school teachers with elbow patches, and now has the resonance of Nineveh and Tyre.     

Breaking the Mould? Roy Jenkins’ ‘Radical Centre’ and British Social Democracy in the ‘New Hard Times’

Social democratic politics in Britain requires compelling answers to three animating questions that Roy Jenkins posed in his landmark 1979 Dimbleby lecture. Firstly, how can the British system of democracy be reformed to develop a culture of political participation and pluralism that leads to more equitable economic and social policies? Secondly, how can the centre‐left and left unite to forestall long periods of Tory dominance in electoral politics, thereby avoiding calamities such as the 2016 referendum on EU membership? And, thirdly, how can a flourishing intellectual ecosystem be cultivated on the progressive left that generates radical ideas for economic and social reform, recognising the importance of concerted dialogue between political traditions? This article revisits Jenkins’ 1979 lecture by considering the prospects for ‘breaking the mould’ of British politics in the ‘new hard times’ of Brexit and ‘permanent austerity’.     

Legitimacy through Partnership? EU Policy Diffusion in Britain and Sweden

Partnership has become a central principle of European Union (EU) policies, particularly in relation to the structural funds. This article considers the diffusion of the partnership principle in the EU, focusing on Britain and Sweden. It is concerned with two questions. First, has the partnership principle led to a process of harmonisation across states or to national resistance? Second, to what extent has the partnership principle enhanced the legitimacy of EU decision making? The evidence presented here suggests that though there has not been significant resistance to the partnership principle within Britain and Sweden, the EU’s requirements have been interpreted and implemented differently in the two states. Thus it is more appropriate to speak of ‘adaptation’ to partnership rather than ‘adoption’. This is explained by what we summarise as ‘national democratic traditions’. In terms of democratic legitimacy, the Swedish adaptation to partnership was nominally more democratic in that local politicians were readily involved from the outset, whereas in Britain they were not. However, the importance of this inclusion should not be overstated in relation to substantive democratic legitimacy. The Swedish model was not supported by well‐articulated democratic strategies or principles. Despite the limitations of the Swedish model, recent developments suggest that Britain is following a similar path.     

Towards a Realignment of the Mind: Compass Lecture,Commonwealth Club,London, 10 February 2011

Britain urgently needs a national conversation about the economic, political and moral predicament it now faces. It should start with the economic crisis of 2008–09. Keynesians and neoliberals alike still seek to return to pre‐crisis business as usual, albeit with modifications. But the untamed capitalism that came to grief in 2008 had three major flaws. First, it undermined the public domain of equity, citizenship and civic virtue, whose creation was one of the great achievements of the late‐nineteenth and early‐twentieth centuries, exposing it to invasion by the market domain. Second, it led to a remorseless rise in inequality of resources and life chances, rendering British society one of the most dysfunctional in Europe. Third, it encouraged the emergence of a debased form of democracy, best called ‘market populism’, that mocks the dream of political equality that lies at the heart of the democratic ideal. Yet growth points of a better society can be detected amidst the gloom. Informal institutions and social movements like London Citizens and the burgeoning environmental movement show that the notion of the public good is still alive. So do the survival of Edmund Burke's communitarianism in the conservative tradition, of John Stuart Mill's social liberalism in the liberal tradition and of ethical socialism in the social‐democratic tradition.     

Political legitimacy

These comments take issue with two aspects of the treatment of Rawls in On The People’s Terms. First, I criticize the characterization of Rawls as downplaying political liberties and focusing instead on social justice. Second, I take issue with the claim that Pettit provides a more robust conception of legitimacy than Rawls. The basis for this claim is that Rawls, along with others in the Kantian tradition, downplays the question of legitimacy by ‘going hypothetical’. Yet in common with Rawls, Pettit’s republican conception of legitimacy imposes a stringent test of legitimacy that many democratic regimes would not pass. This leads him to propose a weaker standard of ‘legitimizability’ that appears to involve the same kind of counterfactual judgment for which Rawls is criticized.     

A Liberal Republican "Cato"

In recent years the polarized debate surrounding the relative influence of the liberal and classical republican traditions on the political thought of the Founding Fathers has abated somewhat. Trenchard and Gordon's Cato's Letters , however, seen predominantly as a classical republican text, continues to be misread, resulting in a misinterpretation of the way in which it may have been read by the Revolutionary era generation. This article presents, evaluates, and subsequently rejects the arguments in favor of viewing the work of Trenchard and Gordon within the framework of either a classical republican or a neo-roman tradition. It argues instead that the authors fall squarely within a liberal republican tradition, embracing Locke, Mandeville, Hume, and Smith and suggests that it was in this vein that they were read by the Founding Fathers .     

Traditions and Public Sector Reform: Comparing Britain and Denmark

A governmental tradition is a set of beliefs about the institutions and history of government. In this article I argue the Anglo-Saxon governmental tradition interprets public sector reform differently to the Rechtsstaat , participation tradition of Denmark, leading to different aims, measures and outcomes. In the Introduction, I define NPM arguing that is has become everything and is, therefore a meaningless term. I identify six dimensions to public sector reform: privatization, marketization, corporate management, regulation, decentralization and political control. In section 2, I describe the six dimensions of public sector reform in Britain and Denmark. In section 3, I explain the idea of a governmental tradition and argue the idea is essential to understanding the differences between Britain and Denmark. In section 4, I compare British and Danish governmental traditions, arguing the key differences lie in beliefs about the constitution, bureaucracy and state-civil society relations. Finally, I provide a summary explanation of the differences and argue that traditions not only shape the aims, measures and outcomes of public sector reform but also lead to different interpretations of reform and its dilemmas. In Britain, the key dilemma concerns central steering capacity. In Denmark, the main dilemma is democratic accountability.     

Declarations of independence 1

Abstract

With the recent landslide electoral triumph of Tony Blair's New Labour in Britain, the question of the degree of convergence between Labour and the Conservatives in opposition takes on even greater strategic and political significance. It is generally undisputed that the terms of political debate in contemporary Britain have been altered markedly in recent years, and that this is not unrelated to Labour's self‐styled “modernisation” in the face of four consecutive election defeats. More contentious, however, is the interpretation of this trend. Has Labour abandoned its socialist and social democratic traditions, re‐projecting itself as an essentially conservative, even Thatcher‐ite, party, or has it managed to develop a novel, dynamic and modernising social democracy for new times? In this paper I seek to provide a benchmark against which such propositions can be evaluated, assessing the extent of bipartisan convergence since 1992. On the basis of comparisons of policy commitments at the 1992 and 1997 general elections, I argue that there has indeed been significant convergence between the parties, that this convergence has been driven principally by Labour, and that Britain is witnessing the emergence of a new bipartisan consensus. Such an interpretation is further reinforced by a consideration of revisions to policy since the Tories’ electoral debacle, which would merely seem to confirm the ascendancy of neo‐liberalism in contemporary Britain. I conclude by considering the likely trajectory of social and economic policy under a New Labour administration with a seemingly unassailable parliamentary majority.     

Property rights and competing for the affections of?Demos: the impact of the 1867 Reform Act on stock prices

The 1867 Reform Act in Britain extended the electoral franchise to the skilled but propertyless urban working classes. Using stock market data and exploiting the fact that foreign and domestic equities traded simultaneously on the London market, this paper finds that investors in British firms reacted negatively to the passage of this Act. We suggest that this finding is consistent with investors foreseeing future alterations of property rights arising from the pressure that the large newly enfranchised group would bring to bear on government policy. We also suggest that our findings appear to be more consistent with the Tory political competition explanation for the Act rather than the Whig threat-of-revolution explanation.     

Path Dependence and Public Sector Innovation in Regulatory Regimes

The overarching theme of this article is institutional analysis of modernization and innovation in the regulatory state, and in pursuing this, the concepts of ‘path dependence’ and ‘administrative traditions’ are used throughout. Self‐reinforcing or positive feedback processes in political systems represent a basic framework. The empirical point of departure is the EU public procurement directive linked to OECD data concerning use of outsourcing among Member States. The question is asked: What has caused the Nordic countries, traditionally not belonging to the Anglo‐Saxon market‐centred administrative tradition, to be ranked so high as users of the Market‐Type Mechanism (MTM) of outsourcing in the public sector versus inhouse provision of services? The reason may be complex, but might be found in an innovative Scandinavian regulatory approach rooted in a ‘small is beautiful’, small and medium‐seized businesses, and local and regional development planning tradition.     

‘New dissidents are but old Provisionals writ large’? The Dynamics of Dissident Republicanism in the New Northern Ireland

This article discusses recent developments in dissident Irish republicanism and some of the arguments advanced to explain its emergence as a factor in Northern Irish politics. In particular it considers those explanations which define these new armed groups as either the latest manifestation of a historically determined Irish republican tradition or simply as ‘residual terrorist groups’ left behind by Provisional republicanism's movement into the constitutional mainstream in the 1990s. It rejects these arguments as ahistorical and schematic, and instead suggests that the dynamics and trajectory of dissident republicanism are shaped instead by the inherent tensions and structures of ‘the new Northern Ireland’. It goes on to compare the contemporary political, social and economic forces that produce the dissidents with the conditions that created the Provisionals as in the early 1970s and concludes that whilst these new groups will continue to pose a threat to the ‘normalization’ of the new dispensation they will not be successful as their republican forebears in mobilizing a significant and sustained challenge to the Northern Irish state.     

How (Not) to Form a Progressive Alliance: Lessons from the History of Left Cooperation

Britain’s political parties can be divided into two blocs: a ‘progressive bloc’ of parties on the left/centre‐left, and a ‘reactionary bloc’ of those on the right/centre‐right. In three of the last four general elections, the progressive bloc won an appreciably larger share of the popular vote than its reactionary rival. Yet its greater internal fragmentation has been repeatedly punished under first past the post, leading to what is now over a decade of Conservative‐led governments. This has prompted growing pressure to form a ‘progressive alliance’ between Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, and their Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish nationalist competitors. This article sheds a historical and international light on these demands, examining the difficulties other similar efforts at progressive cooperation have faced across the world. It considers how progressive alliances have previously sought to overcome geographical, ideological, and social divides between their constituent members, and draws some salutary lessons for British progressives today.     

A Strange Drift to the Right: The Civic Historiography of Michael Sandel

Michael Sandel's Democracy's Discontent strives to contribute to the project of "democratic theory," which aims to bring people together across ideological differences. Sandel wants to revitalize citizenship by uniting religious conservatives and those committed to a more just political economy through an appeal to the American tradition of civic republicanism. However, his project is fundamentally incoherent. First, Sandel's narrative conflates the republican and religious aspects of the American founding, ignoring the fact that civic republican political theory actually developed in direct opposition to the ideal of a Christian polity. Second, his version of civic republicanism deviates from the historic tradition in a way that renders it much more conservative than it actually was and might still be. Third, his reading of American history consistently highlights conservative themes. Consequently, Sandel ultimately undercuts the progressive aspects of his own vision, detracting from rather than contributing to the transideological aspirations of "democratic theory."     

毛泽东民主集中制的共和要义探究

"民主与集中的统一"是毛泽东民主集中制的实质,然而它的运用又可能生成不同的形态,而民主集中制的正宗形态只有一种。具体而言,如果只顾民主而无集中,不可避免导致极端民主制;如果只顾集中而无民主,不可避免导致极端专制。这两个极端都是专制,正好与共和相对立;民主集中制处于两个极端之间,自在地具有共和要义。继承和发扬毛泽东民主集中制思想,就是要批判和反对极端专制与极端民主,敬重和守护民主集中制的共和要义。     

Europe's could‐be demos: Recasting the debate

‘A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst. ... Some think it a new thing and, supposing it an accident, hope that they can still check it; others think it irresistible, because it seems to them the most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history’.1 Thus wrote de Tocqueville in his much‐celebrated Democracy in America on the extension of democratic ideas across borders. This article is about a similar revolution which unfolds against the background of an ever‐more complex and sophisticated framework of political interactions: the European Union. Both processes point to the same desirable state of affairs ‐ democracy. The difference now is that we are witnessing the qualitative transformation of a system of democracies into a democratic system. Or, alternatively, of a plurality of detnoi into a pluralistic demos. It is to Europe's could‐be demos that we now turn, in an attempt to recast the debate of democracy and integration in the European Union of the 1990s.     

Modes of UK Executive–Legislative Relations Revisited

Anthony King's 1976 article ‘Modes of executive–legislative relations: Great Britain, France and West Germany’ is a classic in legislative studies. It argued that it is simplistic to analyse relations between ‘the executive’ and ‘the legislature’ in parliamentary systems, because parliaments are complex organisations comprised of competing actors. Instead, we must consider the various ‘modes’ through which these actors can interact to challenge the executive. As King pointed out, the classic view of the British Parliament was of a dominant ‘opposition mode’ and yet, in fact, the most important relationship was the ‘intraparty mode’: between the government and its own backbenchers. Other options, such as the ‘non‐party mode’ or ‘cross‐party mode’ were considered weak in Britain. This article revisits King's modes in the light of changes at Westminster during the intervening forty years. Developments such as the establishment of the select committee system and a more confident and party‐balanced House of Lords require significant changes to his conclusions. But his central insights, encouraging readers to focus on the multiple relationships inside legislatures, including those within political parties, remain fundamentally important.     

The Primacy of the Political: Rahe and the Myth of the Polis

Paul Rahe belongs to the long tradition of mythologizing the polis , otherwise known as 'the classical republican tradition', which has two signal achievements to its credit. The first is to claim for the great landed monarchies of Europe the democratic legacy of the polis as their very own. The second is to distance themselves from eastern regimes by characterizing them as 'despotic' and 'other'. This tradition is seriously challenged by modern classical and Near Eastern scholarship, which shows city-republican forms to have originated in the east. Rahe's particular version is open to the additional challenge that it glorifies the male warrior polis , from which women were systematically excluded, 'as a moral community of men united by a common way of life', as if a community which depended on the labour of women but gave them no rights could have moral integrity.     

The political transformation of a social democratic state: As the world moves in,Norway moves right*

Political change in Norway, as shown by a conservative resurgence, has to be considered in the context of half a century of social democratic dominance which has deeply affected political institutions and party policies. Change has become evident throughout the system, but the institutional components of the ‘social democratic state’ inhibit the shift towards a more traditional liberal‐pluralist regime. Recent developments, however, indicating a move to the right, especially evident for young voters, together with social democracy's own ideological self‐questioning, now point to the dismantlement of the social democratic state.     

Citizens versus permanent guests: Cultural memory and citizenship laws in a reunified Germany

This article offers a critique of the optimism generated by the new political culture of ‘European citizenship’ based on a historical analysis of the content and utilisation of citizenship laws in pre‐ and post‐reunification Germany. It argues that even if nationality ceases to be a barrier for democratic governance in a consolidated Europe, this development is likely to affect primarily those who are already citizens of a Member State residing in another Member State. The argument made here is supported by the case of ‘guest workers’ in Germany. Although there is growing evidence that especially the Turkish population in Germany enjoys a vast array of civil, social and locally defined political rights, their franchise beyond the ‘limits of citizenship’ does not alleviate larger impacts of the formalised cultural memory of who qualifies to be a German. The most‐documented example of the persistent strain of genealogy‐based nationalism in Germany is the admission and naturalisation policies applied to the ‘returning’ ethnic Germans from neighbouring states. Based on a comparative analysis of the historic treatment of ‘German’ versus ‘non‐German’ outsiders entering Germany, the article concludes that the still‐dominant definition of Germanness emphasising ancestral lineage (jus sanguinis) poses serious obstacles for the achievement of a civic/political self‐understanding in German society as well as in Europe at large.