Sovereign nations and global markets: modern British Conservatism and hyperglobalism

In this article we seek to trace through the major stands of British Euroscepticism and concentrate, in particular, on the importance of a powerful 'hyperglobalist' Eurosceptical strand within British Conservatism. We investigate the British Conservatives' recent divisions over European integration, against the background of the party's increasingly marginal status in British party politics. The piece also draws on findings from two recent surveys of the attitudes of British parliamentarians to European integration, carried out by the Members of Parliament Project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We explore how Conservative divisions of opinion are related in part to particular understandings of globalisation and regionalisation and attempt to show how globalist ideology has unexpectedly re–emphasised and bolstered the traditional nationalism of the Tory party and caused an increasingly hostile attitude amongst many British Conservatives towards the European project as it is presently constituted. We also examine recent attempts to map British Conservative Euroscepticism on to continental varieties using a mixture of ideological positioning and party system (Taggart 1998), arguing that this ignores the extent to which British Eurosceptics advance unique (in EU member state terms) hyperglobalist (rather than isolationist or protectionist) arguments in objecting to further European integration.     

Political memoirs

Books reviewed in this article:
Butler, R. A. The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler
Clark, Alan Diaries
Heseltine, Michael Life in the Jungle
Lamont, Norman In Office
Lawson, Nigel The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical
Major, John The Autobiography
Rawnsley, Andrew Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour
Thatcher, Margaret The Downing Street Years     

Democratic Incongruities: Representative Democracy in Britain

This essay discusses the rationale guiding legislation dealing exclusively with political parties. The analysis is based on examination of party laws in Austria, Finland, Germany, Israel, Poland, Spain and Venezuela. The manner by which a particular legislature applies the general features of party law‐ legislation (general declaration regarding the role of parties in democracies, definition of parties, registration requirements, the democratic character of association in parties, regulation of party finance, legal sanctions) is demonstrated in reference to the Israeli party law, the most recent case of an established democracy whose legislature passed a parties law in 1992.

Throughout the analysis, the study addresses a question of principle: should a legislature comprised of representatives of political parties undertake to legislate laws regulating the activities of political parties in a democratic parliamentary system? It is suggested that a partial response to this question is found in the fact that, with the exception of Finland and Israel, democratic polities that have chosen to legislate party laws had previously experienced a collapse of their democratic systems. In the process of reforming their democratic structures, the legislatures in these polities enacted parties laws that would ensure that political parties perform functions commensurate With the goals and practices of modern democracies.     

The British Labour Party and monetary union

The real test of the British Labour Party's new orientation to Europe will be its policy on economic and monetary union (EMU). This article analyses Labours political economy in relation to European integration and to the management of the currency, and how the intersection of these two have produced four distinctive approaches to EMU within the party. It assesses the stance of new Labour towards EMU in the context of this internal Labour Party debate as well as in the wider context of European social democracy.