Political Science

This book is a pioneering study of how multiculturalism interacts with sub-state nationalism in Britain. It gives equal attention to Scotland’s largest ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ minorities: ethnic Pakistanis (almost all of them Muslim) and English immigrants; and to the Islamophobia and Anglophobia of majority Scots. Rising Scottish self-consciousness could have threatened both these minorities. But in reality, problems proved to be solutions, integrating rather than alienating. In the eyes of the minorities, the devolution of power to a Scottish Parliament has made Scots at once more proud and less xenophobic. English immigrants also felt that devolution has defused tensions, calmed frustrations, and forced Scots to blame themselves rather than others for their problems. Muslims suffered increased harassment after 9/11, although less in Scotland than elsewhere. Consciously or unconsciously, they continued to use Scottish identities and even Scottish nationalism as tools of integration. Conversely, nationalism in Scotland did not increase the majority’s Islamophobia as it did in England and elsewhere. The book is based on extensive quotations from focus-group discussions with minorities, in-depth interviews with elites, and statistical analysis of large-scale surveys of minorities and majorities.

This book examines how New Labour repositioned itself at the ‘centre-ground’. It argues that policy changes alone cannot account for the change in spatial position. New Labour did not simply move to the centre, but constructed it. It persuaded the media, voters and other parties that it had moved to centre, and constructed its policies as centrist.

Written by a leading group of scholars in the field, this unique volume examines post‐Agreement Northern Ireland from a comparative perspective. It shatters the myth that Northern Ireland is ‘a place apart’ – its conflict the result of peculiarly local circumstances. The book is divided into two sections. The first includes theoretical chapters that centre on the concepts of consociationalism, social transformation, and integrationism. The second involves the case‐study approach, with Northern Ireland being compared with other divided societies in four continents, including the Aland islands, the Basque country, Canada, Cyprus, Corsica, East Timor, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, South Africa, South Tyrol, and Sri Lanka. The collection shows that comparative analysis is essential for understanding the dynamics of Northern Ireland's conflict and ethnic conflict in general. It also shows the value of comparative analysis for conflict management. The contributors offer a wealth of suggestions on how to consolidate or change the landmark Agreement that Northern Ireland's political parties reached in April 1998.

The book collects some of the major essays, past and new, of two of the leading authorities on the Northern Ireland conflict. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, and the management of Northern Ireland by successive Labour and Conservative governments between 1974 and 1997, to an analysis of the 1998 Agreement, and the issues of policing and human rights reform in the aftermath of that agreement. The book is unified by the theory of consociation, one of the most influential theories in the regulation of conflicts. The authors are critical exponents of the consociational approach, and several chapters explain its attractions over alternative forms of conflict regulation. The book explains why Northern Ireland's national divisions have made the achievement of a consociational agreement particularly difficult.

The issues raised in the book are crucial to a proper understanding of Northern Ireland's past and future, which, the authors argue, is likely to involve some type of consociational democracy, whether or not the one agreed to on Good Friday 1998. The issues addressed, however, are not particular to Northern Ireland. They are relevant to a host of other divided territories, including Cyprus, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq. The book is therefore vital reading not just for Northern Ireland specialists, but also for anyone interested in consociational and in the just and durable regulation of national and ethnic conflict.

The constitutional background of both legislatures and their procedures are described and where possible compared. Currently unsolved problems often have much in common, in vexed areas such as ethics requirements or how procedural rules permit minorities fair access to legislative time before majorities prevail. British successes include the enhanced authority and effectiveness of select committees and the acquisition of more debating time by the creation of a parallel Chamber. Unsolved problems at Westminster begin with the powers and status of the Lords, and go on through the search for more effective review of EU activities, adapting parliamentary scrutiny to more sophisticated government financial information, and making better use of legislative time without diminishing back‐bench rights. The accelerated pace and extent of procedural changes in Congress is problematic. Constant pursuit of campaign funds, increased party exploitation of Members' ethical shortcomings, and partisan reapportionments have diminished collegiality and compromise. Business is conducted with greater predictability, with fewer quorum calls, postponement and clustering of votes, and by utilization of ad hoc special orders, often in derogation of openness and minority rights in the House. Minority complaints have been frequent and occasionally extreme. Conversely, constant filibuster threats in the Senate have enhanced minority party power there. An ‘inverse ratio’ between the greater complexity, importance, and urgency of pending legislation on the one hand, and diminution of deliberative capacity, fairness, and transparency on the other, has been repeatedly demonstrated, especially at the stage of final compromises between the Houses.

Policy-making is not only about the cut and thrust of politics. It is also a bureaucratic activity. Long before laws are drafted, policy commitments made, or groups consulted on government proposals, officials will have been working away to shape the policy into a form in which it can be presented to ministers and the outside world. Policy bureaucracies — parts of government organisations with specific responsibility for maintaining and developing policy — have to be mobilised before most significant policy initiatives are launched. This book describes the range of work policy officials do. The 140 civil servants interviewed for this study included officials who helped originate policies which were subsequently taken over as manifesto commitments by Britain's Labour Party; officials who helped devise the formula by which billions of pounds are allocated to local government in grants; and also officials who recommended to the Secretary of State that a controversial publisher be allowed to take over a national newspaper. The background and career paths of middle-ranking officials show them to be a diverse group who do not tend to develop long-term subject specialisms. The book goes on to examine how ministers and senior officials affect the work of middle ranking officials and the cues policy bureaucrats use to develop policy.

Have bureaucrats taken over the decision-making role of politicians? This book offers a direct assessment of the role of bureaucrats in policy-making by analysing how they shape policy in making decrees—laws that generally do not pass through full legislative scrutiny. These are often described as ‘secondary legislation’ and are known by a variety of names (including décrets, arrêtés, administrative regulations, Verordnungen, statutory instruments). Such decrees offer an important vantage point for understanding bureaucratic power not only because they account for a large proportion of policy-making activity within the executive, but also because they are made largely away from the glare of publicity. If bureaucrats have strong policy-making powers and use them in a way that minimizes political involvement in policy-making, we would expect to find these powers especially evident in this ‘everyday’ decision-making. The book is based on research examining fifty-two decrees produced between 2005 and 2008 in six jurisdictions: France, the UK, Germany, Sweden, the United States, and the European Union. The comparative perspective allows one to see how far different patterns of bureaucratic involvement in policy-making are characteristic of particular political systems and how far they are a general feature of modern bureaucracies. The book asks three main questions about how these decrees are produced. When do politicians become involved in making them? What happens when politicians become involved? And what happens when they are not involved? The answers to these questions are provided by examination of primary source material as well as interviews with over 100 officials.

Political Choice in Britain uses data from the 1964 to 2001 British election studies (BES), 1992 to 2002 monthly Gallup polls, and numerous other national surveys conducted over the past four decades to test the explanatory power of rival sociological and individual rationality models of electoral turnout and party choice. Analyses endorse a valence politics model that challenges the long-dominant social class model. British voters make their choices by evaluating the performance of parties and party leaders in economic and other important policy areas. Although these evaluations may be largely products of events that occur long before an election campaign officially begins, parties’ national and local campaign activities are also influential. Consistent with the valence politics model, partisan attachments display individual- and aggregate-level dynamics that reflect ongoing judgements about the managerial abilities of parties and their leaders. A general incentives model provides the best explanation of turnout. Calculations of the costs and influence-discounted benefits of voting and sense of civic duty are key variables in this model. Significantly, the decline in turnout in recent elections does not reflect more general negative trends in public attitudes about the political system. Voters judge the performance of British democracy in much the same way as they evaluate its parties and politicians. Support at all levels of the political system is a renewable resource, but one that must be renewed.