British politics: A view from afar

Abstract

I have spent most of my career in British Universities, almost always teaching British politics, among many other things. At present, I am based in a Sociology Department in Australia. As such, I am experiencing two degrees of separation, which, perhaps, allows me a different perspective on the current state of the study of British politics. I have dealt before with the two issues considered here, the general paucity of consideration of models of British politics and the relative lack of theoretically or comparatively informed studies of British politics; therefore, my aim is to examine what has changed in the last decade. In essence, my argument will be that much has changed, although much remains the same. As a brief corollary, I will also argue that, although much could be better, the issues I discuss have been much better addressed in the study of British politics than in the study of Australian politics.