Contemporary British Politics Research Articles

What kind of discipline are we? A network analysis of British Politics

AbstractResearch on British politics has traditionally been too reliant on a single model for understanding its field of inquiry—initially the Westminster model and then, since the 2000s, the governance-focused ‘differentiated polity model’. It has also been criticised for being preoccupied by the institutions that make up the Westminster system in terms of its substantive analytical focus, neglecting theory and international comparisons, failing to learn from other disciplines, and neglecting issues of age, gender, ethnicity and the environment (Marsh in Br Polit 7:43–54, 2012; Randall in Br Polit 7:17–29, 2012; BJPIR in Br J Polit Int Relat 24:3–10, 2022). This article aims to substantiate some of these claims using a network analysis of articles published in the journal British Politics to illuminate the who and the what of contemporary British politics research: Who authors it, which communities they form, what topics they focus on, and how they relate to the rest of the discipline. The evidence presented paints a picture of a valuable, but also still somewhat insular and fragmented discipline, and one that is itself inflected by structured inequalities.

Women Voters Taking the Wheel?

AbstractPolitical parties increasingly segment the electorate to target subgroups of voters, giving more attention to some groups at the expense of others. In the UK, there has been sporadic and often marginal attention paid to women voters. However, the gender gap may now be too large to ignore in contemporary British politics. In this article, we question why more attention has not been paid to the preferences of women voters by political parties, and demonstrate the importance of considering gender as a crucial electoral divide in Britain.

Political Blackness, British Cinema, and the Queer Politics of Memory

This essay queries "political Blackness" as a coalitional antiracist politics in England in the 1970s and 1980s. Contemporary debates on the relevance of political Blackness in contemporary British race politics often forget significant critiques of the concept articulated by feminist and queer scholars, activists and cultural producers. Through close readings of Isaac Julien and Maureen Blackwood’s <i>The Passion of Remembrance</i> and Hanif Kureishi’s <i>Sammy and Rosie Get Laid</i>, this essay examines cinematic engagements with political Blackness by foregrounding the gender and sexual fault lines through which queers and feminists articulated relational solidarities attentive to difference.

The Heart of the Declaration: The Founders’ Case for an Activist Government, by Steve Pincus

This book’s clearly stated purpose is to show the compelling relevance of the Declaration of Independence for contemporary political debate about the scope and purposes of government. It is presumably intended primarily as a contribution to current controversies in the United States. Assertions that hostility to strong government has been characteristic of the American republic since its origins have been challenged by historians of the Constitution, notably by Max Edeling in his A Revolution in Favor of Government of 2003. Steve Pincus is challenging them for the colonial period as well. His use of concepts such as ‘austerity’ has obvious resonances too for contemporary British politics. Pincus’s main propositions seem to be that Britain and pre-Revolutionary America constituted a single political community, and that how to tackle the large debt accumulated by government—in the British case by winning the Seven Years War, and in the American case by winning the War for Independence (although his focus on the Declaration curtails Pincus’s treatment of this)—were central preoccupations throughout this community.

Getting back in the DeLorean: modernization vs. anti-modernization in contemporary British politics

ABSTRACTThis article highlights a growing clash between mainstream modernizing and populist anti-modernizing forces in the UK. Whilst scholarship on UK party politics has, for the past three decades, focussed on processes of party modernization, little attention has been paid to the countervailing processes of resistance towards modernization. This contrasts with comparative studies, which show that throughout much of Europe modernization processes have worked to produce populist backlashes from anti-modernizing forces seeking to reassert various types of traditional values and practices. Drawing on the comparative literature on modernization, our argument here is that a similar populist backlash against modernization is occurring across the political spectrum in the UK and has been a factor in: the rise of nationalism associated with UKIP and the SNP; the 2016 BREXIT vote and the efforts of both Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative PM Theresa May to distance their parties from the legacies of their modernizing predecessors. Empirically, we show how this increasingly prevalent line of conflict is playing out in the UK, whilst theoretically we argue that a discourse theoretical approach can provide significant advantages over existing approaches for understanding the dynamic interplay between modernizing and anti-modernizing discourses.

Classification Accuracy as a Substantive Quantity of Interest: Measuring Polarization in Westminster Systems

Measuring the polarization of legislators and parties is a key step in understanding how politics develops over time. But in parliamentary systems—where ideological positions estimated from roll calls may not be informative—producing valid estimates is extremely challenging. We suggest a new measurement strategy that makes innovative use of the “accuracy” of machine classifiers, i.e., the number of correct predictions made as a proportion of all predictions. In our case, the “labels” are the party identifications of the members of parliament, predicted from their speeches along with some information on debate subjects. Intuitively, when the learner is able to discriminate members in the two main Westminster parties well, we claim we are in a period of “high” polarization. By contrast, when the classifier has low accuracy—and makes a relatively large number of mistakes in terms of allocating members to parties based on the data—we argue parliament is in an era of “low” polarization. This approach is fast and substantively valid, and we demonstrate its merits with simulations, and by comparing the estimates from 78 years of House of Commons speeches with qualitative and quantitative historical accounts of the same. As a headline finding, we note that contemporary British politics is approximately as polarized as it was in the mid-1960s—that is, in the middle of the “postwar consensus”. More broadly, we show that the technical performance of supervised learning algorithms can be directly informative about substantive matters in social science.

British satire, everyday politics: Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci and Charlie Brooker

This article develops a critical engagement with the politics of British satire. After first engaging the mainstream critique of satire—that it promotes cynicism and apathy by portraying politicians in stereotypically corrupt terms—we develop a performative approach to comedy as an everyday vernacular of political life. Beyond a focus on ‘impact’, we suggest that satire can be read as an everyday form of political reflection that performs within a social context. This argument yields an image of Morris, Iannucci and Brooker as important critics of contemporary British politics, a point which we explore through their interventions on media form, political tragedy and political agency.

Rights and Opinion: Or, The Progress of Sentiments

Abstract What is the relationship between minorities and majorities within the liberal constitutional order, and what role ought courts play in defining that relationship? This paper approaches the question first by establishing a framework of analysis which, drawing on work of David Hume, isolates three often undervalued features of constitutional order: the idea of the constitution as a going concern; the idea of the constitution as a complex whole; and the idea of the constitution as a framework of moral sentiment. These themes are explored in a study of contemporary British constitutional politics, an example of a stable constitution in flux. Britain continues to struggle with the Human Rights Act and the new prominence it accords to rights in constitutional debate. Reflecting on this case study, the paper argues that, when it comes to thinking about constitutional change, we should pay more attention to the imaginations of our fellow citizens, and their limits, aiming to enlarge our moral horizons in a way that aligns them with what is best within existing practices.

The Labour government and the battle for public opinion in the 1975 referendum on the European Community

An upsurge of historical research in this century has assessed various campaigns that promoted European Community (EC) membership to the British people. This article, concentrating on the Labour government’s approach to the 1975 referendum on the EC, uses sources such as official records at The National Archives and political papers of some of the key agents; these sources have hitherto been underused for investigating public opinion-related activities on Europe in 1975. Although acknowledging that the interpretation of a government-controlled referendum applies up to a point, the article emphasises, as its key theme, the government’s difficulties in controlling events during the campaign itself. Despite having much support from newspapers, the government often had difficult relations with the mass media as a whole, and the article challenges the belief that it was effective here. This article also contests the idea that the campaign made much impression on the public. These findings further apply to other campaigns on the EC in the 1960s and 1970s and potentially in contemporary British politics.

‘Never Reflective, because So Obviously a Fact’: Institutions and National Identity in English Political Thought

Following the result of the Scottish Referendum in September 2014, Peter Hennessy thought that the English Question would become the weather-maker in contemporary British politics. It is important, however, to avoid overemphasis on the novelty of this matter. There is a compelling argument to bring current debates about Englishness into fruitful dialogue with historical perspectives because this may yield more nuanced understandings of the relationship between political argument and enduring expressions of Englishness. This article considers first a tradition of institutional thinking and how that thinking helped to define English national self-understanding, what Sir Ernest Barker once described as ‘never reflective, because it is so simply and obviously a fact’. The article explores the erosion of that national self-understanding in recent years through a number of ‘ironies of inversion’, in which the previous virtues of English institutionalism can appear as present vices. These ironies of inversion have become factors of popular political grievance, especially since devolution, and have added to an insistent mood that the English Question must be addressed, even if there is no consensus about how it should be addressed.

Ethics and integrity in British politics: how citizens judge their politicians' conduct and why it matters

Public perceptions of political ethics are at the heart of current political debate. Drawing on original data, this book is the first general account of popular understandings of political ethics in contemporary British politics. It offers new insights into how citizens understand political ethics and integrity and how they form judgments of their leaders. By locating these insights against the backdrop of contemporary British political ethics, the book shows how current institutional preoccupations with standards of conduct all too often miss the mark. While the use of official resources is the primary focus of much regulation, politicians' consistency, frankness and sincerity, which citizens tend to see in terms of right and wrong, are treated as 'normal politics'. The authors suggest that new approaches may need to be adopted if public confidence in politicians' integrity is to be restored.

Punning in Punglish, Sounding ‘Poreign’

This essay explores Daljit Nagra's poetry – Look We Have Coming To Dover! (2007) and Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger-Toy Machine!!! (2011) – in the context of contemporary British language politics. It argues that Nagra's approach to language – combining heteroglot, multivoiced experimentalism with an etymological attention to the historical constructedness of language – offers a riposte to monolingual ideologies, which also resituates English as a product and residue of colonial history. While Nagra's poems sometimes come close to regarding the histories enfolded within English as a linguistic and poetic impasse, they continue to invest in the notion of resistance and individual agency in language; and specifically, they revel in poetic dramatization of the accommodations and convivialities of everyday multilingual language practice.

Proving, Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British Politics

AbstractExpressions of disaffection with politics are often connected with criticism of the ways in which contemporary politicians speak and communicate. In this article I show how political speech is in part a product of the way in which a society organises and arranges communication institutionally, technologically and aesthetically. The art of rhetoric is most fundamentally concerned with how, in the midst of political dispute and contestation, political arguments may be made persuasive through their connection with the ‘common sense’ of audiences. This process enables a people to reflect on its beliefs and values and to assess their adequacy in particular circumstances. Decline in this art may be attributed to social and technological change but also, and above all, to the dominance of ideologies hostile to the concepts of ‘common sense’ and ‘common good’, and which privilege the arts of behaviour change and choice management over those of argument, debate and persuasion.

Book Review: Britain and Ireland: History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics: Past Politics and Present Histories

Book Review: Britain and Ireland: History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics: Past Politics and Present Histories

What Kind of ‘Big Government’ is the Big Society? A Reply to Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley

Research Highlights and Abstract This article Contributes to the debates applying Foucauldian theory to contemporary British Politics and invigorates the debate through a discussion with Bulley and Sokhi Bulley Develops understandings of contemporary British Politics under the Coalition government, particularly in light of the ‘Big Society’ project. Compares, through a Foucauldian framework, the differences and similarities between the New Labour (1997–2010) and Coalition (2010–) Governments Ultimately argues that the Coalition Government is demonstrative of a hybrid of the neo-liberal governmentality typical of the New Labour governments and a partial reversion to a more rudimentary Thatcherite form of neo-liberal governmentality. This article is a reply to Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley's recent article on the Big Society. We put forward two main criticisms of Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley's governmentality-focused approach in our alternative reading of the Big Society. Firstly, we argue that, given the ethopolitical strategies Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley focus their attention on are unlikely to produce the kind of transformation in the ethical outlook of citizens they suppose, the real historical significance of the Big Society must lie elsewhere. Secondly, we argue that Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley overlook the lines of continuity and discontinuity linking the Big Society to the forms of neo-liberal governmentality that have preceded it in British politics. In the final section of the article, we argue that the Cameron project amounts to both a partial continuation of the type of neo-liberal governmental rationality characteristic of the New Labour project and a partial reversion to a more rudimentary Thatcherite form of neo-liberal governmentality.

Misrecognition and Political Agency. The Case of Muslim Organisations in a General Election

Research Highlights and Abstract This article: Examines the meaning of claims for ‘recognition’ and struggles against ‘misrecognition’ by working through aspects of Muslim political agency in contemporary British politics; Contributes to research on the political mobilisation of Muslims in Britain by examining how civil society organisations respond to perceived stigmas and project a Muslim civic identity; Contributes to research that investigates dilemmas of political agency between the pressure to conform to standards of neutrality and maturity, on the one hand, and creativity and opposition, on the other; Demonstrates how minority actors manoeuvre and position themselves in the unsettled environment of contemporary British politics. It is a common complaint among Muslim civil society organisations that their presence in British politics is misconstrued. An increasing number of activists and groups are concerned to repudiate what they perceive to be the misperception of their political agency as exceptional and difficult to accommodate. Organisations and initiatives thus project and practice civic identities, to demonstrate that they are committed to the ‘common good’. This article explores how a number of organisations positioned themselves in response to experiences of ‘misrecognition’ in the context of the General Election 2010. With this conceptual focus we explore one of the most pertinent characteristics of Muslim political agency in Britain today: how actors respond to perceived pressures, make claims and project identities in opposition to alleged misperceptions or the refusal to acknowledge their desired self-descriptions. The article draws on a set of qualitative interviews with representatives of advocacy organisations that mobilised Muslim constituents in the run-up to the General Election 2010.

Ideology in the age of the coalition: the strange rebirth of British centrism

The financial crisis of 2007–2008 severely disrupted the hegemony of neoliberalism. This article argues that since the establishment of the Coalition Government in 2010, a trend has become discernible within public opinion towards a new consensus on the size of the state, the role of markets and the function of civil society. This consensus constitutes a distinctive British centrist ideology, termed New Centrism. The article examines the methodological and ideological backdrop to New Centrism, considering the particular features of British party competition, rival critiques of the crisis and an ontology of the old neoliberal settlement. The article also assesses consensus in contemporary British politics and situates the rebirth of centrism in Britain in a comparison with the ideological heritage of centrism in European polities, drawing out a substantive characterization of the New Centrist ideological position as Britain's direct equivalent.

Review of E. Robinson's History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics: Past Politics and Present Histories

Emily Robinson, History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics: Past Politics and Present Histories, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012. 208 pp

History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics: Past Politics and Present Histories. By Emily Robinson.

In his film, The Attic, Adam Curtis argued that Margaret Thatcher became so deeply attached to a romanticised view of the nation’s past that it undermined her understanding of contemporary reality. History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics makes much the same argument in the opposite way; it details how, since the Thatcher era, party politics has drawn heavily on the rhetoric of the past for purposes that are reductively presentist. The book, in short, poses the question ‘what did the “End of History” era do to the ways in which British party politics interacted with history’? Two chapters ‘ideology and temporality’ and ‘structures of memory’ are used to orientate the three extended case studies that chart the rise of political ‘presentism’ in the Conservative Party, during the rise of Social Democratic Party (SDP) and New Labour, and finally at the demise of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

‘Plastic’ or ‘Fantastic’ Brits? Identity Politics and English Media Representations of “Team GB” during London 2012

This article focuses on the dynamic relationship between media-sport and national identity in the context of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Specifically, attention is given to the construction and representation of members of ‘Team GB’ in the English press in the build-up to and during London 2012, against the backdrop of contemporary British identity politics. Sporting passions can reflect prevailing moods of the wider geo-political climate and often may even reinforce or engender these social currents. A qualitative content analysis is used to examine the ways in which the narrative of ‘plastic Brits’ was (re)constructed and represented through images and texts within the English press during London 2012. A cross section of 6 daily English newspapers was subject to this interpretive analysis from 3 August 2012 (the day of the opening ceremony) through to 19 August 2012 (one week after the closing ceremony). We offer three main emergent findings from our analysis of the press coverage: (1) while present in advance of the Olympic Games, the ‘plastic Brit’ narrative was largely absent during the Games themselves; (2) performances by ‘plastic’ members of ‘Team GB’ were de-amplified in covert discourses pertaining to established-outsider relations: ‘plastic Brit’ successes were celebrated, though not as much as those by ‘true Brits’, whereas ‘plastic Brit’ ‘failures’ were generally relegated to the sidelines; (3) hosting the Games and show-casing the country to the watching world encouraged journalists and politicians alike to (re)interpret and attempt to make sense of modern Britain.