Parties In Britain Research Articles

Democratizing Party Leadership Selection

Because the task of choosing a candidate for a country's highest office is so important, political parties seek to devise more inclusive processes of selection, processes that are commensurate with the party's electoral goals. Often this has involved reforming an existing process in ways that open up the mechanisms of leadership choice to a wider `selectorate'. In such a process parties sometimes undergo changes well beyond what may have been anticipated when the reforms were first introduced. This article examines the process of leadership selection in three political parties that have undertaken major reforms in the process of leadership selection in recent years - the Democratic Party in the United States, the Labour Party in Britain and the Progressive-Conservative Party in Canada. In each instance, it is possible to demonstrate that the method chosen has had significant consequences for the parties themselves and for the party system as a whole, in part because of variations in the inclusiveness of the selectorates created, and also through effects on candidate recruitment.

Local Parties in Political and Organizational Perspective

Theoretical Orientation And Empirical Observations The Local Party as an Object of Interdisciplinary Comparative Study: Some Steps Toward Theoretical Integration (Hans Geser) Local Parties in Comparative Perspective (Peter John and Martin Saiz) Local Political Parties In Local And National Context Civic Parties in Canada: Their Diversity and Evolution (Pierre Filion) Local Parties in England: Development and Change 19731994 (Colin Rollings and Michael Thrasher) Local Parties in the German Countryside (Herbert Schneider) Local Parties and Electioneering in Germany: Local Political Messages in an Era of Nationalized Political Communication (Susan E. Scarrow) Do Political Parties Matter in U.S. Cities? (Martin Saiz) Forms of Patronage and Political Parties in the Italian City (Annick Magnier) Local Parties in Switzerland: An Active Pillar of the Swiss Political System (Andreas Ladner) Local Party Organizations in Denmark: Crisis or Adaptation? (Roger Buch Jensen) The Local Party System in Poland (Zbigniew Zychowicz) From Communist Predominance to Multi-party System: The Change in the Local Party System in Russia, 1986-1995 (Sabine Kropp) Conclusion Political Parties in National and Local Context (Martin Saiz)

Baldwin and Scotland: More than Englishness

This article explores the role of the Conservative and Unionist party leader of Great Britain - Stanley Baldwin - in relation to Scotland, the Scottish Unionist party and the Scottish electorate. During the inter-war period, Unionism was aggressively challenged by both socialism and Scottish nationalism. Baldwin was aware that his party needed to present itself as both the natural party of England and as the natural party of Scotland if it was to survive. Although generally considered to be the archetypal Englishman, Baldwin cleverly re-created himself for the Scottish political constituency, a self-portrayal which allowed him to be accepted by Scottish audiences as one of their own. He successfully followed a line of appeal that contended that Unionist values were inherently part of the historical and cultural inheritance of Scotland; if Scots wanted to retain and develop their distinct national identity, Baldwin argued that Unionism was their only possible form of political expression.

‘Independents’, ‘switchers’ and voting for third parties in Britain 1979–92

‘Independents’, ‘switchers’ and voting for third parties in Britain 1979–92

The relationship between government and opposition in the bundestag and house of commons in the run‐up to the Maastricht Treaty

This article analyses modes of interaction between government and opposition in the German Bundestag and the British House of Commons in the run‐up to the Maastricht Treaty, and the implications of co‐operation or a lack thereof for the parties involved. The article is based on the premise that the government—opposition relationship is not derived solely from power relationships and institutional factors, but is also a matter of democratic legitimacy. Three indicators are used to ascertain the level of government—opposition co‐operation: the creation of parliamentary committees, information exchange and incentive management. Based on an institutional analysis and interviews with legislators, the finding is that although parties in Germany and the UK have created parliamentary committees dealing with European affairs, only in the former did the government utilise the new tool for co‐operation with the opposition, in terms of information exchange and incentive management. Consequently, informal co‐operation in Germany brought about an outcome compatible with the interests of the parties involved. By contrast, the lack of co‐operation with opposition parties in Britain led to an extreme parliamentary crisis.

"A Very Present Menace"? Attlee, Communism and the Cold War!

With the end of the Cold War and the further opening of archives, the role of Western communist parties and their relationship with the former Soviet Union has been the subject of fresh scrutiny. This article examines the conviction of the British Labour Government and its security services that the Communist Party of Great Britain represented, at least in the early Cold War period, a "very present menace". The article discusses the policies of the Soviet Union in Europe and the Communist Party in Britain and explores how these shaped the perspectives of the Attlee Government, especially during the London dock strike of 1949. When placed against this background, Attlee’s anti‐communism can no longer be accepted, as most commentators do, as simply a product of Cold War paranoia.

The Dynamics of Party Activism in Britain: A Spiral of Demobilization?

Changes in activism among grassroots members of the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain are modelled using panel surveys in this article, with party members being surveyed before and after the 1992 general election. The evidence suggests that a decline in activism over time has occurred in both parties, but this decline is greater in the Labour party than in the Conservative party. This is attributed to a number of political, cultural and sociological changes in society over time, but in the short run the main factor is the outcome of the general election in 1992. These trends are modelled by means of a ‘general incentives’ theory of activism, which explains the decline in activism in terms of changing incentives for political action. Reductions in incentives for activism were, with one exception, greater for Labour party members than for Conservatives, which explains the differences between the two parties. This may produce a ‘spiral of demobilization’ in which electoral losses produce a decline in activism and campaigning at the local level, which in turn leads to further electoral losses.

Stakeholder Governance: A Cybernetic and Property Rights Analysis

A cybernetic perspective is used to evaluate firms with or without stakeholder participation in their information and control architecture. This approach also provides a basis for evaluating firms with more than one board or control centre as found in Japan, Europe, and labour‐managed firms. Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that multi control centres with stakeholder participation can provide competitive advantages. This hypothesis is supported by the Law of Requisite Variety and the Williamson analysis of why Multi‐divisional firms provide advantages over Unitary Form firms. The opportunity to support stakeholder governance with stakeholder ownership is identified from an analysis of how corporate rights of perpetual succession permits investors to be overpaid. The public policy implications of investor overpayments are considered. Also considered is the use of cybernetic principles to introduce self‐regulation as proposed by the US Vice President. Policy initiatives are identified to build a ‘stakeholder economy’ as proposed by the Leader of the Labour Party in Britain. The paper concludes that appropriate stakeholder governance could improve equity and self‐governance in the private sector, the quality of democracy in the public sector, and the efficiency of both sectors.

Multilevel analysis of the changing relationship between class and party in Britain 1964?1992

Previous analyses of the changing relationship between class and vote in Britain have assumed that the British Election Surveys constitute simple random samples. In fact, they are all clustered samples, and the number of sampling points has varied substantially over time. The paper uses the statistical technique of multi-level modelling to investigate the effects of this clustering and compares the results with those obtained with single-level logistic models. In general, the multilevel and single-level models lead to similar conclusions about the changing relation between class and vote; they both show evidence of a change in the class/vote relationship over time. However, the multilevel models also show that, while the clustering does not affect conclusions about the class dealignment debate, there are other important substantive findings which emerge from the multilevel approach. First, there is clear evidence of substantial constituency differences in the intercepts; that is, individuals had very different propensities to vote Conservative in different constituencies. Second, there were also significant constituency differences in class voting, that is, constituencies seemed to vary in their level of class polarization.

Fine doctors and fallen bishops

There's an awful lot of them about these days—morals I mean. We've had a lot of them from the leaders of the main political parties in Britain. And ex-Roman Catholic Bishop Roddy Wright could have done with some of his ex-lover's morals before selling his story to the News of the World. His ex-mistress tore up his cheque for £2000 and gave her story to the BBC rather than to the chequebook waving tabloid newspapers. That's about as close to the moral high ground as I've seen among this bunch. I confess to a deep suspicion of those from whom the word moral escapes their lips …

Class voting and the Labour Party in Britain: The analysis of qualitative data on voting preference in the 1987 General Election

The paper analyses open-ended data from the 1987 British Election Survey. Respondents were asked their reasons for voting the way they did, and the responses were recorded verbatim. Replies from working-class and middle-class Labour voters were analysed, and content analysis was used to match responses to the main theoretical themes in the psephological literature. The main focus of analysis was on the prevalence of class and class-related references. Somewhat surprisingly, a great many of the reports from the respondents echoed the class themes outlined by Butler and Stokes in the 1960s. Moreover, class-related responses were very strongly represented in the middle-class component of the sample. The implications of the findings for estimations of the prevalence of class voting are explored.

The Lion and the Newt: A British View of American Conservatives' Fear of Social History

Viewed from Lancaster, England the sustained virulence and intolerance of the American Right's attack on social history is difficult to comprehend, both in its scale and its nature. It is not that British social historians are unfamiliar with the prejudices and paranoias of right-wing governments we have, after all, had one of our own since 1979, and Major differs from Thatcher in style and selfS presentation rather than in substance. But during all this time no attack on this potentially subversive discipline has come near to the intensity of the American campaign, although, as we shall see, this is not to suggest that social history in Britain has gone unchallenged as regards its and core methodologies, or that it has had an easy ride. The contrast in experiences may be instructive in various ways, and I propose to discuss the fortunes of social history under the Conservative Party in Britain over the last fifteen years before enquiring into the possible reasons for the differences in the attitudes, policies and profiles of the Right in the two countries. This in turn may make contribution, however indirect, to the construction of survival strategies by American social historians in these difficult times. The Thatcher regime was no more hostile to social history than to the social sciences generally, and although damage was done, it was not the result of directly-targeted campaign. One of the first priorities of the 1979 government was to cut the funding of the national research councils, and the Social Science Research Council was so seriously affected that it had to reduce the number of postgraduate training awards by 25 percent in the first year. Within this framework Economic and Social History, under which motley label most social history research and teaching was then assumed to be done, was under particular pressure, but only because it was seen as traditional scholarly subject which was at risk in the heightened search for relevance to business and policy which was now in vogue.l But social history survived as recipient of research grants, despite perceptions in high places that there was (infamously) no such thing as society, only individuals and their families (a remark attributed to Margaret Thatcher), and that reading history at university was a luxury (a pearl of wisdom from the same chemistry graduate). The concept of social science was officially abolished, but the research council, re-named in newspeak the Economic and Social Research Council, survived and continued to fund projects in social history. Senior social historians felt, however, that the dice were loaded against the discipline and that it had to struggle to be heard; thus Eric Evans in 1987, when the (then) University Grants Commission was persuaded to institute an enquiry into the current state of economic and social history:

Guidelines on appropriate indications for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy

Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy is a valuable diagnostic tool, but for an endoscopy service to be effective it is essential that it is not overloaded with inappropriately referred patients. A joint working party in Britain has considered the available literature on indications for endoscopy, assessed standard practice through a questionnaire, and audited randomly selected cases using an independent panel of experts and an American database system. They used these data to produce guidelines on the appropriate and inappropriate indications for referral for endoscopy, although they emphasise that under certain circumstances there may be reasons to deviate from the advice given. The need for endoscopy is most difficult to judge in patients with dyspepsia, and this aspect is discussed in detail. Early endoscopy will often prove more cost effective than delaying until the indications are clearer.

Changes in Party Identity

Political folklore holds that political parties often try to change their images following a disastrous election defeat. This paper inquires into the truth of this common assumption through a systematic analysis of manifestos promulgated by eight parties in Britain, Germany and the USA prior to national elections in the 1950s through 1980s. Each election was classified as triumphal, gratifying, tolerable, disappointing or calamitous from the standpoint of each party. The change in party images for adjacent elections was assessed by correlating the percentages of sentences devoted to standard political themes in the pair of manifestos. We tested the hypothesis that parties were most likely to change their policy images following disappointing or calamitous elections. Our findings suggest that poor electoral performance was not a sufficient condition to produce a major overhaul of party images, but poor performance in the prior election was virtually necessary to produce major change in policy packaging at the next election.

An analysis of Britain's party manifestos for Europe, 1979–94

An analysis of Britain's party manifestos for Europe, 1979–94

Beyond health care

The aims of health policy ought not to be contentious. Topping the list should be a commitment to improve the length and quality of life of everyone and to minimise avoidable differences in health status among social groups. The corollaries of such goals include improving our understanding of the determinants of health and intervening in public policy to deliver the required outcomes. Unfortunately, no evidence exists that any political party in Britain has grasped the extent to which thinking must change. Debates about the financing, governance, and structure of the NHS remain as dominant as they are largely unconstructive. What is needed now is a radical change of direction away from tinkering with the organisation of health care towards developing new approaches to health policy. The importance of this proposition is illustrated in a new book produced under the auspices of …

Spain

A model is proposed to explain why parties in Britain have usually enjoyed a jump in popularity following the selection of a new leader. Three variables are used to explain the size of these boosts. Parties can expect a greater jump when: the party is below its normal level of support; economic circumstances are in the party's favour; and the opposing leader has been in place a long time.

Short-term popularity boost following leadership change in Great Britain

A model is proposed to explain why parties in Britain have usually enjoyed a jump in popularity following the selection of a new leader. Three variables are used to explain the size of these boosts. Parties can expect a greater jump when: the party is below its normal level of support; economic circumstances are in the party's favour; and the opposing leader has been in place a long time.

The ecology party in England and Wales: Branch organisation and activity

The 1979 general election represented a watershed event in the development of the British Ecology Party. The party's membership jumped from 500 to more than 5,000 in a matter of weeks and many new branches were established. As a consequence of this expansion, an existing division in the party between those who favoured a traditional model of party organisation and those who favoured an alternative model was exacerbated. This article reports the results of the findings of a survey of the party's local level of organisation conducted in 1981 and places those results in the context of the changes. Data are presented on branch formation, branch organisation, branch activity and the background characteristics of the branch contacts. Additionally, case studies are used to illustrate the two approaches to party organisation.

The green party in England and Wales: Structure and development: The early years

The Ecology Party, the forerunner to the English and Welsh, and Scottish Green Parties in Britain, was the first such party in Europe. However, despite this primacy, academic study of green parties has concentrated on continental parties. This is because of their greater success in placing representatives in public office. Drawing heavily upon research conducted at the time, this article discusses both the development of the Ecology Party in the years to 1981 and also the national and regional structure of the party in that year. The discussion is placed within the context of the debate over ‘new parties’ and also that over the compatibility between democracy and oligarchy within political parties.