Progressive Dilemma Research Articles

A progressive dilemma? Investigating cross-country variations in family-immigration policies through the lens of welfare-state regimes

ABSTRACT The notion of a ‘progressive dilemma’, according to which there is an intrinsic tension between comprehensive welfare states and large-scale immigration, has figured prominently in scholarly as well as political debates over the last decade. As one of the main categories of entry in most affluent democracies, family immigration stands out as a particularly interesting test case in this context. Building on this notion of a progressive dilemma, as well as on other theorizing on the welfare-migration nexus, this study examines whether the restrictive effects of certain risk factors on family-immigration policies, such as growing immigration and rising unemployment, have been conditioned by the type of welfare regime. The empirical analysis herein finds that increasing immigration and higher unemployment have triggered policy restrictions in Basic Security welfare states, but that the influence of these factors on policy changes is less clear in State Corporatist and Universal welfare states. Contrary to what the idea of the progressive dilemma would lead us to expect, Basic Security welfare states with weaker universal and redistributive features have been more likely to sharpen restrictions on the admission of family migrants when under pressure from increasing immigration and rising unemployment.

Scandinavian Social Democrats Facing The ‘Progressive Dilemma’: Immigration and Welfare States In Left-of-Centre Party Programs

Scandinavian Social Democrats Facing The ‘Progressive Dilemma’: Immigration and Welfare States In Left-of-Centre Party Programs

The Left's New Urbanism

AbstractThe idea of suburbia, or the suburban, or the suburbs, can imply a number of different things. Suburbia suggests a physical place, in general the outskirts of a city or large town; suburban can infer a certain lifestyle; and the idea of the suburbs is often used to identify a community or class of people who inhabit a specific territory. In politics, these terms can also retain various meanings in terms of geography, culture or community. Alongside the ideas of the urban or the rural, they are often used to debate questions of political strategy and shifting electoral coalitions. In this article, ideas of urban and suburban places, cultures and communities are used to consider wider debate regarding future coalitions and strategy within the modern left, specifically a renewed urban politics that can be identified. This new ‘urbanism’ suggests a geographical realignment—partly on cultural or lifestyle grounds—which is significant within an overall attempt to redefine the ‘base’ of the left in terms of class and community. This article considers these issues with reference to what historically has been described as the ‘Progressive Dilemma’.

Fiscal burdens and knowledge of immigrant selection criteria

ABSTRACT Both scholarly and popular accounts of Canada's relatively non-conflictual immigration politics have attributed substantial power to the selectivity of the country’s immigration policy. In this paper, we use new measures of knowledge of the fiscally selective elements of the immigration system to demonstrate that individuals who know more about the system are, in fact, more supportive of immigration, and that this impact is strongest among those who consider themselves on the left. We argue that this is evidence of the progressive's dilemma, showing in particular that knowledge of welfare state-relevant selection criteria such as the Canadian system’s discrimination against those with chronic illnesses or those who are older is much more important in determining the attitudes of respondents on the left than those on the right.

Nairn's England and the progressive dilemma: reappraising Tom Nairn on English nationalism

AbstractIn British political and intellectual circles, there is a longstanding disagreement between those envisaging an opportunity for the development of a radical English patriotism and those resistant to the idea of a progressive English imaginary. Despite their antithetical quality, both divergent frameworks were explored in the work of Scottish nationalist and New Left intellectual Tom Nairn, long before mainstream social science preoccupied itself with the ‘English Question’. Notwithstanding his later espousal of Englishness as a contribution to democratic renewal, Nairn's earlier notion of an inherently regressive nationalism remains the dominant frame for many intellectuals and politicians confronted by the challenges of increasingly politicised English identities. Whilst he has been only one of a number of thinkers and writers who have informed and contested political thinking on this question in the UK, the influence of his early work upon liberal and left circles has been underestimated, an oversight that this article addresses.

Class, Politics and the Progressive Dilemma

AbstractThis article considers contemporary class inequalities and how they might shape a progressive politics in the UK. Drawing on findings from the BBC Class Survey, it outlines changes in the class structure, class mobility and class identities. It is argued that the class structure is increasingly polarised and fragmented, with a wealthy elite, a vulnerable precariat and fragmented middle and working classes in between. Declining upward social mobility is a source of anxiety for middle‐class and working‐class parents alike. Class identification, especially working‐class identification, has weakened over time, although class snobbery is far from dead. Class has changed and the class basis of politics is changing now too. A progressive politics is possible if the political parties of the centre‐left appeal to the majority of the electorate rather than one class, acknowledge common concerns and worries and appeal to shared hopes and dreams that straddle class boundaries.

English Radicalism and the Annihilation of the ‘Progressive Dilemma’

AbstractThe rise of political nationalism in the early twenty‐first century threatens to subsume the ‘progressive dilemma’ as identified by David Marquand. The labourist tradition is collapsing culturally, the liberal tradition intellectually. In the face of a new politics of nativism across Europe and America, the labour movement needs to put the debate over the progressive dilemma behind it and find a new source of philosophical inspiration in the English radical tradition.

The Progressive Dilemma Revisited

AbstractIn his book of the same title, David Marquand identified the progressive dilemma faced by many intellectuals since the beginning of the twentieth century as a question of whether it was better to work through a political party or through civil society to achieve reform. This dilemma was sharpened by the emergence of the Labour party as the main challenger to the Conservatives, because the party was so closely identified with the defence of a particular interest. This hindered the creation of the kind of broad electoral coalition that could win general elections. Throughout most of its history, Labour has failed to realise its promise and sustain reforming governments. In this article, the history of the Labour party over the past hundred years is outlined, in particular the three cycles 1931–51, 1951–79 and 1979–2010 and the divisions and recriminations that have followed each period in government. The current predicament of the party is then briefly assessed.

Dilemmas and Disappointments: Progressive Politics 1896–2016

AbstractAttempts at a Labour–Liberal Democrat Progressive Alliance came to nothing prior to the 1997 general election. The original idea of progressivism, first mooted in Britain in 1896, was an American one. Suggestions for a progressive alliance in the UK came from Lloyd George in 1914, and then again in 1931, each time with little effect. Nothing emerged after 1945 until the Lib–Lab pact negotiated by Callaghan and Steel in 1977, which led to electoral misfortune for both and the rise and fall of the SDP. In 2010 a coalition between the Lib Dems (under Clegg) and the Conservatives was always much the more likely option. Most Labour people no longer saw the Lib Dems as a party of the left. The Coalition Agreement in 2010 showed the idea of an alliance to be a centrist, elitist one with little grass‐roots support. Such an alliance would flourish through abstract pressure groups rather than popular democracy, especially with a Labour party led by Corbyn. In the US and the UK, progressivism went badly wrong in its politics: Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalist campaign of 1912 divided American reformers fatally, as did Lloyd George's postwar Coalition in Britain after 1918. Now, even after Brexit, a progressive alliance seems further away than ever. The story of the ‘Progressive Dilemma’ remains one of unrealistic projects, invariably disappointed.

Introduction: The Progressive Dilemma in British Politics

AbstractThis special edition reflects on the contemporary relevance of the insights and concerns of David Marquand's book The Progressive Dilemma. In this Introduction, the editors set the scene for these reflections. They consider the structural changes that have occurred in politics since the 1990s: the impact of globalisation, the erosion of class identities, the rise of ‘identity politics’ and the continued fragmentation of the party system. There has been no reconciliation between the parties of the centre‐left, nor any re‐examination of the ‘liberal tradition’ and the potential for a new synthesis with revisionist social democracy. On the one hand, Corbynism is a radicalised metropolitan species of liberalism, while on the other there are plenty in Labour who stress the need for the party to re‐engage with the traditional, socially conservative values of the working class in a new ‘postliberal’ appeal. Yet the authors argue that those who broadly identify with progressive causes in British politics—animated by the various overlapping strands of social liberalism, social democracy and liberal socialism—have still to work out how to address the historic failings that Marquand so eloquently exposed, to create a new and inspiring intellectual vision that unites and energises the left and centre‐left.

Scotland's Progressive Dilemma

AbstractSince the 1980s the Scottish National Party has presented its political project in progressive terms, but this created a twin dilemma: in order to achieve independence, the SNP needed to win political power, and in order to achieve political power it had to win an election, and orthodoxy dictated that winning elections in Scotland involved a centre‐left platform. But the two have often been in conflict, as is clear as the SNP approaches its tenth anniversary in devolved government and agitates for another referendum.

Liberal Nationalism, Imagined Immigration and the Progressive Dilemma

AbstractThe article critically evaluates liberal nationalist perspectives on immigration by drawing on findings from a qualitative research project undertaken in 2014 among White British interviewees in England. From one perspective the study's participants' attitudes seem to support arguments made by David Goodhart and other liberal nationalists regarding immigration, social trust and integration. However, further analysis suggests that these attitudes are to a very significant extent drawn first from partially imagined ideas surrounding immigration and second from potentially unreliable sources. These findings thus provoke the question of whether social trust and notions of a national community are actually being disrupted by immigration, or whether they are being disrupted by prejudiced nationalist and xenophobic perceptions about immigration and immigrants. The article will conclude by arguing for more nuanced research into attitudes towards immigration and in favour of a sceptical approach to nationalist frameworks for interpreting society and politics in Britain today.

The progressive dilemma: from Lloyd George to Kinnock

The progressive dilemma: from Lloyd George to Kinnock

The Annotated Wizard of Oz (review)

Reviewed by: The Annotated Wizard of Oz David L. Greene (bio) The Annotated Wizard of Oz Michael Patrick Hearn . Many photographs and line illustrations; 24 illustrations in three colors, eight illustrations in four colors. 400 pp. (Clarkson N. Potter, $12. 50). L(yman) Frank Baum (1856-1919) is probably America's most important author of juvenile fantasies, but his work has been generally neglected;1 only recently has his Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) begun to attain scholarly and critical recognition. There has been some significant material published about Baum: Edward Wagenknecht's Utopia Americana (1929), Fred Erisman's "L. Frank Baum and the Progressive Dilemma" (American Quarterly, 20[1968]), Marius Bewley's "Oz Country" (in his recent Masks and Mirrors), Roger Sale's "L. Frank Baum, and Oz" (The Hudson Review, 25 [1972-1973]) come to mind and there are others. Two book-length studies of general interest have appeared: Martin Gardner and Russel B. Nye, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was (East Lansing, 1957) and Frank Joslyn Baum and Russell P. MacFall, To Please a Child, a Biography of L. Frank Baum . . . (Chicago, 1961). In 1957, The International Wizard of Oz Club was formed and in that year began its journal The Baum Bugle, which has published much material of critical and historical interest.2 But the attitude of many scholars toward Baum remains negative. By far the most ambitious attempt to present Baum to both the general and the scholarly public is the forthcoming Annotated Wizard of Oz, scheduled for publication in August, 1973. Clarkson Potter's annotated editions are well-known, but this volume is somewhat different from the others in the series. It is probably the most lavishly produced of them all, with the possible exception of the large quarto two-volume Annotated Sherlock Holmes (which, however, has no color illustrations). The illustrative matter in Annotated Wizard is the most striking portion of the volume. All W. W. Denslow's color plates for the book are reproduced in their original colors; all his text illustrations from the first [End Page 231] edition are used, plus many other Denslow Oz illustrations. These other illustrations include those he drew especially for the second edition of 1903, several from his own Oz projects (his 1904 Scarecrow and the Tin-Man pamphlet and newspaper comic page), and a number which were discovered by Mr. Hearn and which seem never to have been printed before. Also included are photographs of Baum, photographs from several of his theatrical and silent movie ventures, and much more. The many drawings and photographs in The Annotated Wizard of Oz make it a treasurehouse for Oz enthusiasts and for anyone interested in popular culture of the 1895-1915 period. I have seen various drafts of Mr. Hearn's manuscript during its composition, and I am not an unprejudiced reviewer of the work. I believe, however, that a less biased observer would agree that all future scholars will have to consult Annotated Wizard for its vast collection of factual material about Baum. Mr. Hearn has assiduously searched out contemporary sources and added much to our knowledge of Baum's life and the circumstances in which he wrote. In addition to the textual notes (which will be discussed below), Mr. Hearn's own contributions to the volume consist of an introduction, a bibliography, and an appendix on W. W. Denslow. I do not know how many pages his introduction fills (this review is based on galley proofs), but I believe that it is longer than any other in the Potter series. It tries quite successfully to see the Wizard within Baum's total output. The bibliography is fifteen pages long and consists of a complete listing of all Baum's published works that have been discovered and all his known unpublished writings, a list of published material about Baum and Denslow, and a full summary of foreign editions of the Wizard and of notable English language editions. The Denslow appendix (eight pages) discusses the relationship between Baum and Denslow, the disagreement between the two over which was more responsible for the success of their books, and Denslow's own publications which used characters from the...

L. Frank Baum and the Progressive Dilemma

L. Frank Baum and the Progressive Dilemma