Download or read book The Labour Party and Constitutional Reform written by Peter Dorey and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2008-06-17 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the Labour Party's approach to constitutional reforms in historical context, and how these have been pursued more to 'modernize' political institutions, rather that radically transform them. Dorey explains the reasons for this constitutional conservatism, and the debates which specific reform proposals have prompted in the Party.

Download or read book The Labour Party and Electoral Reform written by Jasper Miles and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-09 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issue of electoral reform has divided the Labour Party since its inception, but only for a brief period in the early 20th century has the Party been committed to reforming first-past-the-post (FPTP). Now, having suffered four successive general election defeats, the Labour Party will have to reconsider its electoral strategy if it is, once again, to become a party of government. For some, a commitment to electoral reform is an indispensable step to widen support, transform the Party, and unlock British Politics. For others, the present system still offers the best hope of majority Labour governments, avoiding deals with the Party's rivals and the watering down of Labour's social democratic agenda. This book explores the Labour Party's approaches towards reforming the Westminster electoral system, and more widely, its perception of electoral pacts and coalition government. The opening chapters chart the debate from the inception of the Party up to the electoral and political impact of Thatcherism. From there, the book takes a closer look at significant recent events, including the Plant Report, the Jenkins Commission, the end of New Labour, the Alternative Vote Referendum, and closing with the Labour leadership containing the matter at Party Conference, 2021. Importantly, it offers an assessment of the pressures and environment in which Labour politicians have operated. Extensive elite-level interviews and new archival research offers the reader a comprehensive and definitive account of this debate.

Download or read book The People and the Party System written by Vernon Bogdanor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1981-09-10 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive critique of the historical debate on the referendum and electoral reform in British politics from the nineteenth century to 1981. The book falls into two parts. First, the role of the referendum in political debate since the beginning of the century is discussed and a detailed analysis of the referendums of the 1970s is presented. Vernon Bogdanor then clarifies both the benefits and the difficulties involved in the wider use of the referendum. In the second part of the book, he examines proposals for electoral reform since 1830 and considers the attitudes of the parties towards it today. The different forms of proportional representation are discussed and the consequences of adopting them in Britain assessed. The People and the Party System is written in clear, non-technical language and is intended for the general reader. It makes an important contribution to a vital debate and will be of interest to all those concerned with British politics.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems written by Erik S. Herron and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 1017 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No subject is more central to the study of politics than elections. All across the globe, elections are a focal point for citizens, the media, and politicians long before--and sometimes long after--they occur. Electoral systems, the rules about how voters' preferences are translated into election results, profoundly shape the results not only of individual elections but also of many other important political outcomes, including party systems, candidate selection, and policy choices. Electoral systems have been a hot topic in established democracies from the UK and Italy to New Zealand and Japan. Even in the United States, events like the 2016 presidential election and court decisions such as Citizens United have sparked advocates to promote change in the Electoral College, redistricting, and campaign-finance rules. Elections and electoral systems have also intensified as a field of academic study, with groundbreaking work over the past decade sharpening our understanding of how electoral systems fundamentally shape the connections among citizens, government, and policy. This volume provides an in-depth exploration of the origins and effects of electoral systems.

Download or read book Faces on the Ballot written by Alan Renwick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the key shifts in contemporary politics is the trend towards greater personalization. Collective actors such as political parties are losing relevance. Citizens are slowly dealigning from these actors, and individual politicians are therefore growing in importance in elections, in government, within parties, and in media reporting of politics. A crucial question concerns how this new pattern could be restructuring politics over the long run - notably, whether the personalization of politics is changing the institutional architecture of contemporary democracies. The authors show that the trend towards personalization is indeed changing core democratic institutions. Studying the evolution of electoral systems in thirty-one European democracies since 1945, they demonstrate that, since the 1990s, there has been a shift towards more personalized electoral systems. Electoral systems in most European countries now allow voters to express preferences for candidates, not just for political parties. And the weight of these voters' preferences in the allocation of seats has been increased in numerous countries. They examine the factors that appear to be driving this evolution, finding that the personalization of electoral systems is associated with the growing gap between citizens and politics. Politicians and legislators appear to perceive the personalization of electoral systems as a way to address the democratic malaise and to restore trust in politics by reducing the role of political parties in elections. The book also shows, however, that whether these reforms have had any success in achieving their aims is far less clear. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Emilie van Haute, Professor of Political Science, Universite libre de Bruxelles; Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University; and Susan Scarrow, Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Houston.

Download or read book Political Change and the Labour Party 1900 1918 written by Duncan Tanner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-13 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Tanner utilises extensive data from the respective party records to examine the nature of the Liberal and Labour parties prior to 1914.

Download or read book Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform written by Samuel Edward Finer and published by [London] : Anthony Wigram. This book was released on 1975 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Speak for Britain written by Martin Pugh and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-03-24 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, Speak for Britain! is a thought-provoking and highly original interpretation of the party's evolution, from its trade union origins to its status as a national governing party. It charts Labour's rise to power by re-examining the impact of the First World War, the general strike of 1926, Labour's breakthrough at the 1945 general election, the influence of post-war affluence and consumerism on the fortunes and character of the party, and its revival after the defeats of the Thatcher era. Controversially, Pugh argues that Labour never entirely succeeded in becoming 'the party of the working class'; many of its influential recruits - from Oswald Mosley to Hugh Gaitskell to Tony Blair - were from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds and rather than converting the working class to socialism, Labour adapted itself to local and regional political cultures.

Download or read book Leadership and Uncertainty Management in Politics written by François Vergniolle De Chantal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a range of international case studies from the USA, UK, France, Germany and Italy, this text assesses the conditions necessary for effective leadership and emphasizes the part played by uncertainty and division amongst followers.

Download or read book Unions in Court written by Larry Savage and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Canadian unions have scored a number of important Supreme Court victories, securing constitutional rights to picket, bargain collectively, and strike. But how did the labour movement, historically hostile to judicial intervention in labour relations, come to embrace legal activism as a first line of defense as opposed to a last resort? Unions in Court documents the evolution of the Canadian labour movement’s engagement with the Charter, demonstrating how and why labour has adopted a controversial, Charter-based legal strategy to challenge and change legislation that restricts union rights. This book’s in-depth examination of constitutional labour rights will have critical implications for labour movements as well as activists in other fields.

Download or read book Reinventing Britain written by Andrew McDonald and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First [originally] published in Great Britain in 2007 by Politico's Publishing ..."--Title page verso.

Download or read book Constitution Making and the Labour Party written by M. Evans and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-10-15 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since coming to power in 1997 the Labour government 's programme of constitutional reform represents an historic challenge to both British constitutional doctrine and Labour Party orthodoxy. Mark Evans examines the nature and extent of this challenge and argues that the New Constitutionalism is a key element of a policy agenda that in its most crucial aspects reflects the continuing transformation of the British industrial-welfare state into a competition state. Constitution-Making and the Labour Party analyzes key areas of reform under the Blair government from the perspective of Labour Party history and contemporary policy analysis.

Download or read book New Labour and Thatcherism written by R. Heffernan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2000-04-19 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Labour's 1997 victory was widely credited to the party's reinvention of itself as New Labour. This book argues that the transformation of the Labour Party is best understood as the product of Thatcherism, and marks the emergence of a new consensus in British politics.

Download or read book Electoral Reform in War and Peace 1906 18 written by Martin Pugh and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fourth Parliamentary Reform Act of 1918 gave the vote to nearly thirteen million men and over eight million women and determined the structure of electoral politics in twentieth-century Britain. Electoral Reform in War and Peace, 1906–18 (originally published in 1978) is the first attempt to explain this turning-point; it does so partly by exploring the relationship between reform of the franchise and reform of the electoral system between 1906 and 1918. The author’s analysis of the debate on Proportional Representation and the Alternative Vote sheds new light on the Liberal-Labour relationship in this period and shows why the Liberal and Labour Parties failed to reform the electoral system in 1917–18, thereby exposing themselves to twenty years of Conservative hegemony under the democratic franchise. The book attacks the status conventionally accorded to the militant suffragettes, particularly the Pankhursts, in the achievement of votes for women; it argues that the Pankhursts played a negligible role, at best, after 1914, and that the real progress made before the war was the work of the non-militant women largely ignored by historians. The author also offers a reinterpretation of wartime politics as a struggle over the timing of the General Election delayed from 1915 to 1918 and shows how this led to the emergence of a Reform Bill, more by accident than by design, through the innovation of the Speaker’s Conference. He considers the struggle over the Bill itself and the light thereby thrown upon the decline of the Liberal Party. Finally, the book analyses the relationship between wartime experience and political reform by arguing that reform grew essentially out of pre-war conditions, and by demonstrating how resilient attitudes remained under the impact of popular participation in the Great War. This forms a salutary corrective to the assumption that twentieth-century mass warfare had a democratising effect on British society.

Download or read book Why the Left Loses written by Kennedy, Paul and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the world, parties of the left and center-left have been struggling, losing ground to right-wing parties and various forms of reactionary populism. This book brings together a range of leading academics and experts on social democratic politics and policy to offer an international, comparative view of the changing political landscape. Using case studies from the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Australia and New Zealand contributors argue that despite different local and specific contexts, the mainstream center-left is beset by a range of common challenges. Analysis focuses on institutional and structural factors, the role of key individuals, and the atrophy of progressive ideas as interconnected reasons for the current struggles of the center-left.

Download or read book Reform and Revolt in the City of Dreaming Spires written by Duncan Bowie and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Books about Oxford have generally focused on the University rather than the city. This original book on the local politics of Oxford City from 1830 to 1980 is based on a comprehensive analysis of primary sources and tells the story of the city’s progressive politics. The book traces this history from Chartism and electoral reform in the mid-nineteenth century, through the early years of socialism to the impact of communism in the interwar period, the struggle between nuclear disarmers and Gaitskellites in the 1960s and the impact of the new revolutionary left in the late 1970s. Throughout the narrative, the book contrasts the two approaches of those engaged in progressive politics, those who focused on the politics of reform and improved government and those who preferred the politics of revolt, protest and revolutionary rhetoric. The author argues that a central feature of this history has been the co-existence and interaction of working- and middle- class elements. It rediscovers a rich heritage, a fascinating story and offers a rare wide-ranging chronological narrative of local UK city politics. Through its extensive quotes from primary sources, the book presents a vivid picture of local politics over 150 years.

Download or read book Why Cities Lose written by Jonathan A. Rodden and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prizewinning political scientist traces the origins of urban-rural political conflict and shows how geography shapes elections in America and beyond Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography. In the late nineteenth century, support for the left began to cluster in cities among the industrial working class. Today, left-wing parties have become coalitions of diverse urban interest groups, from racial minorities to the creative class. These parties win big in urban districts but struggle to capture the suburban and rural seats necessary for legislative majorities. A bold new interpretation of today's urban-rural political conflict, Why Cities Lose also points to electoral reforms that could address the left's under-representation while reducing urban-rural polarization.