At the time of writing, with Tony Blair safely ensconced in Downing Street and the Labour Party still exhibiting all signs of becoming the ‘natural party of government’, it is rather chastening to recall the not-so-distant past. For,... more
At the time of writing, with Tony Blair safely ensconced in Downing Street and the Labour Party still exhibiting all signs of becoming the ‘natural party of government’, it is rather chastening to recall the not-so-distant past. For, after successive electoral defeats in 1983, 1987 and 1992, commentators, pundits and psephologists alike rushed to conclude that Labour was not, nor was ever likely again to become, electable. Consigned to the political wilderness for eternity, Labour would not only have to accommodate itself to the legacy of Thatcherism, but would have to do so in a ‘one party state’ where it could never again hope to seize the mantle of governmental power (Margetts and Smyth, 1994; King, 1993; Nairn, 1994; cf. Heath, et al., 1994). Scarcely five years after this had become something of a prevailing orthodoxy, talk is now of the Conservatives’ banishment to the political margins. However premature, heroic and foolhardy such claims, the tables have, for now, been turned.
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This chapter introduces the volume, sets out its key themes, and explains how the chapters interrogate the nexus between governance and anti-politics via the concept of depoliticization. It argues that the literature on governance has... more
This chapter introduces the volume, sets out its key themes, and explains how the chapters interrogate the nexus between governance and anti-politics via the concept of depoliticization. It argues that the literature on governance has drawn attention to a ‘capacity gap’ between elected politicians and those who actually take decisions about essential public services, while the literature on anti-politics has highlighted a growing ‘democratic gap’ between politicians and citizens. These issues arise in a dynamic context that is captured by concepts such as meta-governance and multilevel governance but also a wider disillusionment with neo-liberal ideology. This book addresses the ‘research gap’ that arises from the relative absence of studies that have drilled down into the relationship between the ‘capacity gap’ and ‘democratic gap’, by focusing on depoliticization. Overall, we argue that studies of depoliticization are well placed to examine these questions and especially the ‘nexu...
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It is a considerable pleasure to be invited to comment on such a valuable and timely set of reflections on the concept of politics itself. Each reminds us in a different way of our responsibility, as political analysts and politicizers of... more
It is a considerable pleasure to be invited to comment on such a valuable and timely set of reflections on the concept of politics itself. Each reminds us in a different way of our responsibility, as political analysts and politicizers of social processes, to our subject matter and to political subjects – the agents of the practices we seek to describe and explain (...).
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In this chapter, we turn to consider the ways in which legacies which started with national-level legislation can be traced in the experiences of families and households. Our case study revolves around the right to but one’s council home,... more
In this chapter, we turn to consider the ways in which legacies which started with national-level legislation can be traced in the experiences of families and households. Our case study revolves around the right to but one’s council home, which the Thatcher government promoted in 1980 and reinforced via a series of further Acts of Parliament throughout the remainder of the 1980s, and what this did to the social and economic profile of council house residents and their experiences of domestic property crimes (such as burglary, theft from their homes, garages and garden sheds). We find that over time as sales increased, so the percentage of council house residents became increasingly drawn from poorer sections of society, and that over time, this increased their exposure to risk and hence victimisation. This stands as a way of exploring how legacies which initially start at the national level can end up operating at much smaller geographies.
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This chapter examines criminal justice policies, specifically, the degree to which these increased levels of punitiveness, levels which still exist today. The topic of ‘law and order’ was one on which Thatcher accumulated much political... more
This chapter examines criminal justice policies, specifically, the degree to which these increased levels of punitiveness, levels which still exist today. The topic of ‘law and order’ was one on which Thatcher accumulated much political capital, but did this translate into actual policies? The legacy which we chart herein in is not a straight-forward one; initially there is little evidence of a ‘toughening’ of the criminal justice system along the lines one might expect given the rhetoric on law and order. The chapter emphasises the role of ideational change and the ways in which this unfolds gradually over time.
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The fear of crime has occupied a substantial research agenda in criminology; this extends to include theories of why people fear crime. In this exemplar, we explore how political leadership influences the fear of crime (including... more
The fear of crime has occupied a substantial research agenda in criminology; this extends to include theories of why people fear crime. In this exemplar, we explore how political leadership influences the fear of crime (including perceptions of antisocial behaviour). The ‘age, period and cohort’ (APC) approach we adopt recognises the distinct temporal processes of all of the following: individual ageing, current context(s) and generational membership. Following Mannheim (Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, Karl Mannheim. London: Routledge, 1928), we see this as crucial to understanding the origins and shape of social change. Employing repeated cross-sectional data from the British Crime Survey, we explore how worry about crime and perceptions of antisocial behaviour are shaped by the political environment in which respondents grew up. This exemplar shows how a political legacy may instil itself in the values which individuals hold throughout their lives.
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Sociology, Political Science, Politics, Ideology, Political Studies, and 3 moreThatcherism, Covert, and battle
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Despite the posturing, both the United Kingdom and the European Union are trying to reach a deal. However, London’s cliffedge strategy and Brussels’ control of the agenda and progress of the negotiations could result in an “any deal is... more
Despite the posturing, both the United Kingdom and the European Union are trying to reach a deal. However, London’s cliffedge strategy and Brussels’ control of the agenda and progress of the negotiations could result in an “any deal is better than no deal”. A last-minute “Australian” or “Canadian”-style trade deal would have severe economic repercussions for the United Kingdom, in the context of a Brexit that threatens the political system and even the United Kingdom’s unity
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In its dual role as both the ‘economics ministry’ and the ‘finance ministry’, HM Treasury sits at the apex of the British state, and indeed the British political economy. This role has received a great deal of critical attention in the... more
In its dual role as both the ‘economics ministry’ and the ‘finance ministry’, HM Treasury sits at the apex of the British state, and indeed the British political economy. This role has received a great deal of critical attention in the wake of the 2008/09 recession and subsequent imposition of ‘austerity’ by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, continued by the Conservative majority government; for example, it is currently being reviewed by former Head of the UK Civil Service, Lord Kerslake, on behalf of the Labour Party. In this Brief, we consider previous attempts to challenge the Treasury’s pre-eminence within government over economic policy, and suggest that the Treasury should be accepted as the dominant economics ministry with political capital and effort spent on reforming its role, responsibilities and mandate. Creating an alternative economics department within government – a ‘beefed up’ business department – will have only a limited impact. The Brief als...
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Voting is a symbolic practice. Yet political scientists tend to focus either on the outcomes of elections or on citizens’ motivations for voting in the first place – typically by building models of the former on the basis of assumptions... more
Voting is a symbolic practice. Yet political scientists tend to focus either on the outcomes of elections or on citizens’ motivations for voting in the first place – typically by building models of the former on the basis of assumptions made about the latter. By doing so, they forget the symbolic significance of the practice itself and the meaning it has for the participants. In this article, we seek to restore a focus on this symbolic dimension through an analysis of voting rituals in France and Britain. We explore what citizens do when they vote. In particular we pay attention to how the voter’s choice is constructed as either something that can be performed and hence displayed publicly, or as irredeemably secret and private. We consider how such typically taken-for-granted practices help us understand the extent to which these actions reflect divergent assumptions about the boundaries of the public and the private, and contribute to the construction of particular visions of the p...
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Genetics, Neuroscience, Sociology, Mental Health, Biotechnology, and 15 morePolitics, Cancer, Socialization, Political Socialization, Activism, Generation, Data, Disengagement, Cohort, Public Administration and Policy, Political Engagement, Repertoire, Cohort Analysis, Additive Models, and Expectation
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While the story for at least the classed growths of the Left Bank is one in which significant frost damage is the exception rather than the rule, the opposite is true in Pomerol and, above all, St Emilion.
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Postmodernism is a dangerous term, used in dismissive tones and with increasing abandon by political analysts to refer to work they regard as all too keen to embrace the limits of a science of the political. In this sense it has tended to... more
Postmodernism is a dangerous term, used in dismissive tones and with increasing abandon by political analysts to refer to work they regard as all too keen to embrace the limits of a science of the political. In this sense it has tended to become a term of exasperation at the work of others rather than a badge of self-identification. Within the political analyst’s lexicon, and like structuralism, functionalism and relativism before it, postmodernism is now principally employed as a term of abuse. Thus while many authors are declared ‘postmodernist’ by their critics, few openly embrace the term themselves. It is then important that if we are to do any kind of justice to the positions which might be labelled ‘postmodernist’ we are extremely careful in specifying what the term implies and what it does not imply.
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No single concept is more closely associated with the ‘modernization’ of the British Labour Party and, now, the European social democratic tradition more broadly than that of globalization.* The notion of a qualitative and epochal shift... more
No single concept is more closely associated with the ‘modernization’ of the British Labour Party and, now, the European social democratic tradition more broadly than that of globalization.* The notion of a qualitative and epochal shift in the contours of contemporary capitalism, marking the transition from an era of closed national economies to a single global market, has come to dominate Labour’s understanding of the context in which it now finds itself. It lies at the heart of the conception of the ‘third way’ New Labour now seeks to export to Europe and more broadly.1 As the following discussion will hopefully demonstrate, it is a very particular — and distinctly Anglo-US — conception of globalization that has come to inform Labour’s radical and increasingly infectious reassessment of the parameters of political possibility.2 Globalization has come to be invoked by New Labour, in opposition and now in government, as a largely nonnegotiable external economic constraint necessitating market-conforming social and economic reform.3 Consequently, the ‘harsh economic realities’ of ‘new times’ are held to compromise not only the Keynesianism, corporatism and traditional social democracy of the postwar period, but also the ‘over-regulated’ ‘European social model’ which was developed and consolidated throughout Northern Europe over this period of time. The casualties of globalization are, on the basis of this account, considerable; the stakes of New Labour’s understanding of the challenges and constraints it imposes significant indeed.
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Acknowledgements The Contributors 1. Introduction - Sue Penna, Martin O'Brien and Colin Hay 2. Theorising Modernity: Reflexivity, Identity and Environments in Giddens' Social Theory - Martin O'Brien 3. Radical Politics -... more
Acknowledgements The Contributors 1. Introduction - Sue Penna, Martin O'Brien and Colin Hay 2. Theorising Modernity: Reflexivity, Identity and Environments in Giddens' Social Theory - Martin O'Brien 3. Radical Politics - Neither Left Nor Right? - Ted Benton 4. Beyond Emancipation? the reflexivity of social movements - Paul Bagguley 5. Exploring Post-Traditional Orders: Individual Reflexivity, 'Pure Relations and Duality of Structure - Nicos Mouzelis 6. Life Politics, the Environment and the Limits of Sociology - Peter Dickens 7. Criminality, Social Environments and Late Modernity - Dave Smith 8. Modernity and the Politics of Identity - Martin O'Brien and Jenny Harris 9. Theorising Identity, Difference and Social Divisions - Floya Anthios 10. A World of Differences: What if it's so? How will we know? - Charles Lemert 11. Responses and Reflections: An Interview with Anthony Giddens Bibliography Index