Postwar British Politics in Perspective

by Marsh, David; Buller, Jim; Hay, Colin; Johnston, Jim; Kerr, Peter; McAnulla, Stuart; Watson, Matthew

• ISBN13: 9780745620305
• ISBN10: 0745620302
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-06-02
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

This broad-ranging and original text provides an accessible introduction to British politics since 1945, challenging many well-established orthodoxies.

Author Biography

David Marsh, Jim Buller, Colin Hay, Jim Johnston, Peter Kerr, Stuart McAnulla and Matthew Watson are all members of the Department of Political Science & International Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Table of Contents

About the Authors	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction: Explaining Change in the Postwar Period	1	(20)
David Marsh
A strong historical perspective: theoretically informed, but empirically grounded	2	(4)
A multidimensional approach	6	(3)
A sophisticated conception of change	9	(2)
Let's question positivism	11	(3)
Beyond structure and agency	14	(1)
Don't neglect the ideational	15	(1)
Don't forget the international dimension	16	(1)
Conclusion	17	(1)
The structure of the book	18	(3)
Part I Key Themes of Postwar British Political Development	21	(124)
Continuity and Discontinuity in British Political Development	23	(20)
Colin Hay
Continuity, discontinuity, change and stability	25	(2)
Continuity and discontinuity: the growth of the British state	27	(7)
Interrogating institutional change: structure and agency	34	(5)
Beyond structure versus agency: interrogating the process of change	39	(4)
Britain's Economic Decline: Cultural Versus Structural Explanations	43	(23)
Jim Johnston
What do we mean by `decline'?	44	(2)
The cultural thesis	46	(1)
Unlikely bedfellows	47	(8)
The determinist/voluntarist tension within the cultural thesis	55	(8)
Conclusion	63	(3)
The Postwar Consensus: A Woozle That Wasn't?	66	(21)
Peter Kerr
The postwar consensus: an enduring thesis	67	(2)
The consensus `debate'	69	(2)
Aiming short of the target: why the consensus thesis has endured	71	(3)
Broadening our focus	74	(2)
Revising the consensus debate	76	(7)
The conflictual character of British politics in the postwar period	83	(2)
Conclusion	85	(2)
Crisis and Political Development in Postwar Britain	87	(20)
Colin Hay
Conceptualizing crisis	88	(2)
The objectivity and/or subjectivity of crisis	90	(3)
The crisis of the 1970s: a crisis of regulation, legitimation or overload?	93	(7)
Towards an alternative perspective: on crisis as paradigm-shift	100	(2)
From growth to contradiction to crisis	102	(5)
Britain's Relations with the European Union in Historical Perspective	107	(18)
Jim Buller
Domestic economic management and foreign policy, 1925-61	109	(2)
Britain and the European Community, 1961-79	111	(4)
The Europeanization of British economic policy, 1979-97	115	(6)
The Major government and the `Euro-ratchet'	121	(3)
Conclusion	124	(1)
Globalization and the Development of the British Political Economy	125	(20)
Matthew Watson
Positions in the globalization debate	125	(3)
Globalization as ideology?	128	(3)
Globalization as economic reality?	131	(6)
Globalization as more of the same?	137	(3)
Globalization and the political restructring of the state	140	(5)
Part II Key Narratives of Postwar British Political Development	145	(64)
Questions of Change and Continuity in Attlee's Britain	147	(21)
Jim Johnston
The impact of war	148	(4)
The impact of Labour	152	(2)
Beyond an agency-centred narrative	154	(3)
Towards a dialectical explanation of change	157	(2)
What about political constraints?	159	(1)
Labourism and the British political tradition	160	(5)
Conclusion	165	(3)
Explaining Thatcherism: Towards a Multidimensional Approach	168	(21)
Peter Kerr
David Marsh
The Thatcherite chameleon	169	(1)
Problems with current explanations	170	(5)
Restating the problem of Thatcherism	175	(1)
Towards an evolutionary conception of Thatcherism	176	(4)
Factors governing the evolution of Thatcherism	180	(4)
The evolution of Thatcherite state strategy	184	(3)
Conclusion	187	(2)
The Post-Thatcher Era	189	(20)
Stuart McAnulla
Placing the Major government in context	191	(5)
The agency of the Major government	196	(4)
Partycraft-the discipline of the new democracy?	200	(5)
The post-That-jor era: first appraisals	205	(2)
Conclusion	207	(2)
Conclusion: Analysing and Explaining Postwar British Political Development	209	(17)
Colin Hay
David Marsh
Analysing and explaining change	211	(4)
Explaining change: the relationship between economic, political and ideological explanation	215	(2)
Beyond structural versus intentional explanation	217	(1)
The relationship between the material and the ideational	218	(2)
The relationship between the domestic and the international	220	(2)
Conclusion	222	(4)
Bibliography	226	(20)
Index	246