Rational Choice and British Politics An Analysis of Rhetoric and Manipulation from Peel to Blair

by McLean, Iain

• ISBN13: 9780198295297
• ISBN10: 0198295294
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-06-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This engaging and original study, by one of the leading scholars of rational choice theory, explores the course of British parliamentary politics over the last 150 years. It combines social science and analytical narrative history with the great turning points in British politics: the Repeal of the Corn Law; the Victorian crisis of the Liberal and Conservative Parties; the Irish Question and Lloyd George's solution to it; the New Liberal origins of the welfare state; the politics of race and empire under Chamberlain and Powell; and the politics of "there is no alternative" under Margaret Thatcher.

Author Biography

Iain McLean is Professor of Politics at Nuffield College, Oxford University.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	xii
List of Figures	xiv
Introduction	1	(32)
Irish Potatoes and British Politics: Peel, Wellington, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws	33	(24)
Variables Used in the Rollcall Analysis	55	(2)
Dishing the Whigs: Disraeli, Salisbury, and the Relaunching of the Tory Party 1846--86	57	(30)
The Great Victorian Realignment	87	(26)
The Failure of Imperialism: Joseph Chamberlain and Enoch Powell	113	(40)
Did Enoch Powell win the 1970 General Election for the Conservatives? Did he win the February 1974 General Election for Labour?	145	(8)
Lloyd George: Supreme Tactician and Ambitious Strategist	153	(16)
The Patriot Game: Rhetoric and Heresthetic in the Anglo-Irish Treaty Negotiations of 1921	169	(35)
Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, December 6, 1921	194	(4)
Extracts from the Diary of Erskine Childers 1870--1922, Secretary to the Irish Delegation	198	(3)
Preference Orderings	201	(2)
The Irish Decision Sequence, 5 December 1921	203	(1)
`There is no alternative': Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair	204	(27)
Conclusion	231	(5)
References	236	(13)
Index	249