By Tony Wright
ISBN-10: 0203322525
ISBN-13: 9780203322529
ISBN-10: 0415049644
ISBN-13: 9780415049641
Electorate and topics is an essay at the nature and of democracy in Britain on the finish of the 20 th century. It appears to be like on the normally held view that Britain is a version democracy, exposing it as a perilous fantasy that inhibits either radical inspiration and genuine constitutional swap. The ebook seems to be on the culture of political and constitutional inspiration in Britain and at modern political fact, revealing a large gulf among the 2. Dr Wright, a revered instructor and educational lately elected a Labour MP, considers Britain's rather acute type of a normal challenge of contemporary govt. whereas the state thinks of itself as a liberal democracy, its liberalism used to be in truth in position good prior to democracy got here onto the schedule. From the outset, democracy used to be obvious as an issue via either conservatives and liberals. Constitutional concerns have re-emerged at the political time table lately. Dr Wright discusses the capacity wherein we'd flow in the direction of a pluralistic, open and participatory democracy; he additionally argues, despite the fact that, that sensible reforms should not attainable except they're associated with a brand new culture of radical constitutional inspiration.
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Extra info for Citizens and Subjects: An Essay on British Politics
Sample text
Whatever else this did, it provided a cold douche of political reality to those still basking in the reflective glow of old stories told by the fire in the constitutional longroom. More generally, recent British politics have removed any lingering excuse for not grasping the character of a dominocracy. This is where rulers are too powerful; where there are inadequate means of challenge, scrutiny and accountability; and political life itself, as well as the quality of citizenship, is eroded and devalued.
Gone was the celebration of the British model of alternating two-party government. For others the problem was one of governmental ‘overload’, where government Doubts and discontents 31 was swamped and overwhelmed by the pressure of demands, interests and expectations on it and lacked the capacity to deliver. In part, this kind of analysis—which rapidly became a new orthodoxy—was intended as a general account of the difficulties of Western governments as a whole; but it was in relation to Britain that the analysis, with its febrile anticipation of systemic breakdown, was intended to have its most compelling application.
The fact of Representative government revisited 41 election, therefore, becomes the single hinge upon which the larger representative claims increasingly turn, so that the task becomes that of adroit and ‘professional’ election management (aided in the case of the governing party by its ability to choose the date). In this way, representation ceases to be a continuous process, linking governors and governed, and becomes the matter of a single managed moment. 8 Instead of being extended in response to the character of big government and a complex society, representation is thereby narrowed to a primary identification with electoral politics (of an unreconstructed kind) and the historical fact of universal suffrage.