Technical politics

The relationship between the Conservative Party and the organised working class is fundamental to the making of modern British politics. Although always a minority, the organised working class was perceived by Conservatives as a challenge, a threat and an opportunity. The book’s fundamental question is ‘why throughout its history was the Conservative Party so accommodating towards the organised working class?’ And why in the space of a relatively few years did it abandon this heritage? For much of the party’s history its leaders calculated they had more to gain from the unions’ political inclusion, but during the 1980s Conservative governments marginalised the organised working class to a degree that previously would have been thought politically disastrous for the party. This shift altered British politics profoundly.

Four questions stand before the historian of the cold war and the Arab-Israeli conflict: 1) Did Israel and the US have a 'special relationship'? 2) Were Soviet-Israeli relations destined for failure from 1948? 3) Was the Arab-Israeli conflict insoluble because of the cold war or in spite of it? 4)Was detente between the superpowers the key to solving the Arab-Israeli conflict? Israel failed to get a security guarantee from the US because if it were granted ally status the Arab states would turn to the Soviets. Instead of a security guarantee Kennedy used the nebulous term 'special relationship', which did not bind America politically or militarily. Relations with the USSR looked promising at first, but the Zionist ideology of the Jewish state made it inevitable that relations with would worsen , since the Kremlin rejected the notion that Soviet Jews were by definition part of the Jewish nation, and therefore candidates for emigration to Israel. As for the Arabs, they were adamant that the Palestinian refugees return en mass, which meant the destruction of of Israel. No compromise suggested by the US was acceptable to to the Arabs , who were always supported by the USSR.The Soviets demanded detente cover not only the Arab states and Israel, but Turkey and Iran as well. Consequently the Middle East remained a no-man's-land between the superpowers' spheres of influence, inexorably paving the way for the wars in 1956 and 1967.

This book represents the first ever comprehensive study of the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia since the dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991. Drawing on historical institutionalism, it explains the EU’s contribution to post-conflict stabilisation and conflict resolution in Bosnia. The book demonstrates that institutions are a key variable in explaining levels of coherence and effectiveness of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and that institutional legacies and unintended consequences have shaped CFSP impact over time. In doing so, it also sheds new light on the role that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign and security policy. The study concludes that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant impact on this Balkan country in its path from stabilisation to integration, but has also transformed the EU, its foreign and security policy and shaped the development of the EU’s international identity along the way.