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Understanding British and European political issues could be made. Thatcher was also committed to avoiding large tax increases. This was both a philosophical motion, based on the idea that high taxes are a disincentive to enterprise, and a necessity as the economy needed greater stimulation. It was to take three years before the new government could take stock and decide what to do. HEALTH UNDER THE CONSERVATIVES, 1979–97 Funding The most obvious reaction to the growing crisis was to examine the whole basis upon which the NHS was being funded. There were a number of
logical place to begin a review of modern education in Britain has to be the passage of the 1944 Education Act. This should be seen as part of the process of re-building post-war Britain, a task which was the subject of much agreement between the political parties. It was sponsored by R.A. Butler (and is sometimes known as the ‘Butler Act’), the Conservative Education minister in the all-party coalition of the day. The principles and intentions of the Act were as follows: 54 Understanding British and European political issues 1 The ‘Board of Education’ (of which
Given the significant similarities and differences between the welfare states of Northern Europe and their reactions to the perceived 'refugee crisis' of 2015, the book focuses primarily on the three main cases of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Placed in a wider Northern European context – and illustrated by those chapters that also discuss refugee experiences in Norway and the UK – the Danish, Swedish and German cases are the largest case studies of this edited volume. Thus, the book contributes to debates on the governance of non-citizens and the meaning of displacement, mobility and seeking asylum by providing interdisciplinary analyses of a largely overlooked region of the world, with two specific aims. First, we scrutinize the construction of the 2015 crisis as a response to the large influx of refugees, paying particular attention to the disciplinary discourses and bureaucratic structures that are associated with it. Second, we investigate refugees’ encounters with these bureaucratic structures and consider how these encounters shape hopes for building a new life after displacement. This allows us to show that the mobility of specific segments of the world’s population continues to be seen as a threat and a risk that has to be governed and controlled. Focusing on the Northern European context, our volume interrogates emerging policies and discourses as well as the lived experiences of bureaucratization from the perspective of individuals who find themselves the very objects of bureaucracies.
pantheon of european political reflection. Aware of the ever present difficulty of dealing with thoughts and events far away in time, this book hopes to have enabled readers to better grasp what Filmer was all about. NOTes 1 In the words of Johann sommerville, ‘a strong sense of nationhood was a major theme in the literature of all three kingdoms which James and charles tried to rule’ (sommerville, ‘An emergent Britain?’, p. 461). 2 J. H. M. salmon, ‘France’, in H. A. Lloyd, G. Burgess and s. Hodson (eds), European Political Thought 1450–1700. Religion, Law and
expanded. A comprehensive system of social security was established. There were a wide variety of benefits available to all according to need. These included ● ● ● ● ● ● 34 Understanding British and European political issues maternity benefits for pregnant women and nursing mothers, sickness benefits to compensate those who lost wages through illness, unemployment benefit, housing benefit for the very poor, family income support, again for the poor, child benefits for all families with children up to 16 years, free school lunches and uniform grants, old age
politics surrounding the political economy of European integration has long been viewed as featuring a clash of capitalisms for the normative governance of the European political economy. When national actors step into the European political arena they bring with them the ideological convictions from their respective national arenas (Hooghe and Marks, 1999: 76). Divisions within the EU integration process can be located within a two-dimensional space, the first dimension ranging from social democracy to market liberalism and the second from nationalism to
the Treaty of Nice in 2001. The difference this time, and a crucial one, was that the turnout was 53.1 per cent – higher than for either referendum on the Treaty of Nice. This disproved the theory (maintained by the pro-European political parties) that most Irish voters are ‘Yes’ voters by default and that they simply had to be encouraged out to vote; these parties actually had to compete (against a more effectual if typically disparate ‘No’ campaign) in persuading people how to vote. Yet criticisms made in the concluding chapter of this book regarding the conduct
uniformity in terms of resources is both a strength and a weakness. Effectively orchestrated action - through the active connivance and spontaneous understanding among insiders - makes for advantages. Disadvantages, however, include a lack of diversity and flexibility; the cultivation of an ideology of elitism; and the quasi-impossibility of taking into account other points of view and democratising the power system. The ENA symbolises these features of the French political and bureaucratic elite. With it, the influence on European politics of specific educational and
Representational democracy is at the heart of the UK’s political constitution, and the electoral system is central to achieving it. But is the first-past-the-post system used to elect the UK parliament truly representative? To answer that question requires an understanding of several factors: debates over the nature of representation; the evolution of the current electoral system; how first-past-the-post distorts electoral politics; and how else elections might be conducted. Running through all these debates are issues over the representation not only of people but also of places. The book examines all of these issues and focuses on the effect of geography on the operation of the electoral system.
and the national political capacity of parties, although reduced, is still important. By contrast, at the EU level the system of party government does not really exist and the European political capacity of parties (i.e. their ability to influence decisions within the EU) is not – or not yet – really proven. In fact, in the absence of a European parliamentarian or presidential system and, also, in the absence of partisan competition for executive office, Euro-parties exert neither the function of government (a central M1738 - CALLAGHAN TEXT.indd 171 3/8/09 12