Search results
This book provides a new and distinctive interpretation on the political strategy of David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. Rather than offering a chronological overview of his leadership, or a policy-based approach, the book assesses Cameronism via two themes – modernisation and manipulation. In terms of the modernisation the book will examine the following. First, how Cameron attempted to detoxify the negative image of the Conservatives. Second, how Cameron sought to delegitimise Labour as a party of government by deflecting the blame on austerity onto the legacy of Labour in office. Third, how Cameron used the Big Society narrative as a means of reducing the perceived responsibilities of the state. In terms of manipulation the book will evaluate Cameronism in relation to coalition government, and the exploitation of the Liberal Democrats will be examined, notably in relation to austerity, tuition fees and electoral reform. Cameronism will also be examined in relation the challenges to the existing political order by considering the demands for Scottish independence, and the rise of UKIP and the case for a referendum on continued European Union membership. Through this dual emphasis on modernisation and manipulation the book will provide an exploration of the key events and issues that defined the premiership of David Cameron, and a clear overview of his successes and failures as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. The book will be essential reading to those interested in British party politics and prime ministerial leadership.
aims of positive transformation insofar as they encourage political manipulation, create resistance to reforms and may push some actors further towards the informal and illicit sectors. Of the four potential impacts of ideology on transformation, it is this final hypothetical that requires the least reassessment. While there was a general acceptance of the alternative and historically grounded manner in which Kosovo organises itself and operates, there appeared a general consensus that this would, and should, change with time, and that given the right tools it would
consider Cameron in relation to manipulation, thus building on the ideas first advanced in Heppell ( 2013a ). This second part of the book is clearly influenced by the work of Riker and the theory of heresthetics (see, for example, Riker, 1982 , 1984 , 1986 ; see also McLean, 2001 , 2002 and Hay, 2009 for wider discussions about heresthetics). Heresthetics is the art of political manipulation. It
The crisis in higher education is also simultaneously a crisis in constitutional democracies; and the two are intimately linked. The corruption of language that shapes managerialist discourse makes possible a corruption in the communications among citizens that are vital in any democracy. Democracy becomes recast first as an alleged ‘will of the people’, but a will whose semantic content is prone to political manipulation. In turn this opens the way to a validation of demagogic populism that masquerades as democracy when it is in fact the very thing that undermines democracy. When the University sector becomes complicit with this – as it is in our times – then it engages in a fundamental betrayal of the actual people in the society it claims to serve. Populism thrives on the celebration of anti-intellectual ignorance and the contempt for expertise, preferring instead the supposedly more ‘natural’ claims of instinctive faith over reason. Lurking within this is a form of class warfare that treats real and actual working-class life as contemptible.
’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4 (October 1995), pp. 773–96. 6 These ‘new parties’ include: the Democratic Unionist Party, founded in October 1971; the Social Democratic and Labour Party, founded in August 1970; and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, founded in April 1970. 7 Northern Ireland Political Collection, Linenhall Library, Belfast (NIPC), NILP Box 1, ‘Internal NILP Memorandum’, 14 March 1987. 8 Pringle, D.G., ‘Electoral Systems and Political Manipulation: A Case Study
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.
This book explores the reasons and justifications for the Chinese state’s campaign to erase Uyghur identity, focusing, in particular, on how China’s manipulation of the US-led Global War on Terror (GWOT) has facilitated this cultural genocide. It is the first book to address this issue in depth, and serves as an important rebuttal to Chinese state claims that this campaign is a benign effort to combat an existential extremist threat. While the book suggests that the motivation for this state-led campaign is primarily China’s gradual settler colonization of the Uyghur homeland, the text focuses on the narrative of the Uyghur terrorist threat that has provided international cover and justification for the campaign and has shaped its ‘biopolitical’ nature. It describes how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was able to successfully implicate Uyghurs in GWOT and, despite a lack of evidence, brand them internationally as a serious terrorist threat within the first year of the war. In recounting these developments, the book offers a critique of existing literature on the Uyghur terrorist threat and questions the extent of this threat to the PRC. Finding no evidence for the existence of such a threat when the Chinese state first declared its existence in 2001, the book argues that a nominal Uyghur militant threat only emerged after over a decade of PRC suppression of Uyghur dissent in the name of counterterrorism, facilitating a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ that has served to justify further state repression and ultimately cultural genocide.
region. The federation would provide a structure to safeguard citizens against corruption and political manipulation. In addition, Lewis believed that this bloc would provide access to a supply of labour for national public services and greater leverage when accessing international financial aid. In many ways, this model had some resemblance to the federal arrangement that Lewis had proposed for West Africa in the 1950s. However, in 1961 Jamaica held a referendum in which the majority voted against remaining in the West Indies Federation. This was the beginning of the
, Aldershot: Ashgate, 37–51. Walsh, James (2006) Policy Failure and Policy Change: British Security Policy after the Cold War, Comparative Political Studies 39(4), 490–518. Welch, David A. (2005) Painful Choices: A Theory of Foreign Policy Change , Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zahariadis, Nikolaos (2003) Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy: Political Manipulation in Democratic Societies , Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Zahariadis, Nikolaos
sophistries in history’. The interpretative question remains: how do we do justice to the contemporary – Sunningdale in its own time – and to the historical – disciplined thinking about that time in relation to subsequent events? To which one can add a further question: how does one avoid as far as possible the sin and sophistry of the political manipulation of narratives? In this context it is worth reflecting on a remark by G.K. Chesterton in his popular A Short History of England. He noted a familiar paradox: the paradox is that the past is always present but what people