Broken Heartlands is an essential and compelling political road-trip through ten constituencies that tell the story of Labour's red wall, by Sebastian Payne - an award-winning journalist and Whitehall Editor for the Financial Times. The Times Political Book of the Year A Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Daily Mail and FT Book of the Year 'Immensely readable' - Observer Historically, the red wall formed the backbone of Labour's vote in the Midlands and the North of England but, during the 2019 general election, it dramatically turned Conservative for the first time in living memory, redrawing the electoral map in the process. Originally from the North East himself, Payne sets out to uncover the real story behind the red wall and what turned these seats blue. Beginning in Blyth Valley in the North East and ending in Burnley, with visits to constituencies across the Midlands and Yorkshire along the way, Payne gets to the heart of a key political story of our time that will have ramifications for years to come. While Brexit and the unpopularity of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn are factors, there is a more nuanced story explored in Broken Heartlands - of how these northern communities have fared through generational shifts, struggling public services, de-industrialization and the changing nature of work. Featuring interviews with local people, plus major political figures from both parties - including Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer - Payne explores the significant role these social and economic forces, decades in the making, have played in this fundamental upheaval of the British political landscape. 'Impressive and entertaining' - Sunday Times 'A must-read for anyone who wants to understand England today' - Robert Peston

This book examines VOX, the first major and electorally successful populist radical right-wing party to emerge in Spain since the death of General Franco, and the restoration of parliamentary democracy in the late 1970s. In December 2018, VOX, a new party on the populist radical right, entered the Andalusian regional parliament, and played the role of kingmaker in the ensuing government formation discussions. Since then, under the leadership of Santiago Abascal, VOX has earned political representation in numerous local, regional and national elections. The party attracted more than 3.6 million votes in the November 2019 general election, making VOX the third largest party in the Spanish Congress. In two years, the party has become a key political challenger and an important player in Spanish politics. This book explains the origins of the party, its ideology and relationship with democracy, its appeal with voters, and its similarities with (and differences from) other populist radical right parties in Europe. It draws upon a rich source of domestic as well as cross-national survey data and a systematic analysis of party manifestos which provide a detailed account of the rise of VOX and what its emergence means for Spanish politics. This volume will be of interest to scholars of comparative politics, political parties, voters and elections, Spanish politics, the populist radical right and populism in general.

This book focuses on the varied support for the populist radical right in the Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Despite many common characteristics, right-wing populist parties have historically been more successful in the Netherlands and Flanders than in Luxembourg and Wallonia. This book argues that the variation in the success of right-wing populist parties depends to a large extent on the way in which they are perceived and received in a given polity. In the Netherlands and Flanders, mainstream parties and the media have contributed to politicising issues pertaining to immigration and national identity, thereby tilling the field for the populist radical right. In Luxembourg and Wallonia, mainstream parties and the media have resolutely limited the opportunities for right-wing populist challengers to influence the public debate. This volume will be of interest to practitioners as well as students and scholars of party politics, the media, the populist radical right and the Benelux region.

For all the attention to radical political Islam, there is little awareness that the democratically elected government of Turkey has an Islamic flavor. This book places within historical context the rise of the Islamic political party now governing Turkey and examines the implications of its rule for that country and its relations with Europe, the United States and the Middle East.

Essentials of UK Politics and Government is the go-to textbook for all A-level Politics students studying the Edexcel specification. Building on Andrew Heywood's signature accessible style, this new fifth edition has been thoroughly updated by Kathy Schindler and Adam Tomes who draw on their experience to provide an innovative guide to UK Politics. This book covers all the core topics from Democracy and Participation, Elections and Referendums and Voting Behaviour, to the Constitution, the Prime Minister and Parliament. Packed with contemporary examples, this edition includes material on the 2017 and 2019 General Elections, Covid-19 and the latest Brexit developments. Curated pedagogical features such as Key Topic Debates, Case Studies and Synoptic Links will encourage students to strengthen their critical thinking skills and hone their ability to debate with confidence. Accompanying the book is a content-rich companion website featuring bonus case studies, further sample student answers with annotations, tips for planning and organising revision and much more. Accompanying online resources for this title can be found at bloomsburyonlineresources.com/essentials-of-uk-politics-and-government-5. These resources are designed to support teaching and learning when using this textbook and are available at no extra cost.

This book examines how social democratic parties have responded to populist radical right parties in the battle for support from working-class voters. It focuses on the paradigmatic examples of social democratic parties in the Nordic countries. Historically these have been the strongest social democratic parties, but they have declined in recent years partly due to the competition from populist radical right parties. In addition, since populist radical right parties tend to support liberal and conservative parties in parliament or in governmental negotiations, social democratic parties' ability to impact broader policy areas has declined as well. The book provides a detailed empirical account of how social democratic parties - and more broadly, labour movement organisations, including unions - have responded to these challenges across Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. This volume will be of interest to scholars of party politics, comparative politics, Nordic politics, and the populist radical right.

This book provides a cross-country study of the consequences of the expansion of intra-party democracy, the trend towards more inclusive methods of selection for party candidates and leaders, and the impact of these on political elites in terms of sociopolitical profile and patterns of careers. It explores the link between political organizations and political elites, by studying the role of parties in parliamentary and political selection and its impact on the political leadership appointed. Putting an emphasis on primary elections, it analyses the party elites that emerge from those selection processes and those democratized organizational settings. It focuses not only on the analysis of the processes through which party elites are selected and the consequences at the level of the party but also at the level of party elites themselves, i.e. what impact party primaries have on the characteristics parties' candidates and leaders. The book offers a theoretical, comparative, and empirical account of the internal electoral processes of parties and their impact on political recruitment. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, political parties and party systems, electoral politics, democracy, populism, and leadership, and more broadly to comparative politics.

This book examines VOX, the first major and electorally successful populist radical right-wing party to emerge in Spain since the death of General Franco, and the restoration of parliamentary democracy in the late 1970s. In December 2018, VOX, a new party on the populist radical right, entered the Andalusian regional parliament, and played the role of kingmaker in the ensuing government formation discussions. Since then, under the leadership of Santiago Abascal, VOX has earned political representation in numerous local, regional and national elections. The party attracted more than 3.6 million votes in the November 2019 general election, making VOX the third largest party in the Spanish Congress. In two years, the party has become a key political challenger and an important player in Spanish politics. This book explains the origins of the party, its ideology and relationship with democracy, its appeal with voters, and its similarities with (and differences from) other populist radical right parties in Europe. It draws upon a rich source of domestic as well as cross-national survey data and a systematic analysis of party manifestos which provide a detailed account of the rise of VOX and what its emergence means for Spanish politics. This volume will be of interest to scholars of comparative politics, political parties, voters and elections, Spanish politics, the populist radical right and populism in general.

In this volume an international cast of contributors analyze and discuss the role of societal actors in European integration from the creation of the present-day European Union in 1958 to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Based throughout on newly accessible sources the authors discuss a variety of societal actors from political parties to business groups and civil society organizations demonstrating the scope and limits of their role in European polity-building and policy-making before the Maastricht Treaty, with an outlook on the period since then. This is an important text for students and Scholars of European Studies, European Union Politics and contemporary History.

Within three years of the inauguration of the Constitution, its greatest champions found themselves irreparably divided over what that Constitution meant and how to shape the Union it had been created to perfect. Within a decade, the division at the heights of national politics had spread into a full-scale party war, the first, the most ferocious, and perhaps the most instructive in all of American history. Never since have clashing ideologies been quite so central to a party struggle and never has such a giant set of democratic statesmen argued so profoundly over concepts that are at the root of the American political tradition. Conceived in Liberty probes the fundamentals of the great dispute among John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and their followers over the sort of country the United States should be. In clear and concise prose, Lance Banning clarifies the foundations of the first great party struggle-and thus of nineteenth-century America.

The charismatic Julius Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have descended onto the South African political scene like superheroes, vowing to liberate South Africans with their radical, militant, and revolutionary stance. Their pledge in fighting the four evils of this world including colonialism, imperialism, racism, and sexism, has given them an allure of being saviors while striking fear in the hearts of the white monopoly capitalists including their African conspirators, labeled sell outs. The nexus of this book comprises of two social media studies on Malema's eye-opening, controversial, and at times humorous rhetoric-and his audience's unfiltered reaction to it-during the 2019 South African general election season. Malema's discourse is also assessed from South Africa's historical, cultural, and socio-political environment, with special attention given to the poor black majority. The EFF is part of an international protest movement, and connections are, at times, drawn between the South African and the African American experience-both of which have been severely impacted by an international system of white hegemony. Ultimately, this research shows that Malema's fiery and witty rhetoric has firmly situated the EFF at the forefront of a new movement for African liberation. As Malema said, "The time for reconciliation is over, now is the time for justice," solidifying him as one of the most controversial political figures in South Africa, Africa, and perhaps one day, the world over.

This book examines Lebanese political parties and their encounters with modernity. Taking three, mainly Christian parties as an example, the book refutes the idea of Middle Eastern parties being backwards or antiquated. By combining historical and anthropological perspectives, it is shown that these parties stand for normativities of modernity. Lebanese, as well as Middle Eastern parties in general, have a rather poor reputation: they are considered family-based, ideologically meaningless, tailored solely to their leadership, and non-modern. Contrastingly, this book claims that the concept of the "real party" corresponds to an encounter with modernity and that these parties, although dysfunctional in parts, are better than their reputation. Most importantly, Lebanese parties are taking the nation-state as their central reference point, as they recognise it as the legitimate form of societal organization. The volume claims that important constituents of modernity, such as the individual, the nation, secularity, progress, and representing the people (demos), serve for the parties in question as resources of utopian elements informing much of these parties' identities. Bringing Lebanese political parties into a global debate on modernity, the book tackles the notion of parties of the Middle East being non-modern. It will be of interest to scholars researching political science, political history and the Middle East.

This book offers a comprehensive examination of midterm elections from the lens of communications and media coverage. Using a wide variety of methods, this contributed volume covers the differences, similarities, and challenges unique to midterm elections.

Political mobilization tends to take different forms in contemporary Catholic- and Sunni-majority countries. Luis Felipe Mantilla attributes this dynamic to changes taking place in religious communities and the political institutions that govern religious political engagement. In How Political Parties Mobilize Religion, Mantillaevenhandedly traces the emergence and success of religious parties in Mexico and Turkey, two countries shaped by assertive secular regimes. In doing so, he demonstrates that religious parties are highly responsive to political institutions, such as electoral laws, as well as to the structure of broader religious communities. Whereas in both countries, the electoral success of religious mobilizers was initially a boon for democracy, in Mexico it was marred by political mismanagement and became entangled with persistent corruption and escalating violence. In Turkey, the democratic credentials of religious mobilizers were profoundly eroded as the government became increasingly autocratic, concentrating power in very few hands and rolling back basic liberal rights. Mantilla investigates the role religious mobilization plays in the evolution of electoral politics and democratic institutions, and to what extent their trajectories reflect broader trends in political Catholicism and Islam.

It is a well-known fact that Prime ministers are fond of talking, in fact at times it seems impossible to get them to do anything else. The reason for this constant talking is that Prime Ministers are all too aware of the importance of frequently talking to and communicating with the electorate. Political rhetoric has a central function that goes far beyond the need to rouse people at election time or in times of great crisis but rather persuasive political talk by prime ministers is central to the practice of modern government itself.This book argues that there are institutionalised patterns in the speeches that prime ministers give. Like an old-style jukebox, there are only a certain number of records in the prime ministerial machine. Inevitably, each prime minister will play the same songs in the same order as their predecessor. This repetitive rhetoric has an impact not just on the minds of voters, but also on day-to-day governance in Westminster system democracies.

The Dictionary of Labour Biography has an outstanding reputation as a reference work for the study of nineteenth and twentieth century British history. Volume XIV maintains this standard of original and thorough scholarship. Each entry is written by a specialist drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources. The biographical essays engage with recent historiographical developments in the field of labour history. The scope of the volume emphasises the ethnic and national diversity of the British labour movement and neglected political traditions.

This book addresses the meaning of contemporary social democracy and how the centre-left is navigating through its current identity crisis, through a series of cases of social democratic and labour parties across Europe and the Anglosphere. The book examines the ideological, policy, electoral and organisational dilemmas facing the centre-left. Taking in cases including those from the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, it outlines and explores the current and future trajectories of the family of centre-left parties. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and interested readers of labour and social democratic politics, centre-left political parties, trade unions, the future of the centre-left, and more broadly to those studying political parties, European and comparative politics.

This book addresses the meaning of contemporary social democracy and how the centre-left is navigating through its current identity crisis, through a series of cases of social democratic and labour parties across Europe and the Anglosphere. The book examines the ideological, policy, electoral and organisational dilemmas facing the centre-left. Taking in cases including those from the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, it outlines and explores the current and future trajectories of the family of centre-left parties. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and interested readers of labour and social democratic politics, centre-left political parties, trade unions, the future of the centre-left, and more broadly to those studying political parties, European and comparative politics.

This volume attempts to examine the many possible causes of Brexit. The conceptual 'peg' on which the volume hangs is that, irrespective of one's views on whether Britain's exit from the EU was a good or a bad thing, Brexit can justifiably be seen as yet another example of a British policy fiasco. Put simply, the British political elite was not at its best. The collective concern of this volume is twofold. First, it advances possible explanations of how the Brexit issue arose. Why was Britain's membership of the EU thought to be so problematic for so many members of the British political elite and ultimately for a majority of voters? How did we get to June 2016 and the Brexit Referendum? Secondly, the volume examines how the issue was managed (or mismanaged) following the referendum result up until the Withdrawal Agreement in March 2019. The contributions to this volume explore these questions by looking at Brexit from different analytical angles. Some authors explore the long-term causes of Brexit, by disentangling the fraught relationship between the UK and the EU, which had provided the Brexit train with steam; others explore the highly conflictual domestic political dynamics in the run-up to the referendum and in the negotiations of a Brexit deal. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy.

Native scholars offer clearly written coverage of the relationship between political parties and democracy in Africa and Oceania. Political Parties and Democracy: Volume IV: Africa and Oceania is the fourth volume in this five-volume set. It offers clearly written, up-to-date coverage of the political parties of these two regions from the unique perspective of distinguished indigenous scholars who have lived the truths they tell and, thus, write with unique breadth, depth, and scope. Presented in two parts, this volume overviews African parties, then discusses the realities on the ground in Cameroon, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa. The book offers an introduction to the political parties of Oceania, followed by chapters on Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands. Throughout, contributors explore the relationship between political parties and democracy (or democratization) in their respective nations, providing necessary historical, socioeconomic, and institutional context, and clarifying the balance of power among parties—and between them and competing agencies of power—today.

The 1970's witnessed the institution of political liberalism in Greece, which went hand in hand with significant social and economic advancement. Four decades later, the same country is a latter-day 'sick man of Europe'. What went wrong? And why did the more recent global crisis plunge Greece into abject misery? This study provides compelling and original answers to these questions through putting populism at center stage. By introducing new concepts, focusing on micro-mechanisms, and empirically analyzing a large variety of sources, the author shows how populism became predominant in Greek politics and contaminated all major political parties, eventually causing a major polity crisis. Besides its particular interest in the specific case of Greece, the text offers new insights about how states may fail, how populism develops at single-nation level, and what could happen when it reigns supreme. It also makes a strong statement about the corrosive power of populism on modern liberal democracy

The study of Marxism in Britain throws light on what many historians have referred to as `the enemy within'. In this book, David Burke looks at the activities of Russian political emigres in Britain, and in particular the role of one family: the Rothsteins. He looks at the contributions of Theodore and Andrew Rothstein to British Marxism and the response of the intelligence services to what they regarded as a serious threat to security. With access to recently released documents, this book analyses the activities of early-twentieth century British Marxists and brings to life the story of a remarkable family.

Politics and peace in Northern Ireland analyses the complex and contradictory process of implementing the Good Friday Agreement. Using the lens of security dilemma theory, it begins with an original overview of the conflict, the Agreement and post-1998 politics. The book then explores post-Agreement Northern Ireland through the eyes of each of the four main political parties, showing how they tried to shape the course of peace implementation, and how implementation, in turn, shaped the fates and fortunes of the parties. Drawing on extensive original research, this book explains the promise and limits of the Agreement. It shows how and why the two sides' mutual insecurities repeatedly derailed peace implementation, and reflects on the likely direction of parties and politics in the future. This clearly written and up-to-date book will be of interest to scholars and students of recent Northern Irish history, ethnic conflict and peace-making. -- .

Do political parties merely represent divisions in society? Until now, scholars and other observers have generally agreed that they do. But Building Blocs argues the reverse: that some political parties in fact shape divisions as they struggle to remake the social order. Drawing on the contributors' expertise in Indonesia, India, the United States, Canada, Egypt, and Turkey, this volume demonstrates further that the success and failure of parties to politicize social differences has dramatic consequences for democratic change, economic development, and other large-scale transformations. This politicization of divisions, or "political articulation," is neither the product of a single charismatic leader nor the machinations of state power, but is instead a constant call and response between parties and would-be constituents. When articulation becomes inconsistent, as it has in Indonesia, partisan calls grow faint and the resulting vacuum creates the possibility for other forms of political expression. However, when political parties exercise their power of interpellation efficiently, they are able to silence certain interests such as those of secular constituents in Turkey. Building Blocs exposes political parties as the most influential agencies that structure social cleavages and invites further critical investigation of the related consequences.

In the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the Christian Right expected major victories in the 1998 elections. Instead, many of its allies lost close contests, and the movement was seen as a liability in some high-profile campaigns. In the only in-depth study of the Christian Right's role in these races, leading scholars analyze the role of the movement in fourteen key states, from Maine to California, and address speculations that the movement is fading from the American political scene.

The book focuses on elections on the state and local levels, where the Christian Right is most influential, and it describes the movement's niche in some detail. Although each campaign described in the book had its unique characteristics, the editors have drawn some broad conclusions about the 1998 elections. While the movement was weak in the areas of candidate recruitment and fundraising, they say, the outcome may have also been related to external factors including a broader turnout of typically Democratic constituencies and the country's boredom with the scandal that conservatives had made the centerpiece of their campaign. Despite the setbacks of 1998, the contributors argue, the Christian Right continues to have an enormous influence on the political dialogue of the country.

Written from an unbiased, nonpartisan perspective, this volume sheds light on a topic that is too frequently mired in controversy.