In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values - the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?

The British General Election of 2019 is the definitive account of one of the most consequential and controversial general elections in recent times, when Boris Johnson gambled everything calling an early election to 'Get Brexit Done', and emerged triumphant. Drawing upon cutting-edge research and wide-ranging elite interviews, the new author team provides a compelling and accessible narrative of this landmark election and its implications for British politics, built on unparalleled access to all the key players, and married up to first-class data analysis. The 21st volume in a prestigious series dating back to 1945, it offers something for everyone from Westminster insiders and politics students to the interested general reader.

The role of political parties in immigration control and integration policy in Europe is underestimated, and parties on the centre-right are particularly important and interesting in this respect. They make up many European governments and therefore help determine state and EU policy. Moreover, even before the rise of the populist radical right, immigration and integration were matters of genuine ideological and practical concern for Europe's market liberal, conservative and Christian Democratic parties. Exploiting such issues for electoral gain may make superficial sense, but too hard a line risks alienating their supporters in business and in civil society, as well as undermining party unity. It is a difficult balance, but one that makes a big difference both to the parties involved and the public policies they help produce. This volume brings together experts on both migration and political parties - fields that have not always interacted as much as they could or should have done - in order to study the impacts, dilemmas and trade-offs involved. This book is based on the special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

First published in 1999, this volume is based on interviews and research from previously unavailable party, state and private archives, this insightful volume reflects on the interaction between institutional structure and world-view that we call political culture. Using Labour's post-war welfare policy, this informative study makes three key points: The need to break down distinctions between the 'symbolic' and the 'substantial' in politics. The potential of 'Grid-Group' or 'Cultural' Theory as a way of understanding party political culture. The crucial but self-defeating role that welfare policy has played in Labour's efforts to manage itself, win support and govern competently. The well-documented research leads to the conclusion that New Labour's much-heralded desire to 'think the unthinkable' about welfare is largely rhetorical if one recalls what Labour did in office rather than promised in opposition. The Government's welfare reforms, rather than constituting a serious attempt to confront new social realities, are in fact par for the course. Political scientists cannot ignore the new government's past. Political historians need to appreciate the patterns woven in a welter of detail and social democratic defensiveness. By fusing a realist conception of statecraft, an 'interpretavist' interest in symbols and a predictive comparative model of the interaction between ideology and organisation, this authoritative work will enable readers to do just that.

The first book to provide a much-needed analysis of the current state of the party and insight into longer term trends, "New Labour in Power" helps readers to explore both past and present in order to better understand the future.
The book explores Tony Blair's victory through both its historical context and the words of contemporary media commentators, journalists, economists and politicians, including Austin Mitchell, Peter Shore, Peter Jay, A. H. Halsey and Vernon Bogdanor. It combines historical, political and practical approaches to the questions raised by the Labour election victory and addresses core themes such as Europe, the economy, welfare, education, defense and the constitution.

Margaret Thatcher (1925 2013) was the dominant British political leader of our age. No postwar prime minister has equalled the impact she made on modern British history, nor matched her influence on the European and world stages. But, as she becomes a historical figure, how to distinguish myth from reality? The daunting quantity (and variable quality) of literature already available on Thatcher makes it decidedly difficult to discriminate the significant from the tendentious, superficial, and otiose. Moreover, because no comparable British politician has had such profound effects on political and cultural life, valuable evaluations of Thatcher originate from a broad range of scholarly disciplines, as well as from serious sources outside the academy. To make some sense of these widely dispersed materials, Routledge announces the first in a projected new series of Critical Assessments of Key Political Leaders.

Edited by Tim Bale (Queen Mary, University of London), the author of a prize-winning history of the Conservative Party, "Margaret Thatcher" is a three-volume collection. It draws on the best work of modern historians and political scientists, as well as those working in gender and cultural studies. The collection allows users quickly and easily to access both established and cutting-edge assessments of Thatcher s life and work. With comprehensive introductions to each thematic section, providing essential background information and relating the various pieces to each other, "Margaret Thatcher" is destined to be an indispensable resource for research and study.

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In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values - the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?

This accessible, rigorously researched and highly revealing book lifts the lid on political party membership. It represents the first in-depth study of six of the UK's biggest parties - Labour, the Conservatives, the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, UK Independence Party and the Greens - carried out simultaneously, thereby providing invaluable new insights into members' social characteristics, attitudes, activities and campaigning, reasons for joining and leaving, and views on how their parties should be run and who should represent them. In short, at a time of great pressure on, and change across parties, this book helps us discover not only what members want out of their parties but what parties want out of their members. This text is essential reading for those interested in political parties, party membership, elections and campaigning, representation, and political participation, be they scholars and students of British and comparative politics, or politicians, journalists and party members - in short, anyone who cares about the future of representative democracy.

What do we really mean when we say a political party has changed? And exactly what is it that drives that change? Political scientists working in the comparative tradition have come up with a general explanation that revolves around the role of election defeats and loss of office, and around changes of leader and factions. But how well does that explanation cope when subjected to a historically-grounded and therefore robust examination? This book tries to answer that question by subjecting the common wisdom to a real-world, over-time test using one of the world's oldest and most successful political parties as an in-depth case study. What do the periods spent in both opposition and government by the British Conservatives since 1945 tell us about what drives parties to change their sales-force, the way they organize, and the policies they come up with? Using internal papers, memos and minutes of meetings from party archives, along with historical and contemporary accounts, memoirs and interviews, this book maps the extent of change and then explores what may have driven it. The conventional wisdom, it turns out, is not necessarily wrong but incomplete, requiring both qualification and supplementation. This approachably-written book suggests when, how, and why. Along the way, it provides a fresh and comprehensive account of the Conservative Party that should appeal equally to those interested in political history and those interested in political science.

This accessible, rigorously researched and highly revealing book lifts the lid on political party membership. It represents the first in-depth study of six of the UK's biggest parties - Labour, the Conservatives, the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, UK Independence Party and the Greens - carried out simultaneously, thereby providing invaluable new insights into members' social characteristics, attitudes, activities and campaigning, reasons for joining and leaving, and views on how their parties should be run and who should represent them. In short, at a time of great pressure on, and change across parties, this book helps us discover not only what members want out of their parties but what parties want out of their members. This text is essential reading for those interested in political parties, party membership, elections and campaigning, representation, and political participation, be they scholars and students of British and comparative politics, or politicians, journalists and party members - in short, anyone who cares about the future of representative democracy.

The new edition of this successful book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview and account of the changing nature of party politics in Britain today. Webb and Bale draw on models of comparative politics in conducting a wealth of new empirical analysis to map and explain the ways in which the party system has evolved, and the parties have adapted to a changing political environment. Themes covered include the nature and extent of party competition, the internal life and organizational development of parties, the varieties of party system found across the UK, and the roles played by parties within the wider political system. The book also addresses the crisis of popular legitimacy confronting the parties, as well as assessing the scope for potential reform. While parties remain central to the functioning of Britain's democracy, public disaffection with them is as high as it has ever been; reform of the system of representation and party funding is warranted, but there are unlikely to be any panaceas.

The role of political parties in immigration control and integration policy in Europe is underestimated, and parties on the centre-right are particularly important and interesting in this respect. They make up many European governments and therefore help determine state and EU policy. Moreover, even before the rise of the populist radical right, immigration and integration were matters of genuine ideological and practical concern for Europe s market liberal, conservative and Christian Democratic parties. Exploiting such issues for electoral gain may make superficial sense, but too hard a line risks alienating their supporters in business and in civil society, as well as undermining party unity. It is a difficult balance, but one that makes a big difference both to the parties involved and the public policies they help produce. This volume brings together experts on both migration and political parties fields that have not always interacted as much as they could or should have done in order to study the impacts, dilemmas and trade-offs involved.

This book is based on the special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

What do we really mean when we say a political party has changed? And exactly what is it that drives that change? Political scientists working in the comparative tradition have come up with a general explanation that revolves around the role of election defeats and loss of office, and around changes of leader and factions. But how well does that explanation cope when subjected to a historically-grounded and therefore robust examination? This book tries to answer that question by subjecting the common wisdom to a real-world, over-time test using one of the world's oldest and most successful political parties as an in-depth case study. What do the periods spent in both opposition and government by the British Conservatives since 1945 tell us about what drives parties to change their sales-force, the way they organize, and the policies they come up with? Using internal papers, memos and minutes of meetings from party archives, along with historical and contemporary accounts, memoirs and interviews, this book maps the extent of change and then explores what may have driven it. The conventional wisdom, it turns out, is not necessarily wrong but incomplete, requiring both qualification and supplementation. This approachably-written book suggests when, how, and why. Along the way, it provides a fresh and comprehensive account of the Conservative Party that should appeal equally to those interested in political history and those interested in political science.

The British General Election of 2019 is the definitive account of one of the most consequential and controversial general elections in recent times, when Boris Johnson gambled everything calling an early election to 'Get Brexit Done', and emerged triumphant. Drawing upon cutting-edge research and wide-ranging elite interviews, the new author team provides a compelling and accessible narrative of this landmark election and its implications for British politics, built on unparalleled access to all the key players, and married up to first-class data analysis. The 21st volume in a prestigious series dating back to 1945, it offers something for everyone from Westminster insiders and politics students to the interested general reader.

In May 2010, Labour suffered one of its worst ever election defeats. A few months later it chose Ed Miliband as its new leader. His task? To win back power after just one term in opposition - a tall order given how many voters had come to blame Labour for the economic mess the country was in, and to see the party as a soft-touch when it came to immigration and welfare. Even those who were more sympathetic had their doubts. Was Ed Miliband really leadership material? Would he be able to overcome defeating his elder brother to get to the top? Would he have to do as he was told by the trade union leaders who had helped him win? Could he resolve the tensions between Blairites and Brownites, Blue Labour and New Labour? Might his desire to keep his colleagues united mean Labour stayed stuck in its comfort zone? Would he, in seeking to break from the party's recent past, take it too far to the left? Could he offer the electorate something really radical in 2015 or would he instead choose something safer but ultimately less inspiring? And what should twenty-first social democracy look like now that the money had run out? This book, by one of the country's foremost experts on party politics, seeks to answer all those questions and, in the run up to the 2015 general election, to ask one more: will Ed Miliband's five year mission turn out to be 'mission impossible'?

Both parties and interest groups matter to democracy. Historically, examples of close relationships between the two abound. But perhaps the best known because it was supposedly the most intimate and politically important is the relationship between left-of-centre parties and trade unions. Whether rooted in a shared history, culture and ideology or more a 'marriage of convenience', it is widely believed that their relationship helped socialist, social democratic, and labour parties win power and ensured the working class achieved huge gains in terms of full employment, the welfare state and labour market regulation in the post war period. In recent decades, however, it has been widely argued that the links between left-of-centre parties and trade unions have declined as their collaboration has become less mutually beneficial, not least as a consequence of structural changes in the economy and labour market. This volume interrogates, qualifies, and even challenges that widespread assumption. Based on a brand new dataset, including organizational data gathered by a cross-national team of experts, it uncovers and explores what turns out to be considerable variation in the strength of contemporary organizational links between left-of-centre parties and unions in twelve different countries that have been democracies since at least the mid -to late-1940's. Testing a series of hypotheses on the importance and the impact of particular political systems and socio-economic factors, and on the costs and benefits for both parties and unions, detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis suggests that left-of-centre party-trade union links are stronger where trade unions are larger, denser, and more unified and where parties are less able to rely on the state to finance their organizational activities and electoral campaigns. Traditional partners that still have fairly strong links with each other seem to have greater incentives than others to maintain those links. Moreover, it remains the case that the links between parties and unions matter in policy terms.

The new edition of this successful book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview and account of the changing nature of party politics in Britain today. Webb and Bale draw on models of comparative politics in conducting a wealth of new empirical analysis to map and explain the ways in which the party system has evolved, and the parties have adapted to a changing political environment. Themes covered include the nature and extent of party competition, the internal life and organizational development of parties, the varieties of party system found across the UK, and the roles played by parties within the wider political system. The book also addresses the crisis of popular legitimacy confronting the parties, as well as assessing the scope for potential reform. While parties remain central to the functioning of Britain's democracy, public disaffection with them is as high as it has ever been; reform of the system of representation and party funding is warranted, but there are unlikely to be any panaceas.

A fully revised fourth edition of a popular introduction to the comparative politics of Europe, written by a highly respected authority on the subject. This lively and thematically organised text provides an accessible guide to the institutions and the issues that matter in a continent where the boundaries between East and West, and between domestic and European affairs are increasingly breaking down. Covering a wide array of countries it is a concise yet comprehensive overview of one of the world's most important and fascinating regions. Written in an approachable style and packed with up-to-date, real-world examples and information, this is the ideal place for students to begin and to deepen their understanding of Europe's politics. It can be adapted as a standalone text on modules on Comparative European Politics and will be of use as a key reading on undergraduate courses on Comparative Politics more broadly, as well as European Union Politics. New to this Edition: - Updated throughout to provide coverage of developments such as the Eurozone crisis, the growth of left and right-wing populism, the rise of nationalism and Europe's on-going immigration challenge - Includes a short concluding chapter, rounding up and considering the future of the book's core themes of Europeanization and multilevel governance - Additional country profiles on Croatia and Greece to ensure representative treatment of the key countries in Europe today