This thesis is a work of historical sociology, presenting a developmental model of the British State that tracks its growth as a strategic system since 1066. It is comparable with the work of Mann (1986) and Tilly (1992) in arguing for a long-term model of state development that focusses on elite strategies. Boundary strategy is defined as a field of strategic action, with the state at its centre, which helps to produce a national population that imagines its internal boundaries of 'race', ethnicity, class and location in ways that conceal the objective structure of political and class relations. The thesis demonstrates how this field has developed in Britain over the centuries into six key strategies, defined as Blood, Pollution, Property, Civilisation, Nation and Race. The study achieves this by dividing British history since 1066 into four phases. The first is the Feudal State, 1066-1529. The second is the Protestant State, 1530-1829. The third is the Incorporation State, 1830 to the present day, and the fourth is the Fortress State, 1903 to the present day. It is argued that the Incorporation and Fortress phases of the state's development have unfolded concurrently since 1903, forming two distinct but interdependent functional dimensions. The thesis devotes one case study chapter to each phase. The final case study chapter then examines how the incorporation and fortress dimensions have been synthesised in the policy of asylum seeker dispersal since 1997. Each study is structured around the strategies and investigates how the strategies have responded to conflicts between elite interests and popular pressures 'from below'. The case studies also examine how popular violence against minorities has resulted from the unintended consequences of boundary strategies.

In 1974 the House of Commons agreed by Resolution to take the unprecedented step of introducing a Register of Members' Interests. It also converted the convention that a Member should declare any personal pecuniary interest relevant to any debate or proceeding into a rule of the House. These measures were designed to avoid actual or apparent conflict between a Member's private interests and his public duties as an MP. The experience of the House in dealing with conflict of interest, and the problems of defining, identifying and regulating this phenomenon, have, hitherto, been discussed only peripherally in academic literature on Parliament. This study fills a lacuna in parliamentary research by systematically examining these issues and exploring some of the conceptual ambiguities involved. It first documents and discusses the way the House traditionally approached the problem prior to the 1974 Resolutions, and then considers whether recent developments in the regulation of Members' interests indicate a genuine departure from that approach. In so doing it provides a case-study of an important episode in recent parliamentary history. It establishes that the House's approach towards conflict of interest derives as much from historical residues of 'elite political culture' as it does from contemporary pressures. It finds that the House has, in the absence of strong outside stimuli, been reluctant to take the initiative to regulate Members' interests, having preferred to rely on the honour of individual Members, and shows that recent changes are less fundamental than the apparent innovation of introducing the Register might suggest. It considers alternative methods of regulating Members' interests, and asks whether, in dealing with conflict of interest, the House should surrender its sole right, enshrined in parliamentary privilege, to regulate and to adjudicate upon the conduct of its own Members in their parliamentary capacity.

The 2010 General Election and subsequent coalition government brought groundbreaking changes to the conduct of UK politics, challenging recent British political history’s encapsulation within the dominant paradigm of the majoritarian ‘Westminster model’, and raising the prospect of further indecisive elections, not least evident in the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming 2015 General Election. These developments have also encouraged a rereading of past British minority governments, previously relegated to a status of either inherent weakness or aberration. Seminal works in the study of minority governments (Kaare Strom, 1990, 2006) have tended to concentrate on international experience, and even more recent studies by the Constitution Unit in London which have sought to act as a guide to current political parties (‘Making Minority Government Work’ (2010)) have not considered past British administrations in any great depth. This thesis provides a historico-political study of the two main parties’ strategic response to minority government during the Callaghan Administration of 1976-1979. The twin conclusions of this work are that both the Labour Government and Conservative Opposition showed greater consideration of strategies for dealing with minority government than has previously been appreciated by scholars, and that their actions are indicative of a distinct British tradition of minority government hitherto relatively unrecognised. The first two chapters establish the study’s theoretical framework, chronological context of the Callaghan Government, and strategy-making process within the main parties. Chapters 3-4 take in the alternative courses of action during Government formation and the changing approaches to managing legislative defeats, while Chapters 5-6 examine formal and informal interparty cooperation. Chapters 7-8 consider strategies of electoral timing, as well as planning by both parties for future minority or coalition governments, while the remaining two chapters revisit the confidence vote that brought down the Government, and place Callaghan’s Administration within a wider reconceptualising of British minority government history.