The reputation of Kingston Borough Council during the nineteenth century has been that it was dilatory in operation and reluctant to meet the challenges that were associated with an expanding community. The thesis, reassesses that reputation, in comparison to similar communities, and addresses possible reasons for reluctance. As the main theme is the response of the local authority to both permissive and mandatory legislation imposed by central government, research has had to consider who constituted the local authority. Questions have therefore focused on the type of men who served on the council for the period following the introduction of the Municipal Reform Act of 1835 and ending in 1900. In particular, the occupational representation on the council has been analysed in order to establish whether there may have been influence from any one sector of the social and economic life of the borough, and whether that changed over the peirod of research. Answers have been sought also as to the level of kinship, both contemporaneous and between generations, and the social networks, or associations, which linked councillors. To facilitate analysis of data retrieved from sources that recorded the life and work of individual councillors, including council and newspaper reports, a computer database has been designed to bring together information from the contemporary sources, bith manuscript and printed. Capable of supporting analytical procedures, the database is in the form of a list of 240 names compiled from the councillors listed in the Council Minutes, Board of Guardian Minutes and the recorded proceedings of other formal bodies. Other possible causes for the manner in which Kingston council reacted to the needs of an expanding population have been sought. What influenced the decision making process most, was it inexperience, an inability to accept the changing machinery of government, both central and local, a lack of understanding of the role of modern local governance or other issues which fuelled the lengthy debates that preceded every move toward improvement? It has been necessary to consider the extent to which Kingston council's dilatory behaviour, if proven, rests with the caste of men who exercised authority, concern about finance or whether there was a combination of contributory factors. What emerges from the analysis is a picture of a council dominated by a group of men who made up the burgeoning middle class society of the borough. It would be a exaggeration to call them a self-perpetuating oligarchy, but they certainly had a core of first families who, for much of the nineteenth century, sought to maintain the status quo. By studying the various inputs into a particular local authority, for instance the level of competence, local circumstances, reaction to change, professionalism and financial management, to name but a few, it could be possible to determine why it functioned as it did and make a contribution to the administrative history of the region.

This thesis offers the first detailed assessment of an event that has hitherto been consigned to the margins of the literature on devolution and territorial reform in the United Kingdom, the Conference on Devolution, 1919-1920. Sitting between October 1919 and April 1920, the Conference on Devolution was arguably one of the two moments in the UK’s constitutional history when the territorial constitution was approached in a holistic fashion by policy makers and political elites (the other occasion being the Royal Commission on the Constitution, 1969-1973). The primary aim of this thesis is to provide the first detailed analysis of the Conference on Devolution, to develop a fuller understanding of why it was established, what it debated and why it failed. Secondary to that objective, this thesis will also assess what relevance the Conference has for students of territorial governance in the UK today, at a time when the UK’s constitution is in flux. In pursuit of these objectives, the thesis utilises the ideas and insights on territorial governance of James Bulpitt and James Mitchell, alongside an extensive catalogue of archival evidence, including the previously unstudied (in the context of the Conference on Devolution) personal papers of the Conference’s Secretary, Gilbert Campion. Using this methodology and archival sources, the thesis offers a considerable revision to previous understandings of the Conference on Devolution. It demonstrates that the Conference’s fatal disagreement on how the devolved legislatures should be composed, was not, as has been previously portrayed, just a disagreement at the latter stages of the Conference’s work, but was instead a cleavage that undercut the entirety of the Conference on Devolution. Finally, the thesis highlights the clear resonance between the issues deliberated by the Conference and many of today’s territorial governance debates.

This research is concerned with issues of episteme, epistemology, and community. It asks how and why an epistemic community emerges? It looks at the study of the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process as covered in the British and Irish political science academy in order to answer this question. This research is thus ultimately about knowledge, knowledge creators, and the circumstances and conditions in which they develop. It is also a case study of what happens when academics engage with political events. Do they act as innovators or simply as scholar who react to changing political environments? This research explains the emergence of the Northern Ireland epistemic community using the boundary object concept. It asserts that knowledge communities do not develop de novo but instead emerge through academics struggles and frustrations with existing knowledge paradigms. A boundary object is the means by scholars can come together and challenge such paradigms and build new knowledge infrastructures. Through the emergence of the Northern Ireland peace process and scholar’s (re)engagement with and application of consociational theory and comparative methods this epistemic community was made possible. This research looks at the barriers that prevented the emergence of this community during the Troubles, its emergence following the outbreak of the Northern Ireland peace process, and its evolution following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Additionally, we look at the conflicts that developed between members of this community and how these academics define themselves both professionally and in relation to a community they are a part of yet see themselves as a part from.

Conventional wisdom holds that today’s young people, often known as ‘the Millennials’, are a politically alienated generation. Their hostility towards political parties, association with protest movements, and low electoral turnout are all said to indicate their alienation from the processes and institutions of Western democracy. This conventional wisdom stands, however, on shaky ground. Previous research has given too little attention to the definition and measurement of political alienation, and has barely explored its causal relationship with political participation. The use of methods capable of exploring the generational distinctiveness of the Millennials has been limited, as have efforts to outline why the Millennials should be conceptualised as a distinct political generation in the first place, and what is gained from doing so. Focussing on the case of Britain, this study explores the extent to which the Millennials are a distinct political generation in terms of political participation, political apathy, and political alienation, and considers how their conceptualisation as a distinct generation improves our understanding of their political characteristics. Furthermore, it tests the theory that their alienation from, rather than their apathy towards, formal politics can explain their distinct political behaviour. Through critiquing and developing conceptualisations of the Millennials as a political generation, and of political apathy, alienation and participation, this thesis challenges the conventional wisdom. The Millennials are a distinct generation in terms of their political participation, apathy and alienation – but they are distinct for their lack of participation, their unusually high levels of apathy towards formal politics, and their unusually low levels ofalienation from it. The Millennials have the potential to be the most politically apathetic, and least politically alienated, generation to have entered the British electorate since World War Two. In addition, this research also shows that while generational differences are significant and often substantial, they make only a limited contribution to explaining variation in political apathy, alienation and participation. This research argues, therefore, that future studies into and policy responses to the political behaviour of young people must recognise their distinct levels of political apathy. At the same time, however, the focus on political generations should not be so intense as to obscure the role of more influential causes of differences in political participation.

This is an examination of the context, content and significance of the surprising engagement of the British left with the arguments of Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), one of the most influential theorists of the new right and an important influence on leading figures in the Conservative Government elected in the UK in 1979. The thesis examines in detail the engagement by four thinkers on the British left with Hayek's work: David Miller, Raymond Plant, Andrew Gamble and Hilary Wainwright. Its chronological parameters are the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the election of ‘New Labour’ in the UK in 1997. Important contextual factors behind this engagement include the rise and fall of the British Conservative Party, the difficulties of statist forms of socialism and Hayek's own death. The engagement with Hayek's work provides a case study that demonstrates changes in political themes, in particular, the decline of statist forms of socialism with the left's embrace of the market and individual freedom, the decline in support for the paternalistic state and the search for more ‘feasible’ alternatives. I argue that the British left's engagement with Hayek is part of a wider intellectual break that constitutes the end of a ‘short twentieth century’ in political thought, and that the political landscape is now dominated by two strands of the liberal tradition. As such, the research will be of importance to anyone seeking a clearer understanding of recent changes in political thought and to the shape of the contemporary political landscape.

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This thesis explores the idea that an equality state has evolved in Britain since the 1960s. The policies and institutions that make up the equality state are those that seek to ensure some forms of equality between its citizens. Its latest development has been through the 2010 Equality Act that promotes equality in relation to nine protected characteristics, but just two of these are considered here, race and sex. The study will investigate the origins of the equality state under the 1964-1970 Labour governments through the formulation of policies that explicitly or implicitly promoted sex and racial equality. The main areas examined in relation to racial equality are the anti-discrimination provisions of the 1965 and 1968 Race Relations Acts; measures to promote the integration of immigrants, particularly in employment, education, housing and policing; the institutions which aided integration particularly the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants and Community Relations Commission; and the Urban Programme and other measures taken in response to Enoch Powell's 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech. With sex equality the areas considered are the 1970 Equal Pay Act; the development of policy to promote equal opportunity in employment; and the reform of law relating to abortion, divorce and the availability of contraceptive services through state agencies. iv The primary focus of the thesis is on the policy making process and the research is based on government papers in The National Archives. Other influences on these policy areas have been researched through primary sources, particularly policies' origins in the Labour Party, the influence of the trade union movement, campaigning groups and, in the case of sex equality, the remaining first wave feminist organisations. Through this the thesis develops an understanding of the nature and limitations of the equality that the equality state promotes.

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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the debate over Britain’s application for membership of the European Community. It explains the significant impact which short-term political calculations played in the stances adopted by individual members of the political elite. This political expediency was a major reason for the inadequacies of the debate on membership. Central to the research is a set of individual trajectories displaying the positions adopted by parliamentarians and political parties from 1959-1984 during which time Britain’s very membership of the European Community was at stake. The trajectories include a representative sample of Conservative and Labour MPs compiled using interviews, voting records, speeches and other evidence. While the aim of the thesis is to analyse whether members of the elite held views determined by concerns other than the substantive issue itself, the thesis also advances the argument that many failed to consider the long-term implications of Britain’s membership. The lack of a comprehensive debate of sufficient quality contributed substantially to later problems with Britain’s relationship with Europe. The chronological chapters analyse significant events at particular stages in the evolution of Britain’s relationship with Europe. The 1975 referendum on Common Market membership for example, is a spectacularly significant milestone – not only for Britain and Europe, but also in respect of the positions taken by Britain’s political elite, whose views were often shaped or changed as a consequence of the political machinations surrounding the issue. Analysis of this and other events including general elections and leadership changes, provide a greater understanding of why members of the political elite subordinated the issue of Britain’s future in Europe to short-term, pragmatic, party management or career considerations.