Univ., Habil.-Schr.--Potsdam, 2003. / Literaturverz. S. [414] - 461.

During the past two decades, extensive research efforts have focused on the conventional wisdom that the economy has a direct influence on a party's destiny. This hypothesis rests on the implicit assumption that the linkages between macroeconomic variables such as inflation and unemployment and party support are direct and unmediated. As the present study indicates, however, objective economic measures only serve as a proxy for the invisible force that drives voters' party support. Once the relevant variables, namely, the perceptual factors of the electorate, are controlled for, variables that describe the state of the objective economy fail to exert their "magic" on political behavior.

This study represents the intellectual biography of an idea. That idea is the Welfare to Work regime of the New Labour government of Tony Blair over the period 1997 to 2007. This Welfare to Work regime is situated within a concept of an Enabling State developed in speeches by New Labour Ministers, particularly Blair, Gordon Brown, David Blunkett and the brothers Ed and David Miliband. The study elaborates the concept of 'enabling', traces its origins back, partly to the debates at Putney at the end of the English Civil War, partly through working-class history, and partly through the transformation of Gladstonian Liberalism wrought by New Liberals such as T.H. Green, L.T. Hobhouse and J.A. Hobson between 1880 and 1914. lt will argue that New Labour can be understood only by reference back to these origins. The study will also define the Enabling State by defining its opposite, the Disabling State created, albeit unintentionally, by the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997. The study employs a subset of Discourse Analysis, Speech Act Theory, to study the Labour speeches, since there has yet not been elaborated a 'theory of the Enabling State'. A participant observation is also employed to discuss how 'enabling' works at the level of individuals. The study is an attempt to 'read history backwards' as it were: to define the enabling state as it exists now, at least at the level of rhetoric, and then, as practical history, to trace lead ideas back to their sources, and to find antecedents: not cause and effect, for that is too difficult, but to find practices, traditions, concepts and discourse on which New Labour have been able to draw. This study will argue that, far from abandoning traditional Labour values, New Labour has found new ways to realise them.

Thesis advisor: Peter H. Weiler / In 1997, New Labor embraced an ideal of multiculturalism in an attempt to foster a particular brand of open communication and respectful cooperation among different individuals and cultural groups. This MA thesis investigates the background to one aspect of this multiculturalism, New Labor's education policies. The thesis shows how New Labor's current multicultural ideal originated in the 1960s in Labor's attempts to combat racial discrimination. As its attempts proved inadequate, Labor expanded its understanding of what was necessary to create a tolerant society, including educational policies that fostered tolerance, respect for different cultural groups, and personal responsibility. During eighteen years spent in opposition to a Conservative majority government, Labor refined its ideal of multiculturalism in debates, forging a path from the idealistic and radical reforms of the 1960s and 1970s toward New Labor's middle way. This thesis describes how New Labor utilized a variety of tools to achieve the goal of a tolerant, cooperative, multicultural society, including repurposing Conservatives' policies. This thesis defends multiculturalism as an appropriate response to a changing political environment, one that attempted to deal with the exigent circumstances presented by racial discrimination, class and cultural based underachievement, and underlying cultural tensions. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Le long processus de revendication de l’autonomie en Écosse était couronné de succès en 1997 avec le rétablissement d’un Parlement local. Aujourd’hui, à quelques années seulement de cet événement majeur, l'actualité s’intéresse déjà à l'organisation d’un référendum sur l’indépendance complète du pays qui se tiendrait prochainement. En politique, une semaine est décidément une longue période, comme l'affirmait l’ancien Premier ministre Harold Wilson. Mais est-ce une raison valable pour oublier le passé ? Qui s'intéresse, par exemple, aujourd’hui à un autre référendum écossais, celui de 1979 ? Celui-ci, en dépit de son échec "programmé" ne mérite pas le mépris des historiens car c’est à partir de ce "désastre" politique que le processus conduisant à 1997 tire sa force. Cette thèse est une analyse minutieuse de l'état d’esprit en Écosse et les facteurs divers et contradictoires incitant l'électorat écossais à l'enthousiasme, au désintérêt et à l'absentéisme lors du référendum de 1979. Elle cherche à comprendre comment une nation dont le sentiment identitaire est si fort n’a pas trouvé de point de ralliement dans un projet politique visant à lui donner plus d'autonomie. Elle analyse comment un gouvernement de gauche a cru nécessaire de proposer un projet de dévolution en opposition avec sa propre philosophie politique et qui l'a conduit à sa perte. Enfin, elle explore comment la "victoire" des opposants à ce projet de dévolution, et tout particulièrement le Parti conservateur britannique, pouvait si mal interpréter le vrai message de l'électorat écossais lors de ce grand rendez-vous manqué. Cette thèse invite les historiens à une meilleure appréciation de la notion de "défaite" en politique et rappelle l'importance parfois très complexe du rôle joué par le passé dans les choix identitaires présents et à venir du peuple écossais. / Scotland’s long road to self-government was crowned with success in 1997 when the parliament was re-established in Edinburgh. Today, within only a few years of this momentous event, political analysts have already turned their attention to a forthcoming referendum on complete independence. As a former Prime minister was once keen to point out “a week is a long time in politics”, but is it a valid reason for ignoring the past? Who today, for instance, is interested in another referendum, that of 1979? Despite its image of "programmed” failure, this historical event does not deserve the contempt it has received from historians for it is precisely from this “disaster” that the processes leading to 1997 can be traced. This thesis is a detailed analysis of the state of mind of the Scottish people and the various and contradictory factors which pushed them towards enthusiasm, disinterest and absenteeism during the referendum of 1979. It seeks to understand how a nation so imbued with the sense of its own identity was unable to support a political project aimed at giving it more control over its own affairs. It analyses how a left-wing government found it necessary to propose a project of devolution of its own powers which was in conflict with its own political philosophy and which ultimately led to its own self-destruction. Finally, it examines how the message sent by the Scottish people at the time of this great “victory” should have been so badly understood by the antis and in particular by the Conservative Party. This thesis invites historians to think more carefully about the notion of “defeat” in political terms and remember the importance and often complex role played by the past, and popular images of the past, in shaping the sense of belonging and identity in the present and determining the future choices of the people of Scotland.

By the 1960s violence became institutionalized in modern Jamaican politics. This endemic violence fostered an unstable political environment that developed out of a symbiotic relationship between Jamaican labor organizations and political violence. Consequently, the political process was destabilized by the corrosive influence of partisan politics, whereby party loyalists dependent on political patronage were encouraged by the parties to defend local constituencies and participate in political conflict. Within this system the Jamaican general election process became ominous and violent, exemplifying how limited political patronage was dispersed among loyal party supporters. This dissertation examines the role of the political parties and how they mobilized grassroot supporters through inspirational speeches, partisan ideology, complex political patronage networks, and historic party platform issues from 1940 through 1980. The dissertation argues that the development of Jamaican trade unionism and its corresponding leadership created the political framework out of which Jamaica's two major political parties, the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and People's National Party (PNP) emerged. Within the evolution of their support base Jamaican politicians such as Alexander Bustamante utilized their influence over local constituencies to create a garrison form of mobilization that relied heavily upon violence. By investigating the social and political connection between local politicians and violence, this dissertation examines how events such as the Henry Rebellion in 1960, the 1978 Green Bay Massacre, and the public murder of the PNP candidate Roy McGann in 1980 demonstrate the failure of traditional Jamaican political patronage to control extremist violence among grassroot supporters, giving rise to a general public dissatisfaction with the established Jamaican leadership. This transformation of the political system resulted in the institutionalization of political violence by the late 1960s, and a pattern of general elections destabilized by vicious conflicts between JLP and PNP gangs. This political violence was reflected in the rise of gang dons such as Jim Brown and Wayne "Sandokhan" Smith who became independent of the patronage system through their exploitation of the drug trade. Consequently, modern Jamaican politics in the twenty-first century is fractured and local political leaders have lost control of the gangs.

No description available.

In recent years a number of studies within Scottish labour history have added to the discipline’s understanding and knowledge of the history of the labour and trade-union movements of several Scottish towns/cities hitherto neglected by a historiography traditionally dominated by research into the West-Central Belt. These studies, of which this thesis forms part, provide data against which generalising narratives which purport to describe the development of the labour and trade-union movements in Britain can be read - a process which ultimately must improve these now orthodox narratives or see them replaced. The thesis also provides a historical description of the progress of the labour and trade- union movements in Perth, c. 1867 to c. 1922. This study of Perth is unique in that Perth’s labour and trade-union movements have been almost entirely neglected and thus the thesis provides a substantial body of fresh observations and data in the form of a critical and comparative history of the Perth labour and trade- union movements, c. 1867 to c. 1922. Comparative considerations within the thesis revolve around existing studies of the labour and trade-union movements of Scotland’s main industrial towns/cities/areas including Paisley and the Vale of Leven which shared common features with Perth. In gathering evidence use has been made of an array of primary sources. Both qualitative and quantitative methods feature throughout the thesis which is arranged using a thematic and chronological structure. The thesis also examines the Perth co-operative movement and the city’s working-class housing, in so far as they offer an understanding of the reasons for the historical development of working-class consciousness and support for Labour in Perth. The thesis provides an example of a development of class consciousness and support for Labour that shows strong deviation with those (according to conventional Scottish labour history) found in many other parts of Scotland. In particular, the thesis considers why a significant proportion of the Perth working class either remained loyal to Liberalism or shifted allegiance to Conservatism in the very early 1920s at which point the death agony of the Liberal Party had become deafening and the rise of Labour inexorable. In addition, the thesis examines the slow development of trade unionism in Perth and its failure to make any substantial headway until almost the conclusion of the Great War. The thesis when placed alongside studies such as Catriona Macdonald’s work on Paisley adds to the case for a fragmented development of class and trade-union consciousness across Scotland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The motor for the deviation between Perth and elsewhere is shown to be due to a ‘local identity’ - in particular a lingering and powerful industrial paternalism, the absence of a sizeable and powerful branch of the Independent Labour Party, and an insular craft-union dominated trades council. Additionally, the Perth working class is shown to have played a significant role in its own subordination going so far as to act to maintain the local industrial order even as Perth’s industrial paternalists and Liberal elites were abandoning the consensus upon which it was built.

British Labour Party&rsquo / s attitudes and policies towards European integration have historically oscillated between varying degrees of support for concrete integration steps and obstinate opposition to it. A major and pronounced volte-face on European policy occurred after 1983 and the aim of this study is to locate the causes of this shift in European policy and its subsequent course under &lsquo / New&rsquo / Labour period. The causes and motivations are searched within the general transformation of the party and they are assessed according to the changes in party&rsquo / s ideology and its perceptions about the needs of British national political economy. The scope of the study covers the intersection area between intra/inter-party politics and political economy. On these areas, Neo-Marxist theories of state and Regulation Approach are utilised, as well as the classical political sociology models on party politics. An historical inquiry on party policy encompassing the post-war period has been undertaken. In a similar vein, in order to compare it on ideological grounds, other European social democratic-socialist party policies are analysed alongside the British Labour case. It is argued that party&rsquo / s policy preferences are strongly influenced by and shaped according to the national socio-political institutional structure. The thesis comes to the conclusion that historical institutionalist analysis coupled with a &lsquo / structural dependency to capital&rsquo / theory offers a highly plausible explanation for the evolution of Labour Party&rsquo / s policy course on Europe, including the recent &lsquo / New&rsquo / Labour period.

Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Bonn--Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 316-329. Index.