Even if the arguments of Beer and Jenkins are not completely accepted there are grounds for claiming that British politics has been very ideological in the relaxed sense of the term, even if not in the restricted sense.
From the wartime coalition government until the early s all the major parties, both in and out of government, largely agreed on the basics of government policy. These included the following:. There was often little difference between Labour and Conservative governments. Their pragmatism was based on the acceptance of similar policy goals in order to win elections. Yet this is clearly an example of ideology. It assumes a significant role for the state in the economy and society.
However, even during the high point of this consensus, from, say, to the early s, there were those in both major parties who were opposed to the consensus policies of their respective leaderships.
The left of the Labour Party wanted greater state intervention and control in society and the economy, while the right of the Conservative Party wanted a massive withdrawal of the state from any areas of social and economic activity and a significant reduction in the levels of taxation. They had little actual effect on the policies of their parties, as consensus politics appeared to be what the majority of the electorate wanted.
Political debate and electoral competition revolved around who could manage the system best, who could deliver the greatest level of economic growth, public services and social improvement for least cost and effort. This social-democratic consensus was successful in establishing an ideological grip on British politics for a number of reasons. The mass unemployment, poverty and failure of the s discredited the minimal state policies of the governments of the day.
If such methods could defeat the Nazis why, it was widely demanded, should state planning not defeat poverty and unemployment afterwards? At last, the long economic boom of the s and s appeared to show that Keynesian economics worked and governments did not have to make difficult choices about state spending and private income levels. Economic growth would enable Britain to have both excellent public services and high individual standards of living.
The s challenged the post-war consensus. There were a number of reasons for this. The post-war economic boom came to an end with growing economic difficulties, especially rising inflation and unemployment. Economic decline became more obvious as mining, shipbuilding, steelmaking, textiles and heavy engineering went into apparently terminal decline.
With that decline came the shrinking of trade-union membership. By the s the postwar generation that grew up with the welfare state and social democracy were a majority of the electorate. At the same time economic prosperity was growing in the new service sector and white-collar areas of the economy. With that came a new individualism, a new impatience at the inefficient and collectivist provision of state-run services and industries. In both the Labour and the Conservative parties the anti-consensus elements recognised their opportunities for power.
The Labour Party moved to the left, thereby losing both members and a close connection with the Labour Government — In it split over ideological issues, with many of its right wing going on to form the Social Democratic Party before ending up after its demise a few years later in the Liberal Democrat Party. The Conservatives moved to the right, slowly at first, but gathering pace under the leadership of Mrs Thatcher after These ideological changes were of significance in the following decade.
The Labour Party was condemned by voters as extreme, and it subsequently lost four elections in a row. The Conservative Party, in power —97 , was able to pursue policies that challenged many aspects of the post-war consensus. The Thatcher and Major governments attempted to create a new right-ofcentre ideological consensus for British politics, heavily influenced by neoliberalism, and to bring about a fundamental shift away from the social-democratic consensus.
The features included the following:. There was no significant reversal of Conservative policies after Labour came to power in Welfare spending was kept under tight control, helped by high levels of economic growth and low unemployment. Attacks were made on benefit fraudsters and the automatic nature of some benefits.
There was considerable support for free-market capitalism, no return to corporatism and no great changes to the tough trade-union legislation of the s. Even policies such as the minimum wage and family income-tax credits were designed to encourage people into work rather than rely on state benefits.
Pragmatic policies, yes, but with ideological underpinnings familiar to the post-war consensus and its successor. People have ideological beliefs, even if these beliefs are not very coherent. Ideological beliefs are beyond rational or scientific testing, whatever the claims of their proponents. Such beliefs perform a social role for those who hold them. Some critics argue that ideologies are simply instruments of power, wielded by the dominant groups in society.
Opponents of such views can point to abundant evidence that liberal capitalism is deeply influenced by ideology. Ideological beliefs were of profound influence in twentieth-century history. New forms of ideology, such as militant Islamism, seem likely to be important in the twenty-first century. From to there was a clear consensus between the major parties which constituted such an ideology.
A consensus exists today, though it is far more influenced by neo-liberalism than was the case in the period before Hattersley, Choose Freedom Michael Joseph, Barry, N. Dunleavy et al. Dutton, D. Eagleton, T.
Ideology: An Introduction Verso, Eatwell, R. Eatwell and A. Wright eds. Goodwin, B. Heywood, A. Leach, R. British Political Ideologies Philip Allen, MacKenzie, I. Eccleshall et al. McLellan, D. Ideology Open University Press, Plamenatz, J. Ideology Macmillan, Plant, R. Drucker et al. Seliger, M. Ideology and Politics Allen and Unwin, Thomas, G. Vincent, A. Vincent, Modern Political Ideologies Blackwell, , pp. Series: Understandings. This book critically examines the range of policies and programmes that attempt to manage economic activity that contributes to political violence.
Beginning with an overview of over a dozen policies aimed at transforming these activities into economic relationships which support peace, not war, the book then offers a sustained critique of the reasons for limited success in this policy field. The inability of the range of international actors involved in this policy area, the Development-Security Industry DSI , to bring about more peaceful political-economic relationships is shown to be a result of liberal biases, resulting conceptual lenses and operational tendencies within this industry.
A detailed case study of responses to organised crime in Kosovo offers an in-depth exploration of these problems, but also highlights opportunities for policy innovation. This book offers a new framework for understanding both the problem of economic activity that accompanies and sometimes facilitates violence and programmes aimed at managing these forms of economic activity.
Summaries of key arguments and frameworks, found within each chapter, provide accessible templates for both students and aid practitioners seeking to understand war economies and policy reactions in a range of other contexts. It also offers insight into how to alter and improve policy responses in other cases.
As such, the book is accessible to a range of readers, including students interested in peace, conflict and international development as well as policy makers and practitioners seeking new ways of understanding war economies and improving responses to them. Despite the imperative for change in a world of persistent inequality, racism, oppression and violence, difficulties arise once we try to bring about a transformation.
As scholars, students and activists, we may want to change the world, but we are not separate, looking in, but rather part of the world ourselves. The book demonstrates that we are not in control: with all our academic rigour, we cannot know with certainty why the world is the way it is, or what impact our actions will have. It asks what we are to do, if this is the case, and engages with our desire to seek change. Chapters scrutinise the role of intellectuals, experts and activists in famine aid, the Iraq war, humanitarianism and intervention, traumatic memory, enforced disappearance, and the Grenfell Tower fire, and examine the fantasy of security, contemporary notions of time, space and materiality, and ideas of the human and sentience.
The book argues that although we might need to traverse the fantasy of certainty and security, we do not need to give up on hope. This book deals with the institutional framework in post-socialist, after-empire spaces. It consists of nine case studies and two contributions of a more theoretical nature.
Each of these analytical narratives sheds some light on the micro-politics of organised violence. After , Serbs and Croats were competing over access to the resources needed for institution building and state building.
Fear in turn triggered ethnic mobilisation. An 'unprofessional' riot of Serbs in the Krajina region developed into a professional war between Serbs and Croats in Croatia, in which several thousand died and several hundred thousand people were forcefully expelled from their homes.
The Herceg-Bosnian style of resistance can be surprisingly effective. It is known that most of the heroin transported along the Balkans route passes through the hands of Albanian mafia groups; that this traffic has taken off since summer The concept of Staatnation is based on the doctrine according to which each 'nation' must have its own territorial State and each State must consist of one 'nation' only.
The slow decline and eventual collapse of the Soviet and the Yugoslav empires was partly triggered, partly accompanied by the quest for national sovereignty. Dagestan is notable for its ethnic diversity and, even by post-Soviet standards, its dramatic economic deprivation.
The questions used for this analysis can be found in the survey topline. Take gun control as an example. In this survey, we update our long-standing trend on whether it is more important to protect gun rights or control gun ownership. And to capture more detail on how far people are willing to go on this issue, each of these groups was asked a follow-up question.
Those who favor gun rights were asked if there should be some restrictions — or no restrictions — on gun ownership. Those who prioritize gun control were asked if most people should be allowed to own guns within limits, or if only law enforcement personnel should be allowed to own guns.
Compared with this near-unanimity on general priorities, all-or-nothing proposals on guns attract relatively modest support from the right and left. Consistent conservatives are most likely to favor complete freedom to own guns. Thus, those in the center ideologically are no less likely than those on the left, and only somewhat less likely than those on the right, to hold all-or-nothing views about gun ownership.
Yet the issue remains contentious, at least in part because opposition goes significantly beyond the view that unauthorized immigrants should simply be denied an opportunity to become citizens. On the other side of the issue, those who back a path to citizenship were asked if unauthorized immigrants who meet certain conditions should be eligible for citizenship right away or only after a period of time.
Yet abortion also is an issue on which the public generally supports a middle-ground approach. Consistent liberals are far more likely than other groups to say there should be no restrictions on abortion. While opinions about abortion are correlated with ideology, many Americans who are not ideologically aligned still express unyielding views on this issue. Yet conservatives and liberals are not any more likely than others to view the issue of government surveillance in stark terms.
Among consistent liberals, as many say the NSA program should be prevented from collecting any data about U. The idea of a single-payer health care system — in which the government pays for all health care costs — has long been a dream of many liberals.
But when Congress took up health care reform in , Democrats united behind a market-based proposal — what became the Affordable Care Act — which was seen as more politically feasible. Overall, the public is divided over how far the government should go in providing health care. Those who believe the government does have a responsibility to ensure health coverage were asked if health insurance should be provided through a mix of private insurance companies and the government, or if the government alone should provide insurance.
Even among consistent conservatives, there is minimal support for the government having absolutely no role in providing health care. The public, particularly younger Americans , are deeply skeptical about their chances for ever receiving full Social Security benefits when they retire. When the majority who oppose benefits cuts is asked if the program should be expanded, or kept as it is, most support the status quo. The prospect of phasing out Social Security draws little support.
Liberalism begins from the premise that everyone is an individual, and that individuals have rights. The central value of liberal individualism is freedom.
All freedoms are not equally important; the main liberal values are concerned with certain particularly important freedoms, such as freedom of assembly, of speech, and of worship. Liberals mistrust the state and argue that society is likely to regulate itself if state interference is removed. Hayek argues that all state activity, whatever its intentions, is liable to undermine the freedom of the individual; that society is too complex to be tampered with; and that the activities of the free market, which is nothing more than the sum total of activities of many individuals, constitute the best protection of the rights of each individual.
As a political position, liberalism has been important as a means of defending people from abuse by authority. Although liberalism was initially a radical doctrine, it has also been used since the 19th century to stand for a defence of propertied interests.
The 'conservatives' of the New Right are generally liberal individualists rather than conservatives. They are sometimes also called neo-liberals, because they combine the focus of the traditional market liberals with a degree of conservative scepticism about human behaviour and motives. Populism is often seen as a reaction against social change, appealing particularly to people who feel their position is threatened by it.
Populism is based on a view of 'the people' as sharing views and interests, and able to exercise a common 'general will' typically interpreted by a charismatic leader. The French Front National , for example, claims to run "in the name of the people". The populist approach to democracy is liable to be exclusive. Populist parties may be prepared to support welfare provision for 'the people', but they may be suspicious of welfare for outsiders and immigrants. The picture advertises provision formerly made in a French town led by a National Front mayor, offering a bonus payment for French families only.
The measure was subsequently declared illegal. Further material: Immigration and nationality. Eugenic ideologies existed before fascism, and although they were discredited by their association with medical murder and the holocaust they have resurfaced in recent years.
They are characterised by the nineteenth-century belief that socially constructed characteristics, like poverty, crime or sexuality are inborn, and that they will inevitably find a way to emerge unless breeding is regulated. Repeated attempts in social science have found no empirical support for the belief that such characteristics are replicated between generations. The extreme right in Europe is mainly racialist and nationalist rather than collectivist. In Greece, however, Golden Dawn has adopted an authoritarian, collectivist ideology referring directly to fascist tropes.
Despite the ambiguity; some generalisations are possible: in each sense, poverty can be identified with a lack of well-being. Individualists and economists define well-being as a property of 'individuals'. Social well-being is the interests of people in groups, which is not always the same as the people within it; there are often conflicts between the interests of individuals, families and communities.
For example, it is generally considered to be in the interests of a nation to defend itself against attack, even where people within it suffer directly as a result. Individual and social welfare coincide because people are interdependent, social creatures, and people rely on social mechanisms like social interaction, exchange, the division of labour, and education for their personal development and well-being.
The basis of solidarity is mutual obligation. This is mainly expressed through reciprocity, or exchange. Often, though, reciprocity is "generalized"; there is no simple balance, but people give because they have received something in the past, or because some future reciprocity is possible.
For example, parents give to children because their own parents gave to them; people support pensioners in the expectation that future generations will support them when they are pensioners.
Generalized reciprocity is the norm within families, but it also occurs in mutual insurance. Solidarity can be difficult to distinguish from 'altruism', but there is no reason to suppose that the motivation is unselfish. The central problem of solidarity is that it is often exclusive - confined to a special group. External link: Catholic social teaching. Rights are rules: they can protect liberties or impose duties on other people. A classic account by Hohfeld distinguishes claim-rights such as a pension from liberties, and powers like a driving licence from immunities such as tax relief.
Rights to welfare can be general applying to everyone or particular applying, like contractual rights, only to specific people. The welfare states of continental Europe have mainly developed particular rights, related to membership of schemes and individual rights; this has proved a very effective way of promoting social protection, most notably in the area of pensions, but it does not necessarily extend to the whole population.
The model followed by the UK attempted to extend rights to everyone, on the basis of citizenship; citizenship is the right to have rights. This idea, like solidarity, can be exclusive; it can be used to deny people rights, as well as to include them.
Most rights are held by individuals, but a strong case has been made for group-based rights, such as rights to culture and the rights of indigenous peoples.
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