British Foreign Policy and the Party System

1960 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-646
Author(s):  
F. S. Northedge
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Party System ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
General Elections ◽  
International Issues ◽  
A Minor

It is a paradox of British politics that, while party discipline is such that no government has to depend on Opposition support in order to pursue the foreign policy of its choice, this very fact has been one reason for the normal consensus on questions of foreign policy between the two front benches. The greater the prospects of Opposition leaders forming the next government the greater the discipline they tend to exert over their ranks, and the more international realities are imposed upon the kind of fantasy-thinking to which a party denied power for many years is especially prone. These tendencies have been notable in British politics since the war; they are likely to continue, given that the Labour Party can control the forces of disruption unleashed by its recent defeat. In the five general elections since the wartime Coalition Government foreign policy issues have not merely occupied a minor role; they have been regarded by party leaders, though not always by the rank and file, as though they were primarily questions of personal qualifications for conducting policies the main outlines of which were not in dispute. At the general election in the autumn of 1959, although disagreements between Government and Opposition had undoubtedly grown since the quiet accords of 1955, the campaign turned, if on international issues at all, on the eligibility of Right or Left to represent the country in negotiations in which the likely British position was largely agreed on both sides. The Leader of the Opposition recognised that this was so, although his explanation for it was that Ministers had been forced to accept Labour's policy recommendations.

The origins of Canada’s feminist foreign policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Chapnick
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
International Community ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
A Minor

In January 2019, a leading Canadian foreign policy blog, OpenCanada.org, declared that “[u]nder the government of Justin Trudeau, Canada has embraced a feminist foreign policy—gradually at first, and with fervor over the past year.” Although critics have debated the policy’s effectiveness, the embrace, if not also the fervor, was indisputable. By 2019, the Trudeau government’s second foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, was proclaiming Canada’s feminist approach to international relations openly and regularly. The international community had also noticed. This article investigates the origins of the new Canadian foreign policy “brand.” It finds that, contrary to popular thinking, the prime minister himself played at most a minor role in the initiation of what became a full-fledged transformation of Canada’s global image.

Local Elections

2020 ◽  
pp. 381-399
Author(s):  
Ulrik Kjær
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Electoral Law

Local elections are held every fourth year in the ninety-eight municipalities and the five regions of Denmark. Five features following from the local electoral law are used as points of departure to analyse the local elections: extended suffrage, non-concurrency with national elections, low formal but high natural thresholds, influential preference votes, and indirectly elected mayors. Thinking of local elections not as second-order but second-tier elections, it is concluded that the local vote is very local, with more than seven in ten voters basing their vote on local issues, the local campaign, and local candidates. This is despite the fact that the local party system is heavily nationalized and has come to resemble the national party system more and more. Most of the parties represented in national parliament run in almost all municipalities and regions and gain representation in many of these, while local non-partisan lists only play a minor role and conquer less than one seat in twenty. The two largest parties, the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, share among them almost two-thirds of the seats and a clear majority of the mayoralties.

scholarly journals Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Edward Fieldhouse ◽  
Jane Green ◽  
Geoffrey Evans ◽  
Jonathan Mellon ◽  
Christopher Prosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Long Term Changes ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Over Time

What has changed in British politics? Volatility. The British party system, and the electorate within it, have become more volatile over time, delivering substantial increases in fragmentation, in 2015, and then the largest two-party share in decades, in 2017. This chapter explains the focus of the book; what we explain, and then how we go about doing so. We focus on long-term changes in volatility, what explains that volatility, and what explains the parties that benefit from this in general elections, specifically focusing on vote outcomes in the 2015 and 2017 Elections through novel explanations combining the effects of electoral shocks in a context of increasing vote switching between elections. The chapter provides an overview of the book.

British Policy toward Hong Kong and its Political Reform

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (04) ◽  
pp. 1650013 ◽  
Author(s):  
TIM SUMMERS
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Uk

Twenty years after the return of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, this paper examines the UK’s policy toward Hong Kong over the last decade, with a particular focus on its approach toward the ongoing and intensifying political and constitutional debates in Hong Kong, which have partial origins in the British colonial legacy. The paper argues that the UK has been attempting a delicate balancing act in relation to Hong Kong between a number of factors: the growing importance of relations with China as a whole, the particular opportunities offered by UK–Hong Kong links, the changing and more contested political landscape in Hong Kong, the occasional intervention of British politics, and the agreements on Hong Kong’s future to which the UK was party in the 1980s. These reflect tensions between pragmatism and idealism, and in conclusion, the paper discusses what the case of Hong Kong says more broadly about the making of British foreign policy.

The Effect of Path Length and Display Size on Memory for Spatial Information

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Guérard ◽  
Sébastien Tremblay
Keyword(s):  
Path Length ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Length Effect ◽  
Serial Memory ◽  
Fixed Reference ◽  
A Minor

In serial memory for spatial information, some studies showed that recall performance suffers when the distance between successive locations increases relatively to the size of the display in which they are presented (the path length effect; e.g., Parmentier et al., 2005) but not when distance is increased by enlarging the size of the display (e.g., Smyth & Scholey, 1994). In the present study, we examined the effect of varying the absolute and relative distance between to-be-remembered items on memory for spatial information. We manipulated path length using small (15″) and large (64″) screens within the same design. In two experiments, we showed that distance was disruptive mainly when it is varied relatively to a fixed reference frame, though increasing the size of the display also had a small deleterious effect on recall. The insertion of a retention interval did not influence these effects, suggesting that rehearsal plays a minor role in mediating the effects of distance on serial spatial memory. We discuss the potential role of perceptual organization in light of the pattern of results.

Use of Different Tissue Thromboplastins in the Control of Anticoagulant-Therapy

1958 ◽  
Vol 02 (05/06) ◽  
pp. 462-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Verstraete ◽  
Patricia A. Clark ◽  
Irving S. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Prothrombin Time ◽  
Anticoagulant Therapy ◽  
Factor Vii ◽  
Rabbit Brain ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Rabbit Lung ◽  
Coagulation Mechanism ◽  
Time Test ◽  
The One ◽  
A Minor

SummaryAn analysis of the results of prothrombin time tests with different types of thromboplastins sheds some light on the problem why the administration of coumarin is difficult to standardize in different centers. Our present ideas on the subject, based on experimental data may be summarized as follows.Several factors of the clotting mechanism are influenced by coumarin derivatives. The action of some of these factors is by-passed in the 1-stage prothrombin time test. The decrease of the prothrombin and factor VII levels may be evaluated in the 1-stage prothrombin time determination (Quick-test). The prolongation of the prothrombin times are, however, predominantly due to the decrease of factor VII activity, the prothrombin content remaining around 50 per cent of normal during an adequate anticoagulant therapy. It is unlikely that this degree of depression of prothrombin is of major significance in interfering with the coagulation mechanism in the protection against thromboembolism. It may, however, play a minor role, which has yet to be evaluated quantitatively. An exact evaluation of factor VII is, therefore, important for the guidance of anticoagulant therapy and the method of choice is the one which is most sensitive to changes in factor VII concentration. The 1-stage prothrombin time test with a rabbit lung thromboplastin seems the most suitable method because rabbit brain preparations exhibit a factor VII-like activity that is not present in rabbit lung preparations.

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