The New Right Conception of Citizenship and the Citizen's Charter

1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bellamy ◽  
John Greenaway

MANY COMMENTATORS HAVE VIEWED THE CITIZEN'S CHARTER programme as a cynical exercise, having little to do with either the political participation one associates with citizenship or the establishment of a general bill of rights in the manner of the great Charters of the past. Although these criticisms possess some force, they fail to recognize that a distinctive conception of citizenship and rights underlies the initiative. In section one, we give an outline of this view of the citizen and trace its origins in the New Right critique of the social-democratic theory that predominated during the post-war period. This exercise forms a necessary preliminary both for understanding the objectives of the policy, the task of section two, and for assessing its coherence and plausibility, the aim of section three. We shall conclude that the scheme fails because it either substitutes the market for the state where it is inappropriate or omits to do so where it might provejustified. In these respects, the combination of politics and markets from the mixed-economy perspective of the social democratic conception of citizenship may well be superior.

Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....


Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This chapter concerns the politics of managing the domestic banking system in post-war Britain. It examines the pressures brought to bear on the post-war settlement in banking during the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, the growth of new credit creating institutions and the political demand for more competition between banks. This undermined the social democratic model for managing credit established since the war. The chapter focuses in particular on how the Labour Party attempted in the 1970s to produce a banking system that was competitive, efficient, and able to channel credit to the struggling industrial economy.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
HUGH BOCHEL ◽  
ANDREW DEFTY

The post-war ‘consensus’ on welfare was based largely in the perceived agreement of leading politicians of Conservative and Labour parties on the role of the mixed economy and the welfare state. However, from the late 1970s economic and demographic pressures and ideological challenges, particularly from the New Right, led to cuts in spending on welfare, increased private involvement and an emphasis on more individualistic and selectivist approaches to provision. Recently some scholars have begun to discuss the emergence of a ‘new liberal consensus’ around welfare provision. Drawing upon interviews with 10 per cent of the House of Commons, this article examines the extent to which a new political consensus upon welfare can be identified. In addition to analysing responses to questions on welfare issues, it considers the extent to which MPs themselves believe there to be some degree of consensus in approaches to welfare. It also considers whether any consensus exists merely in the political language used in relation to welfare issues, or whether there is a more substantive convergence.


1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Guizzi

IT IS NOT EASY TO EXPLAIN THE REASONS THAT LED TO THE appointment of Bettino Craxi as Prime Minister. First of all, there was certainly the political fatigue of the Christian Democratic Party which had held the premiership for 35 years. AIdo Moro, a great man and leader, had tried to mediate between the various currents within the party, as well as between the party and other allied parties (the Republicans, the Social Democrats, the Socialists). But what Moro really dreamt of was a possible alliance with the Communist Party to solve at least the most serious issues, such as terrorism and economic decline. He thought of repeating with the Communists the experience the DC had had in the early 1960s with the Socialists: widening the democratic area with the view of transforming the PCI into a social democratic trend. In order to obtain this he even considered letting the PCI take part in the majority at least if not in the government itself. His disappearance had serious repercussions, especially in the Christian Democratic Party where internal friction grew even stronger than in the past. This resulted in a great drop in the party's power and ability to manage the country politically even if, at least in part, it regained in the 1979 and 1983 elections the votes lost in the 1976 elections.


2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (119) ◽  
pp. 301-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raimund Feld

There was an impact of neoliberalism on the Swedish model over the past twenty years. Its main political driving force was the social democratic party. It is argued that neoliberalism had a major impact first on the level of discourse and then, from 1990 onwards, on the policy level as well. As a result, the gap between the Swedish model and continental welfare states is found to be narrowing, the universalism of the model itself being undermined as those who can afford to do so more and more frequently choose to pay for better services on the market while others are relegated to means-tested social assistance and social services increasingly starved of resources.


1970 ◽  
pp. 53-57
Author(s):  
Azza Charara Baydoun

Women today are considered to be outside the political and administrative power structures and their participation in the decision-making process is non-existent. As far as their participation in the political life is concerned they are still on the margins. The existence of patriarchal society in Lebanon as well as the absence of governmental policies and procedures that aim at helping women and enhancing their political participation has made it very difficult for women to be accepted as leaders and to be granted votes in elections (UNIFEM, 2002).This above quote is taken from a report that was prepared to assess the progress made regarding the status of Lebanese women both on the social and governmental levels in light of the Beijing Platform for Action – the name given to the provisions of the Fourth Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The above quote describes the slow progress achieved by Lebanese women in view of the ambitious goal that requires that the proportion of women occupying administrative or political positions in Lebanon should reach 30 percent of thetotal by the year 2005!


2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
D. A. Abgadzhava ◽  
A. S. Vlaskina

War is an essential part of the social reality inherent in all stages of human development: from the primitive communal system to the present, where advanced technologies and social progress prevail. However, these characteristics do not make our society more peaceful, on the contrary, according to recent research and reality, now the number of wars and armed conflicts have increased, and most of the conflicts have a pronounced local intra-state character. Thus, wars in the classical sense of them go back to the past, giving way to military and armed conflicts. Now the number of soldiers and the big army doesn’t show the opponents strength. What is more important is the fact that people can use technology, the ideological and informational base to win the war. According to the history, «weak» opponent can be more successful in conflict if he has greater cohesion and ideological unity. Modern wars have already transcended the political boundaries of states, under the pressure of certain trends, they are transformed into transnational wars, that based on privatization, commercialization and obtaining revenue. Thus, the present paper will show a difference in understanding of terms such as «war», «military conflict» and «armed conflict». And also the auteurs will tell about the image of modern war and forecasts for its future transformation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
Pia Rowe ◽  
David Marsh

While Wood and Flinders’ work to broaden the scope of what counts as “politics” in political science is a needed adjustment to conventional theory, it skirts an important relationship between society, the protopolitical sphere, and arena politics. We contend, in particular, that the language of everyday people articulates tensions in society, that such tensions are particularly observable online, and that this language can constitute the beginning of political action. Language can be protopolitical and should, therefore, be included in the authors’ revised theory of what counts as political participation.


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