Summary
Contents
Subject index
Providing a complete up-to-date overview of the changing nature of contemporary party politics in Britain, this book draws on models of comparative politics and the latest empirical analysis to explain the capacity of British parties to adapt to a changing political environment. A number of broad themes include: the nature and extent of party competition; the internal life and organizational development of parties; the variety of evolving party systems in the United Kingdom; and the links between parties and the wider political system. The current weaknesses of party performance are addressed, and the scope of reform explained and examined. Contrary to claims of 'decline', however, the book demonstrates that party politic
Conflict and Cohesion within Parties
Conflict and Cohesion within Parties
- The Influence of the Parliamentary Backbenches 168
- Factionalism and the Conceptual Dimensions of Intra-Party Politics 171
- Analysing Intra-Party Politics in Two-Dimensional Ideological Space: Data and Method 176
- British Parliamentary Elites in Two-Dimensional Space 177
- Europe: The Emerging Third Dimension? 182
- Conclusions: Factionalism, Intra-Party and Cross-Party Alignments 186
- Notes 188
‘there is little we can understand and discuss as long as the assumption remains that the party underworld is all alike, all made of one and the same stuff. The first step is, then, to identify the diverse nature of fractions’ (Sartori 1976: 106).
Few who have investigated intra-party politics could disagree with Giovanni Sartori's observation that, ‘as with icebergs, it is only a small part of politics that rests above the water-line’. It is ...
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