Notes Introduction 1. See for example the comment in the Daily Express (19 December 1997): ‘This country’s distinctive contribution to civilisation has been the development of stable institutions of representative government.’ 2. This approach is linked to the governance thesis, which is itself becoming a new orthodoxy (Kerr and Kettell 2006). 1 ‘Variations on a Theme’: Political Tradition in Explanations of British Politics 1. We should recognise, as Chadwick (2000: 288-9) does, that ‘the distinction between real politics and ideas is artificial – politics is a linguistic practice and our understanding of any political practice is incomplete if it does not refer to the discourses that surround and construct it’. 2. Hall (1986: 19) defines ‘institutions’ as: ‘the formal rules, compliance proce- dures, and the standard operating practices that structure the relationship between individual in various units of the polity and the economy’. 3. Similarly in a widely read textbook, Dearlove and Saunders (1991: 70) describe the Westminster Model as ‘a cabinet system of government where close two party electoral competition produces a party duopoly in the Commons and an alternating monopoly of the executive that is mandated and able to imple- ment the programme it put before the electorate so that representative and reasonable government is secured’. 4. Lijphart juxtaposes the Westminster Model of Democracy with a Consensus Model of Democracy. The latter will be raised in Chapter 6. 5. The Asymmetrical Power Model (Marsh, Richards and Smith 2001: 2003; Marsh 2008a) offers a more accurate description of how the British political system functions. 6. For example in a later co-authored work, he suggested that ‘the men who drafted the Treaty of Union carefully left every institution in England and every institution in Scotland untouched by the Act, provided that the exist- ence of such an institution was consistent with the main objects of the Act ... the essential unity of the people’ (Dicey and Rait 1920: 362). 7. For example Bogdanor goes so far as to suggest that ‘the profoundly unitary nature of the UK, as expressed in the supremacy of Parliament’ (1979:7) was the defining feature of territorial relations in the UK. 8. See for example Bogdanor (1999), Mitchell (2000) and McGarvey and Cairney (2008). 9. Johnson argues that ‘in retrospect, it is hardly short of astonishing that this faith in the virtues and vigour of a bundle of conventions and institutional practices shaped mainly over a century ago should have endured so long’ 221 222 Notes (2004: 2). However adopting a focus on political traditions and the institu- tional and cultural impact demonstrates how such conventions and prac- tices become common understandings of political life over time. 10. For example Midwinter, Keating and Mitchell (1991: 2) argued that ‘the UK remains a unitary state, in which ultimate sovereignty resides in Parliament’. 11. As we saw earlier the lack of theory in British politics is an increasingly iden- tified weakness of analyses of British politics (Greenleaf 1983a; McAnulla 2006a; Kerr and Kettell 2006). 12. See for example Bill Jones et al. Politics UK (2004) 13. It is worth noting in passing here that in the many constitutional reforms proposed since Birch originally discussed this idea little has been done to alter this. In cases where reform proposals have been advanced, the claim to make the system more representative, such as the ‘People’s Peers’ or the Wakeham Commission Report (2000), a closer inspection highlights the extent to which the result would likely to be to preserve the specialist and unrepresentative nature of politicians due to the nature of the appoint- ments process. 14. Marsh and Hall (2007: 222) suggest that debates about responsibility were implicit in those occurring about representation that had characterised the late 18th and 19th centuries. The same notion of responsibility was implicit in the Tory, Whig and Liberal discourses concerning representation, a point that will be dealt with in greater depth later. 15. Broadly, in the UK the Liberals stressed that responsible government would be achieved via accountability to Parliament whereas Conservatives placed their emphasis on the desirability of a strong executive that was able to govern. 16. It is highly debatable whether Bevir and Rhodes overcome this in their own work, given how they conceptualise the relationship between ideas and institutions. For a greater exploration of this see Chapter 2. 17. It should be noted here that the Asymmetrical Powel Model (APM) devel- oped by Marsh, Richards and Smith (2001; 2003) also utilises the BPT as a central tenet of its overall organising perspective and the more recent work of Batters (2005) and Marsh and Hall (2007) has built upon this critical perspective. 18. Tant’s analysis of British democracy is reminiscent of Rousseau’s oft- quoted observation that ‘the English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people are enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it’ (cited in Cress 1987: xi) and the subject of Lord Hailsham’s 1976 Dimbleby Lecture ‘Elective Dictatorship’. 19. This is a trend that, it could be argued, continues unabated. See for exam- ple New Labour’s failure to honour their manifesto commitments to hold referendums on both membership of the Single European Currency and, significantly, electoral reform for Westminster elections. For a convincing explanation of the latter see Marsh and Hall (2007). 20. As already noted The British Political Tradition forms a central part of the APM developed by Marsh, Richards and Smith (2001; 2003). It is also Notes 223 discussed in detail by McAnulla (2006a) and developed in detail by Marsh and Hall (2007). 21. Historical Institutionalism is a branch of social science whose method involves analysing institutions in order to identify sequences or patterns of social, political and economic behaviour across time. Charles Tilly’s Coercion, capital and European states (1990) defines it as a method for measuring ‘big structures, large processes, and (making) huge compari- sons. As such it is explicitly concerned with the notion of continuity and change over time. Critics argue that it privileges the former over the latter. For an engaging discussion of Historical Institutionalism see D. Marsh, E. Batters and H. Savigny, Historical Institutionalism: Beyond Pierson and Skocpol (unpublished paper: available online). 22. For discussion of this see for example Hay (2002), Marsh, Batters and Savigny (2004: available online), Schmidt (2006). 23. This view forms a key part of Bevir and Rhodes’s critique of the existing usage of the BPT (Bevir and Rhodes 2003). 24. Marsh (2003) suggests there are five overall positions concerning the relationship between institutions and ideas. He identifies them as (i) Institutionalism (ii) Idealism (iii) The Additive Approach (iv) The Discourse Analytical Approach (v) The Dialectical Approach. Of these Marsh advo- cates a dialectical approach. For details see Marsh (2003: unpublished paper available online). 25. For discussion and explanation of the fate of Freedom of Information under New Labour see Batters (2005) and Marsh and Hall (2007). 26. The stages of the morphogenetic cycle are (i) structural conditioning (ii) social interaction (iii) structural elaboration or reproduction. 27. Hay states that ‘what is required instead is a recognition of the complex interaction of material and ideational factors. Political outcomes are, in short, neither a simple reflection of actors’ intentions and understandings, nor of the contexts which give rise to such intentions and understandings. Rather, they are a product of the impact of the strategies actors devise as means to realise their intentions upon a context which favours certain strat- egies over others and does so irrespective of the intentions of the actors themselves’ (2002: 208). 28. See for example Norton (1984) and Punnett (1987) whose reverence for the British political system and its development barely conceals their conservatism. 2 Tradition or Traditions? 1. Nor is the concept of political tradition peculiar to British politics. See for example R. Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (1948). 2. We should note here that McAnulla (2006b) persuasively suggests that their interpretivism has not fully overcome the problems of positivism. This will be explained more fully later in this chapter. 3. Hay (2002) offers a detailed analysis and critique of the methodology of positivist political science. In particular he highlights the parsimony of positivist approaches to political analysis and critiques their ‘naturalism’ (2002: 59–89). 224 Notes 4. For a detailed discussion and evaluation of the relative merits of these approaches see Marsh (2008a). 5. Firstly Bevir and Rhodes suggest that the interpretive approach identifies important empirical gaps in the WM by distinguishing the fundamental changes in British government. Essentially Bevir and Rhodes (2003; 2004) argue that the WM is an outdated and unconvincing description of British politics. Secondly the interpretive approach decentres institutions and thus avoids the idea that institutions fix the behaviour of individuals within them rather than being products of that behaviour. For Bevir and Rhodes, change is rooted in the beliefs, attitudes and preferences of individual actors. Concepts such as tradition and dilemma are available to political scientists as explanatory devices if this approach is adopted. Thirdly it is suggested that this approach opens up new research agendas and questions regarding British government and techniques, such as ethnography and history, are excellent tools for identifying beliefs and actions as well as explaining such beliefs and actions. Fourthly it raises key theoretical issues regarding the pluralising of policy- making and diversification of government structures. It therefore lends support to the idea of bottom- up forms of decision-making as an analytical view.