This doctorate looks at the role of parliamentary select committees in the UK House of Commons. Though the literature on this topic is extensive, this research project explores the issue from a distinctive vantage point. While research on committees has predominantly focused on their outputs, such as committee reports, in order to assess the effectiveness of Parliament in holding the executive to account, this thesis looks at the input-side to committee work. It explores the individual beliefs, everyday practices and perennial dilemmas of parliamentary actors in select committees. In doing so, this thesis argues that understanding beliefs and practices of committee members, chairs and staff are crucial ways to better comprehend the way that scrutiny works in the House of Commons. This PhD finds that scrutiny is contested in a range of ways by a range of actors. In taking actors’ interpretations seriously, this PhD reveals that each actor has their own performance style, which is used to enact beliefs about scrutiny. At its most simple, this PhD argues that scrutiny is pushed and pulled in different (sometimes conflicting) directions by parliamentary actors. There is no such thing as uniform, systematic select committee scrutiny; there exist only dense webs of scrutiny that rely upon committee members, chairs and staff to enact their roles in such ways to be conducive to holding the executive to account. These dense webs of scrutiny affect committee relationships, their ability to question witnesses in select committees, and construct consensus in writing reports.

Interpreting Parliamentary Scrutiny: An enquiry concerning everyday practices of parliamentary actors in select committees of the House of Commons

‘A truthful pen and an impartial spirit’: Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola and the Conquista de las Islas Malucas

This chapter advances a theoretical basis for the development of a public ombud institution that is progressive and democratic. In so doing, it seeks to answer the question of what sort of public ombud we want and need. It offers a critical account of the apparent consensus on ‘modern ombudsman practice’, characterised by the prioritisation of the individual user, system and dispute resolution. It associates ‘modern ombudsman practice’ of this sort with a jurisprudential mentality, with the values of the ‘new public management’ and with the ideal of the quasi-judicial ombud and its priorities of negative individual rights, boundaries and adjudication. As an alternative, it proposes the democratic ombud founded upon the ‘demosprudential’ values of community, human rights principle and deliberative practice. It concludes that the demosprudential path is the necessary means of attaining ‘the People’s Ombud’ and an ombud that is true to its democratic roots. This will require the acquisition by the ombud of different powers, as well as a willingness and capacity to use them.

The Public Services Ombud and the Claims of Democracy

Micro and Macro Philosophy: Organicism in Biology, Philosophy, and Politics

Roman concepts and institutions have been formative for Western political forms and the Romans' thinking about power has had a deeper influence on Western traditions of political thought than is recognized in political theory. Recent developments have sparked the interest of political theorists in genres and artefacts that convey thinking about politics through means besides distinct argumentation. At the same time, the political turn in the study of Latin literature has opened the field to theoretical questions beyond the range of usual literary training. This chapter surveys issues, such as freedom, institutions, and foundation, which are central to Roman political thought, and maps a variety of methods for approaching how the Romans thought about politics. These include: close reading, rhetorical analysis, conceptual history, comparison with other media and cultural artefacts, and metaphorology. Illustrative interpretations span art and inscriptions, poetry and prose, with excurses on the reception and transformation of Roman political thinking in Augustine and Machiavelli. A sample reading of the death of Turnus in the Aeneid argues for a broad intellectual toolkit. 

Political Thought

PERHAPS it would be helpful to try to distinguish three levels of writing and talking about political activity which might avoid some common and unnecessary ambiguities and disputes, and might help to end the dreary curricular curse of separation between ideas and institutions. Having done this, I will try to apply the distinction to a group of recent books which have in common a preoccupation with something they call ‘democracy’, but otherwise only a bewildering lack of common assumptions. Fortunately my distinctions will not involve new terminology but will just sharpen an ordinary usage (until the lead breaks, some will think), so no quarrels between scientific positivism and linguistic analysis need arise. I would distinguish between political philosophy, political theory and political thought and argue that all our studies approximate to one of these. By political thought I mean the ordinary opinions that people hold, their immediate demands, assumptions and conditioned reflections about day to day public affairs-often called ‘public opinion’: that is, attitudes and actions which can be studied as given data within an accepted or settled social context. I mean by political theory attempts to explain the attitudes and actions arising from ordinary political life-thus political theory is basically concerned with the relationships between concepts and circumstances. And I mean by political philosophy attempts to resolve or to understand conflicts between political theories which might appear equally acceptable in given circumstances; it can take two forms (not necessarily incompatible): a philosophical analysis of the terms and concepts of political theory or (though many cannot come this far) an attempt to establish ethical criteria to judge between the desirability of different theories (so it arises when disputes need to be ‘clarified’-some say-or ‘resolved’-say others-when the ‘can be’ of the disputants is broadly agreed and only the residual ‘ought to be’ remains). I stress that I intend this distinction as one of levels of discourse, not of logically distinct statements; or if one could deline them precisely enough to be logically distinct categories, then their application to understanding or explaining events would always be imperfect. But they are, I think, genuinely distinct levels of abstraction, though each arises from the other. Political thought is the immediate and the concrete; political theories are concepts as to how social and political order adheres, develops and decays ; political philosophy is the most abstract expression and the most general-political philosophy must, indeed, be philosophy. (But this is not an hierarchy of political importance. If, for instance, Marx is not in this light a political philosopher,

Philosophy, theory and thought

The prospects for parliamentary reform

Toleration and permissiveness

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Philosophy, theory and thought

The prospects for parliamentary reform

Toleration and permissiveness