(1998). From hostility to ‘constructive engagement’: The Europeanisation of the labour party. West European Politics: Vol. 21, Britain in the Nineties the Politics of Paradox, pp. 72-96.

From hostility to ‘constructive engagement’: The Europeanisation of the labour party

This article explores the ways in which British election campaigns and parties have changed as a result of new technology and party recruitment from advertising agencies, pollsters, and public rela...

New Campaign Communications: Consequences for British Political Parties

Although Britain has developed a reasonably successful model of party democracy, there is little legal recognition of political parties in the constitutional order My hypothesis is that the legal status of political parties relates to deep-seated political and social theories subsisting in British society Britain's self-regulating political parties still adhere to the liberal theory of parliamentary democracy However, there is increasing dissatisfaction with this status quo, which tends to ignore the pluralist reality Therefore, demands are now being made for the creation of a new theory of democracy and for a range of constitutional reforms which such a theory requires I propose to adopt a model of double democratisation which implies a refocusing of the liberal distinction between state and society This model develops an equilibrium between state and society within a constitutional framework which can be called 'constitutionalised democratic autonomy' I seek to argue that all agencies of power should be regulated within a constitutional framework which allows public scrutiny of the political system as a whole while affording, on the one hand, the greatest measure of freedom to civil society and, on the other, parity of autonomy to the state The fact that political parties now play a powerful role within the state adds additional urgency to the task of reformulating the democratic agenda In connecting a new perspective on political parties to the reformulated theory of democracy, the dual relationship of political parties to the state and civil society, ie, their character both as a social sphere and as a political sphere, will be stressed Based on these theoretical arguments, this dissertation critically analyses British law relating to political parties and maintains that there is a need for the legal institutionalisation of political parties It discusses various possibilities for the constitutionalisation of political parties, which are envisaged to encourage in a balanced way inter- and intra-party democracy This constitutionalisation will require, inter alia, (a) intra-party democracy, (b) electoral reform and (c) the juridification of the financial affairs of political parties This dissertation concludes that the constitutionalisation of political parties is part and parcel of the modernisation of the British political system in the direction of correcting a divergence between the pluralist reality and the liberal constitutional ideal

Constitutionalising political parties in Britain.

Party organisation is about more than structure and power: it is an important means through which political elites define a party and its political identity. This thesis examines narratives of organisational reform in the British Labour Party between 1979 and 2014, at times of significant debate about methods of leadership election, party governance, processes of policy-making and the union link. When arguing for particular kinds of organisational reform, elites within the Party have constructed different stories in order to contest proposals and present their visions for structural change. In doing so, they have tied together interpretations of Labour’s past, present and future with particular notions of what makes for ‘democratic’ and ‘legitimate’ politics. This temporal and cultural politics lies at the heart of the transformation the Party underwent in this period and underpins the challenges posed to its identity in recent years.

In the course of this thesis, three related arguments are made. First, it is argued that the organisational debates that took place between 1979 and 2014 offer a unique perspective on the complicated and fractious identity politics of the Party as being historically rooted in collectivism or individualism, movement politics or parliamentarism. Second, it is argued that Labour’s elites have increasingly sought to individualise party structures since the decline of the left in the ‘80s. In contrast to other accounts of Labour’s organisation that focus on its structures, this thesis argues that this individualisation was as much about party identity as it was process. Third, this thesis argues that the prolonged debates about Labour’s organisational identity demonstrate how unsettled and divided the Party has been throughout its recent history. The lack of a common sense understanding of the Party's organisational character can help to explain its fractured internal dynamics since its loss in the General Election of 2015.

Narratives of organisational reform in the British Labour Party, 1979-2014

Power in the parties: R. T. Mckenzie and after

Reforming the Labour Party

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Reforming the Labour Party