Constitutional Issues concerning reform women Constitutional reform 151 11 ➤ Review of constitutional reform before 1997 ➤ Analysis of the reasons behind the Labour reform plan of 1997 ➤ Descriptions of the main reforms ➤ Analysis of the reforms ➤ Prospects for future reforms CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM BEFORE 1997 Attitudes to reform The attitude of most governments towards constitutional reform during the twentieth century has been essentially conservative. This has, of course, partly been the result of the dominance of the Conservative party for most of that
This book seeks to review the state of political issues early in the twenty-first century, when New Labour is in its second term of office. As part of the updating process it became necessary to choose which political issues are important. The book includes the main issues which appear in current Advanced Level Politics syllabuses. In the case of Edexcel, which offers a specific political issues option in its A2 specification, all the specified issues have been included. The book deals with the process of constitutional and political change which are issues in themselves. It also includes material on constitutional reform (incorporating the recent development of human rights in Britain), and devolution. The book includes the global recession and other recent political developments and looks at the important issues in British politics since 1945. It examines the key issues of British politics today: economic policy, the Welfare State, law and order, environment policy, Northern Ireland, issues concerning women, European integration and the European Union, and the impact of the European Union on Britain. The book also deals with the European Union and Britain's relationship to it. Finally, it must be emphasised that Britain's relationship to the European Union is in itself a political issue which has fundamentally changed the party system.
society. But common political institutions are central to British identity as they both reflect and shape these other values. With its programme of constitutional reform, support for further European integration and efforts to ‘rebrand’ Britishness, New Labour threatens the 184 Philip Lynch ‘British Way’. Hague rejected claims that Britishness was an historical invention now ripe for modernisation, arguing that it continued to be a unifying force. Hague’s Conservative nation draws upon a traditional Tory attachment to political institutions, a Thatcherite emphasis on
constitutional government. CONAMU’s Executive and its technical team have maintained the organization’s stability during this period of uncertainty. The National Constitutional Assembly met between December 1997 and May 1998. During this time CPME, CONAMU and other women’s organizations developed an active presence, lobbying delegates for the inclusion of a number of constitutional reforms dealing with women. CPME’s strategies for influencing public policy varied 120 CASE STUDIES depending on the specific political circumstances and the changes taking place in state’s women
coasts blithely on from election to election, ignoring the howls for constitutional reform and fundamental rebuilding which have greeted some aspect of every result since 1959. In drawing this book to a close, we wish to try to discern more exactly what represents continuity and what represents change. To do this, we turn first to some basic summary statistics which are commonly used to look at party system dynamics – the effective number of parties; individual and total volatility – in order to locate the 2002 party system at the end of a trend starting in 1978, the
believed that, as every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, to prevent such abuse ‘power should be a check to power’. Recognition of this is the foundation of entrenched rights and written constitutions in political systems, structured around the rule of law. This strand in liberal thought has continued into the twenty-first century, with liberals showing enthusiasm for constitutional reform in Britain and Europe
-national’ form of human collectivity and coexistence. This inventive notion goes beyond assimilationist regimes of ‘inter-culturality’ where the protection of cultures takes place in separate and restricted isomorphic territories. There is a challenge to existing states to rethink mono-ethnic sovereignty, which has been met with constitutional reform and deeper commitments by governments in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Indigenous movements have influenced the constitutional process through advocacy of an alternative relationship with nature and activism around defence of
ITLP_C02.QXD 18/8/03 9:55 am Page 23 2 ‘What kind of people are you?’ Labour, the people and the ‘new political history’ Lawrence Black Like their subject, historians of Labour have tended to be attached to tradition and sceptical of novelty – in short, rather conservative. Newer tendencies are nonetheless evident. These result, in part, from changes in Labour. New Labour’s constitutional reforms, its engagement with issues of national identity and communication skills have been concurrent with recent work on the party’s past in such areas (Chadwick 1999
was explicitly induced from above, i.e. from the European level. This awakened parliamentary elites. The first step consisted of a rudimentary reform of the delegations’ general role to inform parliament on European matters. In 1990 membership doubled, governmental information policy became more systematic and the Ministers for European Affairs gained an informed parliamentary forum to present governmental policy via the organisation of periodic hearings (Loi 90–385, 10 May 1990). But the real breakthrough occurred in the context of constitutional reform, on which
groups it was the Fabian Society’s decision to adopt constitutional reformism and evolutionary gradualism that provided an appropriate application of Marxist social theory to British political conditions as well as synthesising it with indigenous intellectual traditions. Thirdly a grasp of the correct overall strategy would, however, rarely be enough, for political success also depended on being able to choose the right tactics. Thus, while Fabianism provided an accurate analysis of trends in British society and politics, it made little contribution to the foundation