Everyday Life in British Government

Everyday Life in British Government
Author: R. A. W. Rhodes
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2011-04-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191620580

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As citizens, why do we care about the everyday life of ministers and civil servants? We care because the decisions of the great and the good affect all our lives, for good or ill. For all their personal, political, and policy failings and foibles, they make a difference. So, we want to know what ministers and bureaucrats do, why, and how. We are interested in their beliefs and practices. In his fascinating piece of political anthropology, Rod Rhodes uncovers exactly how the British political elite thinks and acts. Drawing on unprecedented access to ministers and senior civil servants in three government departments, he answers a simple question: 'what do they do?' On the basis of extensive fieldwork, supplemented by revealing interviews, he tries to capture the essence of their everyday life. He describes the ministers' and permanent secretaries' world through their own eyes, and explores how their beliefs and practices serve to create meaning in politics, policy making, and public-service delivery. He goes on to analyze how such beliefs and practices are embedded in traditions; in webs of protocols, rituals, and languages. The story he has to tell is dramatized through in-depth accounts of specific events to show ministers and civil servants 'in action'. He challenges the conventional constitutional, institutional, and managerial views of British governance. Instead, he describes a storytelling political-administrative elite, with beliefs and practices rooted in the Westminster model, which uses protocols and rituals to domesticate rude surprises and cope with recurrent dilemmas.

British Government and Politics

British Government and Politics
Author: Douglas V. Verney
Publisher: New York, Harper
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1966
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

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Government and Politics in Britain

Government and Politics in Britain
Author: John Kingdom
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 800
Release: 2003-06-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780745625942

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The third edition of this best-selling, prize-winning textbook continues to lead the field with its widely acknowledged capacity to enthuse students through its challenging and thought-provoking style. With the reforming Blair government in its second term, evidence of popular disenchantment with traditional politics, globalization and new levels of terrorism, British politics continues in a state of dramatic flux. To chart the most recent developments in contemporary British politics, this edition has been updated in all its 22 chapters. * Coherent structure of this single-authored textbook makes it exceptionally easy to use and draws the threads together with a holistic perspective * Brings the subject to life by taking the reader beyond 'facts' to the fascinating questions about power, ambition, intrigue and corruption in the real world of politics * Attractively presented, with memorable quotations, cartoons, photographs, diagrams and tables to enliven the text and make the learning process involving and informative * Glossary, impressive bibliography and up-to-date chronology. * Supported by a textsite designed for students and lecturers: www.polity.co.uk/kingdom Well established as a central text for students of British politics and government, the book has also proved of wide relevance throughout the social sciences.

Life as Politics

Life as Politics
Author: Asef Bayat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2013-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 080478633X

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Prior to 2011, popular imagination perceived the Muslim Middle East as unchanging and unchangeable, frozen in its own traditions and history. In Life as Politics, Asef Bayat argues that such presumptions fail to recognize the routine, yet important, ways in which ordinary people make meaningful change through everyday actions. First published just months before the Arab Spring swept across the region, this timely and prophetic book sheds light on the ongoing acts of protest, practice, and direct daily action. The second edition includes three new chapters on the Arab Spring and Iran's Green Movement and is fully updated to reflect recent events. At heart, the book remains a study of agency in times of constraint. In addition to ongoing protests, millions of people across the Middle East are effecting transformation through the discovery and creation of new social spaces within which to make their claims heard. This eye-opening book makes an important contribution to global debates over the meaning of social movements and the dynamics of social change.

Histories of Everyday Life

Histories of Everyday Life
Author: Laura Carter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198868332

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Histories of Everyday Life is a study of the production and consumption of popular social history in mid-twentieth century Britain. It explores how non-academic historians, many of them women, developed a new breed of social history after the First World War, identified as the 'history of everyday life'. The 'history of everyday life' was a pedagogical construct based on the perceived educational needs of the new, mass democracy that emerged after 1918. It was popularized to ordinary people in educational settings, through books, in classrooms and museums, and on BBC radio. After tracing its development and dissemination between the 1920s and the 1960s, this book argues that 'history of everyday life' declined in the 1970s not because academics invented an alternative 'new' social history, but because bottom-up social change rendered this form of popular social history untenable in the changing context of mass education. Histories of Everyday Life ultimately uses the subject of history to demonstrate how profoundly the advent of mass education shaped popular culture in Britain after 1918, arguing that we should see the twentieth century as Britain's educational century.

Dramas at Westminster

Dramas at Westminster
Author: Marc Geddes
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-12-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526136821

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Based on unprecedented access to the UK Parliament, this book challenges how we understand and think about accountability between government and Parliament. Drawing on three months of research in Westminster, and over forty-five interviews, this book focuses on the everyday practices of Members of Parliament and officials to reveal how parliamentarians perform their scrutiny roles. Some MPs become specialists while others act as lone wolves; some are there to try to defend their party while others want to learn about policy. Amongst these different styles, chairs of committees have to try to reconcile these interpretations and either act as committee-orientated catalysts or attempt to impose order as leadership-orientated chieftains. All of this pushes and pulls scrutiny in competing directions, and tells us that accountability depends on individual beliefs, everyday practices and the negotiation of dilemmas. In this way, MPs and officials create a drama or spectacle of accountability and use their performance on the parliamentary stage to hold government to account. Dramas at Westminster: Select committees and the quest for accountability offers the most up-to-date and detailed research on committee practices in the House of Commons, following a range of reforms since 2010.

The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography

The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography
Author: Dariusz Wójcik
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1145
Release: 2018-01-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0191072176

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The first fifteen years of the 21st century have thrown into sharp relief the challenges of growth, equity, stability, and sustainability facing the world economy. In addition, they have exposed the inadequacies of mainstream economics in providing answers to these challenges. This volume gathers over 50 leading scholars from around the world to offer a forward-looking perspective of economic geography to understanding the various building blocks, relationships, and trajectories in the world economy. The perspective is at the same time grounded in theory and in the experiences of particular places. Reviewing state-of-the-art of economic geography, setting agendas, and with illustrations and empirical evidence from all over the world, the book should be an essential reference for students, researchers, as well as strategists and policy makers. Building on the success of the first edition, this volume offers a radically revised, updated, and broader approach to economic geography. With the backdrop of the global financial crisis, finance is investigated in chapters on financial stability, financial innovation, global financial networks, the global map of savings and investments, and financialization. Environmental challenges are addressed in chapters on resource economies, vulnerability of regions to climate change, carbon markets, and energy transitions. Distribution and consumption feature alongside more established topics on the firm, innovation, and work. The handbook also captures the theoretical and conceptual innovations of the last fifteen years, including evolutionary economic geography and the global production networks approach. Addressing the dangers of inequality, instability, and environmental crisis head-on, the volume concludes with strategies for growth and new ways of envisioning the spatiality of economy for the future.

British Politics

British Politics
Author: Simon Griffiths
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2018-03-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1349939765

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Fully revised and updated third edition of a popular, established textbook, providing a definitive introduction to Britain's politics, political institutions and processes. Comprehensively re-worked and re-structured to better align with courses, this new edition places great emphasis on the changing context of British politics while addressing key themes such as the ongoing importance of gender and ethnicity to political and social life in Britain. Furthermore, the book's familiar authoritative style has been retained with a fresh look and revitalized pedagogical features to provide a complete learning package. The book is designed for courses on or related to British politics. Its accessible style and context-setting Part 1 will make it ideal for students new to the field (particularly those who haven't studied the subject at school level or international students), but its rigour will stimulate and engage more experienced students. New to this Edition: - Fully updated to cover the 2016 EU Referendum, the 2017 General Election and other key political developments - 'Politics in Action' videos with key academic experts and practitioners offer differing viewpoints on the political system - Expanded companion website featuring regular updates and additional pedagogic tools for students and lecturers alike, such as self-test quizzes, flashcards, timelines, a lecturer testbank and lecture slides - Vibrant and engaging full colour page design to help your students navigate the book's broad coverage

Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England

Disaffection and Everyday Life in Interregnum England
Author: Caroline Boswell
Publisher: Studies in Early Modern Cultur
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781783270453

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How did ordinary English men and women respond to the transformations that accompanied the regicide, the creation of a republic, and the rise of the Cromwellian Protectorate? This book uncovers grassroots responses to the tangible consequences of revolution, delving into everyday practices, social interactions, and power struggles as they intersected with the macro-politics of regime change. Tussles at local alehouses, encounters with excise collectors in the high street, and contests over authority at the marketplace reveal how national politics were felt across the most ordinary of activities. Using a series of case studies from counties, boroughs, and the London metropolis, Boswell argues that factional discourses and shifting power relations complicated social interaction. Localized disaffection was broadcast in newsbooks, pamphlets, and broadsides, shaping political rhetoric that refashioned grassroots grievances to promote royalist desires. By uniting disparate people who were alienated by the policies of interregnum regimes, this literature helped to create the spectre of a unified, royalist commons that materialized in the months leading up to Charles II's Restoration. Such agitation - from disaffected mutters to ritualistic violence against officials - informed the broad political culture that shaped debates over governance during one of the most volatile decades in British history. CAROLINE BOSWELL is Associate Professor in History at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.