Politics: The Basics, 4th Edition

processes of political change. Clearly a reaction to the impact of two world wars on the heartland of Europe, it has developed f ...

President de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s first application to join on the grounds that Britain would be an American Trojan horse und ...

the final policy decisions in this way. The European Commissioners are appointed for fixed periods from member states, but are s ...

and states with massive economic resources. Effectively the United States and, possibly, Japan are the only political and econom ...

formation of a European Constitutional Convention which reported in 2003 and which led to the proposal for a new constitution fo ...

‘Warrant Chiefs’ had to be invented to attempt to impose an authoritarian (colonial) system on what was already an egalitarian s ...

Just as the structure of local government frequently reflects the central government, so broadly there is a tendency for local p ...

independent action by local government is similarly virtually unthinkable. An important element in the relationship is the cultu ...

affected and citizen education, training and loyalty is facilitated. ‘Small is beautiful’!: the greater the autonomy accorded lo ...

Wilson, D. and Game, C., 2002, Local Government in the United Kingdom, 3rd edn, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan Excellent up-to- ...

DEMOCRACY This chapter considers the meaning of democracy and examines critically some of the formal and informal institutions o ...

Lincoln’s memorable definition may suggest three key elements of democracy. First, that it is ‘of’ the people not only in the se ...

In Athens, because the majority of citizens had to be convinced if the community were to act, it seems a very high standard of i ...

election of large numbers of citizens to Soviets (Councils), electoral commissions, factory and collective farm councils and the ...

‘first-past-the-post’ systems have often been debated at length. Fascinating though the topic may be to many political scientist ...

by the system must be weighed in assessing such systems, alongside the links to constituencies and the proportionality of the le ...

Different systems differ greatly in how roles are distributed amongst the executive, and indeed how large the executive is and, ...

quasi autonomous national (or non-)governmental organisations.) Clearly the fewer the number of ‘political’ posts, the more top ...

The effectiveness of such committees and of legislators generally is also related to the number of support staff and ancillary f ...

Most legislatures are ‘bicameral’, that is they have two ‘Houses’. In almost all, the ‘lower’ house (popularly elected by univer ...