Abstract
DECLINE OF THE PUBLIC
by
Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 168, £14.99, ISBN 0745629105
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: *****
Reviewer: JONATHAN SEGLOW
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
This book is about the decline of the public domain in the UK, and not the concept of the public as such, but it is no less impressive for that. For Marquand, the public domain is that dimension of social life, distinct from the private and – especially – market realm, where democratic citizenship, equality and service predominate, and where ideas are debated and trust can grow. Marquand argues that the public domain (i) needs sustenance and nurture, but (ii) has been enfeebled by twenty years of New Rightist ‘Kulturkampf’ (his word), and hence (iii) urgently needs to be revived. The first chapter provides three striking recent illustrations of (ii): the Matrix Churchill affair in the early 1990s, the BSE crisis, and Blair's attempt to block Livingstone's accession to the London Mayoralty. Chapters two and three trace the genesis of the public domain from mid-Victorian Britain to its zenith in the 1950s. Chapter four describes the neo-liberal Kulturkampf begun by Thatcher of privatisation, deregulation, market mimicry in the public sector, and a relentless culture of individualism and consumerism. Marquand convincingly argues that neo-liberalism, by attacking intermediate institutions (e.g. local government, universities, pressure groups) of the public domain, paradoxically required a strong, ‘monarchical’ state and that it sought to legitimate this by an unmediated appeal to popular sentiment. The final chapter argues that New Labour has largely perpetuated the Kulturkampf through its adherence to a monochrome, consumerist political vocabulary. Only the last twenty pages positively address thesis (iii). Marquand's republican programme for revitalising the public domain draws on values of citizenship, pluralism and democracy. It would have been satisfying to have these thoughts elaborated more fully, and perhaps connected with recent work on republicanism and deliberation in political theory. Nevertheless, this is a critique and manifesto, not a philosophical or historical treatise, and in those aims it succeeds very well, demonstrating again the author's profound knowledge of the British political context. This short, powerful book should interest students and experts alike.
MODERNISING BRITISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT: an assessment of Labour's reform programme
by
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. 283, £16.99, ISBN 0 333 964659
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: ****
Reviewer: PAUL CARMICHAEL
(University of Ulster)
This book, the latest in a long history of scholarly output, maintains the impressive standards of one of the leading authorities in the field. Its thirteen chapters offer a wide-ranging and comprehensive analysis of the ‘modernisation’ of key areas of local government activity including representation and elections, political structures, councillors, management (Best Value and Beacon Councils), regional government, and finance since 1997. If a minor criticism may be ventured it is that of a tendency for Anglo-Centrism. In Chapter 9 (‘Towards Regional Government?’), the impact of devolution and other exciting developments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (the latter fails to get a mention) and their lessons for England might have been explored more deeply. Otherwise, Stewart gives a measured assessment of the Government's record. He applauds the progress made in invigorating ‘community leadership’ and the emphasis on improving local authorities’ performance. However, he is critical of the micro managing on the overall health of local democracy characterising much of the Government's agenda. With flair and élan, the author argues with a gusto born of genuine concern to safeguard the integrity of local government as an institution and to preserve and expand its still all too limited autonomy, especially in finance. He laments the failure to realise the true potential of the modernisation agenda. Nevertheless, if yet another missed opportunity by a government that promised so much but in which so much faith has proved – thus far – misplaced, Stewart continues to exude optimism. We are on the cusp of what may be an historic third term for Labour. In a timely contribution to the debate over the Party's approach to local government and, crucially, sorely neglected central-local relations, this book merits the serious consideration of all those seeking informed analysis and who dare to hope for wiser counsels to prevail.
CONTEMPORARY BRITISH FASCISM: the British National Party and the quest for legitimacy
by
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 220, £45.00, ISBN 1 4039 0214 3
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: *****
Reviewer: AARON EDWARDS
(Queen's University, Belfast)
Contemporary British Fascism is a timely addition to the literature on the phenomenon of right-extremist politics in the early 21st Century. The author charts the historical development of the BNP over a twenty-year period from its emergence as an embarrassing pariah, perched on the fringes of society, to its present position as a professional and marketable political party. The underlying ideological dynamism informing the BNP's policies are considered vis-à-vis its surrounding social and political environment. What is needed, Copsey argues, is a heuristic definition of the anti-liberal-democratic and authoritarian nature of fascist ideology, which is capable of standing outside time and place. Copsey has ensured that his analytical scope is sufficiently broadened to include discussion of electoral case studies, ideological interpolation and methodological strategies for explaining fascism as a political movement. A useful generic study of the BNP in comparative perspective positions the Party in light of its far right European antecedents and contemporaries. This book will appeal to students and seasoned academics alike; but political practitioners and policy analysts who wish to gain a critical insight into race relations in contemporary Britain will also find it a useful aide memoire.
The neighbourhood respectability cultivated by the BNP in recent years has undoubtedly hastened its advance into the political mainstream. Even though Thatcherism's rightist policies placated many prospective BNP voters in the 1980s it appears that current Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat one-upmanship over the asylum debate has remarkably enhanced the standing of Griffin's Party. Copsey has handled the thorny issues of racism, anti-Semitism and holocaust denial with delicacy and skill. The only minor oversight on Copsey's part is that he has not personally solicited empirical data by interviewing the Party's cadre, which would have further reinforced his highly original extrapolations. Nevertheless this is an impressive piece of scholarly research.
RESHAPING THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION: essays in political interpretation
by
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 324, ISBN 0 333 94620 0
Readership: Undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: *****
Reviewer: MATTHEW FLINDERS
(University of Sheffield)
‘Too much vigour, not enough rigour’ may well come to be seen as a fitting epithet for New Labour's reform of the British constitution. It is in this context that Johnson's Reshaping the British Constitution makes a major contribution to the understanding of the British constitution in particular and the nature of British democracy more widely.
The book is constructed upon two central arguments. First, the traditional customary constitution, while not perfect, was at least built upon a number of core principles and accepted precedents and conventions, which provided a degree of constitutional ‘glue’ (p. 287). A major shortfall of the constitutional reform programme since 1997, Johnson suggests, is the absence of any statement or debate about its values or a coherent account of the kind of state or pattern of government that might be expected to have taken shape in Britain at the conclusion of the reform effort. The second argument focuses on the degree to which the reform programme should actually be interpreted as ‘radical’ in terms of delegating power, creating new checks and balances or changing the nature of British democracy. On this matter Johnson is unequivocal: ‘Despite the best efforts of the protagonists of constitutional reform to present the changes of the past six years or so as the fulfilment of a radical reform programme, there are few grounds for accepting such a view of the matter. The constitution has not been reshaped or cast in a new form’ (p. 308).
Johnson's conclusion therefore chimes with those of a number of eminent scholars including Tom Nairn, David Marquand, Lord Norton, Stuart Weir and David Beetham who have all, in their own ways, highlighted the continuing centrality of the Westminster Model. The great value of Reshaping the British Constitution is that it is as much about political analysis and how we understand and interpret political developments as it is about the British constitution. It therefore provides both breadth and depth and a conceptual lens through which observers of the British constitution can look beneath the rhetoric and understand the tensions and paradoxes of the reform process.
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP: issues of theory and practice
by
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. 178, £35.00, ISBN 0 7546 3959 2
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: ****
Reviewer: DAVID SULLIVAN
(University of Wales, Bangor)
Most of the essays in this volume were written as reflections on the government report Education for the Teaching of Citizenship and Democracy in Schools (1998), chaired by Bernard Crick. Though as Crick himself says in his Preface to the book, the authors are far from uncritical of his report and, one might add, of each other. The editors have also, very wisely, in-cluded a few papers written for other occasions, including an excellent essay by Will Kymlicka – one of the best in this high quality collection. Two themes recur which are especially important to the current debate about citizenship education in Britain, and to both of which this book makes a significant contribution. One is the tension between liberal and republican models of citizenship. As a number of contributors point out, the relationship between these remains a key theoretical issue. Closely related, and more often referred to in the wider public debate, is the question of how citizenship education can operate in a multi-cultural and multi-national state such as the United Kingdom. David Archard argues that the Crick Report only alludes to this problem, though in doing so it opens up the wider debate. The debate here, not least Archard's own rigorous examination of some of the unresolved tensions, shows how the discussion can be taken forward. Many of the contributors concur in stressing that a great deal of the responsibility for developing democratic citizenship lies with schools and local authorities and this excellent collection of essays would profitably be read by many who have to discharge that responsibility – both those studying to become teachers and practicing teachers following post-graduate inservice courses on citizenship education. It should also be read by students of politics as a way of reminding them how intellectually stimulating the serious study of political education can be.
AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY?: Britain's post-war ‘golden age’
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Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. 264, £47.50, ISBN 0 7546 35287
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ***
Reviewer: JEREMY NUTTALL
(Kingston University)
The organising concept of this edited collection is the arrival of ‘affluence’ in Britain, defined by one of its contributors as ‘mass consumption for the majority’ (p. 18). This determines the book's period of focus, largely the 1950s and early 1960s, though exploring arguments for the earlier and later emergence of affluence; mood, an optimistic focus on rising material living standards as a corrective to historiographical overemphasis on relative economic decline; and scope, the many-sided implications of affluence facilitating analysis which crosses the divides between social, cultural, political, and economic history, so as to meet what the editors call ‘increasingly loud calls for a more integrated approach to contemporary history’ (p. 4). Topics in the twelve chapters include Rodney Lowe on welfare policy, Matthew Hilton on the Birmingham Consumers’ Group, and Christian Bugge on youth marketing.
This will be a useful book, one for specialists in the cultural, economic, and especially, (growing) political cultural history of the period more than undergraduates, because the emphasis is on diverse case studies, not broad sweep. As a political historian, I found helpful Richard Toye's attention to the nuanced attitude to affluence of the neglected Douglas Jay, Catherine Ellis's informed coverage of Tony Crosland's embrace of affluence, and Lawrence Black's analysis, through examples such as the Young Conservatives, of the cross-party unease at an affluence they saw entailing ‘moral and cultural loss besides material gain’ (p. 86). The contributors’ writing styles are generally clear. The collection as a whole does not provide systematic attention to a historiographically distinctive unifying theme, because the introduction is too short and several chapters, including the two on the economy, depart from the focus on affluence. But the book's individual parts do, as the editors intend, bring different branches of recent history together in some interesting ways.
THE NEW MANDARINS: how British foreign policy works
by
London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. 254, £18.95, ISBN 1860649785
Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates
Rating: ****
Reviewer: EDWARD JOHNSON
(University of Central England)
The first half of this text on British foreign policy sets out to illustrate in a rather house-journal style, the quiet, modernising, managerial revolution that has blown through the Foreign Office since 1997. Begun by Robin Cook, it has found supporters amongst a set of high flying ‘Young Turks’ as well as some more senior figures such as Sir John Kerr, who was the Permanent Under-Secretary until 2002. Under the ‘Foresight’ manifesto, there has been a restructuring within the FCO, a greater emphasis on the management of people and resources, revised working practices, wider recruitment policies, a new IT system and in-post training for diplomats in those new items on the agenda of foreign policy such as human rights and international drug trafficking. For many, these reforms were overdue but the more traditionalist reader might baulk over the fact that the FCO now has a mission statement, and the splendidly Dickensian-titled ‘Chief Clerk’ is now the ‘Director of Corporate Affairs’.
The remainder of the work covers in a more fluent, critical and up to date fashion what is, nevertheless, standard material on British foreign policy making. There are chapters on the relationship between officials and ministers and the roles of parliament, pressure groups, the Press and even outside advisers in policy formulation. The final chapter returns to the revolution and considers that for all its reforms, the FCO can no longer expect to be consulted first about an international issue. Competition comes from other government departments or more critically from the Prime Minister's Office. The latter rivalry is not new but has been given added force both by Blair's presidential style and his Iraq policy. For the FCO to remain at the fore of British foreign policy will, Dickie believes, require a form of permanent revolution on its part.
NEW LABOUR'S OLD ROOTS: revisionist thinkers in Labour's history, 1931–1997
by
Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004. 264, £14.99, ISBN 0907845 894
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ***
Reviewer: STEPHEN DRIVER
(Roehampton University)
Patrick Diamond, a special advisor at 10 Downing Street, offers students of New Labour a selection of readings from Labour's past – or at least a slice of that past. This is a book about Labour ‘revisionism’. It starts with Tawney, Dalton and Durbin; continues with Crosland, Gaitskell and Jenkins; includes J.P. Mackintosh's lament on the failings of social democracy and Marquand's critique of possessive individualism; and finishes with Crick, Hattersley, Radice and Brown to mark ‘revisionism re-born’.
All this, Diamond argues, makes New Labour not very new at all. Like Steven Fielding, Diamond sees Blair's Labour Party as part of the revisionist tradition where values matter more than the tools of public policy. As times change, so must what governments do. What makes Labour is an underlying commitment to equality. This view challenges those who see New Labour as an accommodation to Thatcherism.
Diamond likes to think of revisionism as a ‘cast of mind’. What endures in that cast are values, not policies. But is such a means/end distinction so clear-cut? One cast of political mind will predispose you to certain policy instruments, just as it will lead you to reject others. Hayek liked markets because they embodied freedom. Crosland may have rejected public ownership, but he advocated another set of collectivist policies that were embued with egalitarian values. Few would deny that policies need revising over time, but they are not value-free. If the current Labour government offers a market-based solution to a public policy question, then this is likely to have consequences for what it wants to achieve, as Brown acknowledges in the debate over public sector reform. This doesn't make Brown right. But social democrats like Diamond need to be explicit about their policy choices and what they mean for their political values.
REGULATING LOCAL AUTHORITIES: emerging patterns of central control
by
London: Frank Cass, 2003.164, £42.50, ISBN 0 7146 5373 X
Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: **
Reviewer: DAVID O'BRIEN
(London Borough of Barnet)
Creeping centralisation, both overt and covert, characterises the recent history of local-central relations in Britain. The current rhetoric of ‘new localism’ and ‘freedoms and flexibilities’ belies a centralising tendency, epitomised by myriad targets, inspections, and ring-fenced grants, that often elevates national priorities above local needs. This apparently irresistible dynamic led one Cabinet Minister recently to conceptualise local authorities as mere agents of central government. This book assembles seven essays around the theme of central-local relations. Four chapters concern Britain; the others provide comparative perspectives from abroad. Aspects of the collection should benefit interested researchers and students, and it offers useful historical and international context for practitioners.
Jones and Stewart review developments in central-local relations in Britain since the 1970s, identifying greater government control over the financing, service delivery, and internal organisation of local authorities. Finding that central government frequently contradicts its own rhetorical endorsement of local democracy, they expose systematic confusion over the funding and delivery of local authority services. Lowndes addresses the widening gulf between rhetoric and reality in central-local relations in Britain. She claims recent reforms do not enhance local autonomy. Instead, an evolving regime of targets and indicators – imposed by government under the aegis of performance management – further entrenches the prevailing centralising impulse. Carmichael and Midwinter analyse financial issues, exploring the relationship between government grants and local authority expenditure. The manipulation of funding represents a tool with which central government seeks to direct local authorities, and centralised systems deepen the impact of government grants on patterns of local spending.
The remaining chapters examine local-central relations in Scotland, Scandinavia, Western Europe and South Africa respectively. Although the individual essays are generally interesting and informative, overall the collection bears limited coherence or lucidity. Disappointingly, the editors make little attempt to weave instructive conclusions from the disparate strands of inquiry.
BRITAIN IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: law, policy and parliament
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Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 277, £18.99, ISBN 1 4039 0452 9
Reviewer: SIMON BULMER
(University of Manchester)
The impact of the European Union (EU) upon British politics has been extensive. This collection focuses on the impact on Parliament. It picks up the story from an earlier study, under the same editors, Westminster and Europe (Macmillan, 1996). It is indicative of the pace of change in the EU that this book is a sequel, rather than a second edition, because a significant set of new developments has challenged national parliamentary control over European policy. Like its predecessor volume, it arises from a study group on Parliament and the EU, and the authorship comprises academics and parliamentary officials.
The approach of the book is empirical. Although the term ‘democratic deficit’ recurs, there is no attempt to test research propositions or, indeed, to make comparisons with other member states. Instead, the book addresses changes to the parliamentary scrutiny system in both Houses, designed to make the government more accountable. It then explores the accountability mechanisms through a range of policy areas and issues, most of which have come to new prominence since the previous volume. Thus, thematic chapters address: governance developments within the EU; issues arising from the Labour Government's accession to the Social Chapter; the launching of the euro; the developing foreign, security and defence policy; and asylum and immigration policy. One chapter addresses the interaction with assemblies in post-devolution UK. The Conclusion covers the work of the Convention on the Future of Europe but not the EU's Constitutional Treaty, agreed in the Summer 2004, and awaiting ratification.
For all those interested in the UK Parliament, including practitioners, this book provides a comprehensive and readable account of the day-to-day challenges posed by EU business. It will also be of value for researchers who need the evidence and ‘feel’ for the subject that is offered here as part of their own qualitative research on the Europeanisation of the UK Parliament.
FROM POLITICAL VIOLENCE TO NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT: the winding path to peace in the twentieth century Ireland
by
Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004. 257, £18.95, ISBN 1 900621 84 3
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: CHRISTOPHER FARRINGTON
(University College Dublin)
This edited collection provides an overview of the role of political violence in the political development of Ireland in the 20th Century. The book's focus is on the political environment in which the opportunities for the use of violence flourished. Thus, chapters from Fanning, Laffan and Bew examine the political context in which the Easter Rising of 1916, the Anglo-Irish War and the Civil War occurred; O'Halpin, Ruane and De Chastellain the changing context of Republican struggle; and Jackson and Dixon deal with the role of political violence within Unionist thought. The book is given coherence by a strong introduction by the two editors, an overview of political protest in Ireland by Bric and a conclusion on the legacy of political violence by Coakley.
Of particular note are the chapters by O'Halpin and Ruane. O'Halpin's discussion of the international aspects of Republican struggle is refreshing. He argues that Republican diplomacy has been guided by the old maxim, ‘England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity’ rather than any ideological commitments (p. 81). Moreover, neither Britain nor America regarded Republicans as a danger to their strategic interests and this has allowed them to maintain international links, which have not been embarrassing to either government during the peace process. Ruane argues that the particular circumstances which gave rise to the IRA campaign in the late 1960s, are unlikely to be recreated and this mitigates against a resumption of Republican violence. Instead, he sees Loyalists as the likely protagonists in the future.
Overall, the book is important in tying the contemporary and historical dimensions of political violence in Ireland together through two implicit themes. Firstly, contingency and the outbreak of political violence are usually closely related and, secondly, that the threat of violence is as important a dynamic in understanding politics in Ireland as its actual use.
RACISM IN THE IRISH EXPERIENCE
by
London: Pluto Press, 2004. 308, £16.99, ISBN 07453 1996 3
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates Rating: ***
Reviewer: AARON EDWARDS
(Queen's University, Belfast)
Racism in the Irish Experience brings together a series of interconnected essays on the highly polemical concept of race. Garner problematises the discursive category ‘racism’ at the outset, claiming that the scientific legitimacy conferred upon it is misleading. Instead of allotting it common currency in academic and political discourse a restriction should be placed on its utilisation as a typological sorting device. How flawed preconceptions of ‘otherness’ subsequently reinforce the ‘norm’ of biological differentialisation between races is given extensive coverage here. The book will appeal to students and scholars who are interested in gauging the seemingly incongruous xenophobic predilections harboured by those with generational experience of colonialisation and/or migration.
The book is obviously the product of much theoretical and methodological labour. However, in parts, it resembles a brainstorming exercise rather than a robust academic treatise. It is not entirely obvious how the author envisages his overarching argument developing over the course of the book. Instead of traversing obstacles in his journey to the heart of racism in the Irish experience, Garner leaves his readership undecided about whether they should accompany him along this premonitory route. Undoubtedly the Irish have suffered racism at various historical conjunctures: the Diasporas who encountered inhibiting political legislation in America and Britain are testament of this discrimination. But British Government policy misdemeanours in the mid-19th Century, which precipitated mass emigration during the famine period, is a topic Garner chooses to omit. Similarly, the collective experience of Irish Protestants at home and abroad is relegated to the historical periphery. This is an unfortunate oversight and one that might have injected much needed balance into his research project. However, the ‘work in progress’ approach adopted does not preclude a successful illumination of several salient issues, nor does it prevent a cogent deciphering of the attitudinal data on Garner's part.
THE EURO AS POLITICS
by
London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2004. 217, £12.50, ISBN 0 256 36535 7
Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates
Rating: ***
Reviewer: SUNGWOOK YOON
(University of Bristol)
The first impression after reading this book is that Professor Schwartz seeks to answer whether the UK should join the euro or not, which can be hardly expected from the title, The Euro as Politics. In this sense, however, this book provides somewhat two different main arguments from the current tendency, which takes ‘harmonisation of regulation and laws’ into account more importantly, with regard to the British case of joining the euro. The author argues the importance of the political implications of the UK joining the euro more than the economic implications and of the institutional and monetary competition. Schwartz advocates that the UK keep the pound sterling in order to ensure ‘monetary competition’ with the euro as well as ‘competitive pressure’ on the ECB.
The author starts by presenting the economic and political advantages to use the euro as a whole, ranging from less exchange rate risk and low transaction costs to more politically integrated union. In the second part of the book on monetary sovereignty, the author comes to a conclusion that monetary sovereignty is not the matter of joining the euro, but the focus should be on the economic institutional structure and the political constitutional framework. Finally, Schwartz analyses the pros and cons of economic and political cases for keeping the pound sterling and its implications for the UK and the EU.
In general, the book is informative and clearly structured, and the exposition of the arguments generally easy to follow. Especially, the features of boxed materials of economic theories and the facts, historic examples of monetary union and the summary of key points could help readers understand more easily. However, Schwartz's argument seems to open discussion, whether the UK should not join the euro either for the UK itself or for the monetary and institutional competition with the EU (ECB) and the euro.
Britain and Ireland
New books received
Rob Baggot, Judith Allsop and Kathryn Jones (2005) Speaking for the Patients and Carers: health consumer groups and the policy process. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 345, £18.99, ISBN 0 333 96829 8
Steve Bruce, Tony Glendinning, Iain Paterson, Michael Rosie (2004) Sectarianism in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 187, £11.99, ISBN 0 7486 1911 9
Richard A. Chapman (2004) The Civil Service Commission 1855–1991: a bureau biography. London: Routledge, 288, £70.00, ISBN 0 7146 5340 3
Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley (2004) Political Choice in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 371, £55.00, ISBN 0 19 924488 X
Krista Cowman (2004) ‘Mrs Brown is a Man and a Brother’: women in Merseyside's political organisations, 1890–1920. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 196, £18.50, ISBN 0 85323 748 4
Massimo Florio (2004) The Great Divestiture: evaluating the welfare impact of the British privatisation 1979–1997. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 424, £29.95, ISBN 0262062402
Geoffrey K. Fry (2005) The Politics of Decline: an interpretation of British Politics from the 1940s to the 1970s. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 307, £55.00, ISBN 0 333 72622 7
Stephen Glaister and Daniel J.Graham (2004) Pricing Our Roads: vision and reality. London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 131, £10.00, ISBN 0 255 36562 4
Andrew Hindmoor (2004) New Labour at the Centre: constructing political space. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 218, £45.00, ISBN 0 19 927314 6
Roger King (2004) The University of the Global Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 215, £16.99, ISBN 1 403 911304
Gail Lewis (ed.) (2004) Citizenship: personal lives and social policy. Bristol: Polity Press, 184, £17.99, ISBN 1 86134 521 6
Allan McConnell (2004) Scottish Local Government. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 272, £15.99, ISBN 0 7486 2005 2
Ranald Michie and Philip Williamson (ed.) (2004) The British Government and the City of London in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 381, £60.00, ISBN 0 521 82769 8
Gerard O'Brien (2004) Irish Governments and the Guardianship of Historical Records, 1922–72. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 231, £50.00, ISBN 1 85182 864 8
Cornelius O'Leary and Patrick Maume (2004) Controversial Issues in Anglo-Irish Relations, 1910–1921. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 180. $40.00, ISBN 1 85182 657 2
Bob Osborne and Ian Shuttleworth (2004) Fair Employment in Northern Ireland: a generation on. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 215, £10.99, ISBN 0 85640 752 6
Charles Pattie, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley (2004) Citizenship in Britain: values, participation and democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 346, £16.99, ISBN0 521 53464 X
Paul Rock (2004) Constructing Victims’ Rights: the Home Office, New Labour, and victims. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 583, £75.00, ISBN 0 19 9275491
Michael Tonry (2004) Punishment and Politics: evidence and emulation in the making of English crime and control policy. Devon: Willan Publishing, 164, £15.99, ISBN 1 84392 062 X
Brian Salter (2004) The New Politics of Medicine. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 236, £17.99, ISBN 0 333 80112 1
Alastair Smith (2004) Election Timing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 259, £45.00, ISBN 0 521 83363 9