Book Notes
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00076 |
| Subject Matter | Book Notes |
Book Notes
British Politics
Rob Baggott, Pressure Groups Today (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1995),
xi 250 pp., £35.00 ISBN 0 7190 3578 3, £9.99 pbk ISBN 0 7190 3579 1.
Designed principally for A-level and ®rst-year students, this book provides an excellent introduc-
tion to its subject matter. Simply but strongly organized, the author takes us through de®nitional
and analytical matters before considering the place of pressure groups in democratic systems. He
then considers how groups are organized and the resources they have at their disposal. Two
particularly useful chapters review the links between organized groups and the executive, the
second strongly suggesting that the style of government is a main factor determining the nature of
the relationship. Nevertheless, Baggott correctly concludes that the relationship, though complex,
inevitably means that governments are locked into the world of pressure groups for all kinds of
reasons. Other chapters deal with lobbying Parliament, groups, the media and the public, and on
how groups operate in other areas of public decision making. This latter includes brief but useful
material on both local government and on the European Union. One would have liked something
on the world of pressure groups and quangos: an omission perhaps to be remedied later. All in all
Baggott has produced a useful text which will bene®t those for whom it has been designed: how-
ever, more advanced scholars will ®nd little new.
MIKE GOLDSMITH
University of Salford
Vernon Bogdanor, Politics and the Constitution: Essays on British Government
(Aldershot, Dartmouth, 1996), xxi 276 pp., £39.50 ISBN 1 85521 760 0.
In as much as there is a stated aim, this loose-knit collection of essays attempts to `. . . show(s) that
the struggle over the constitution is in essence a political struggle'. The essays are drawn from a
variety of sources, weakly tied together by an editorial introduction, with little in the way of a
unifying argument or linkage between chapters and bereft of a concluding section or a biblio-
graphy. The book is organized into three parts. In Part I Bogdanor provides a telling defence of
constitutionalism arguing that `. . . to preserve the notion of constitutionalism as a limitation of
power, we need to depart from the Diceyan insistence upon power and sovereignty being located at
one point, at Westminster'. The essays which follow in Parts II and III rather feebly pursue this
theme. Part II analyses dierent aspects of the changing nature of party politics. Part III, argues for
the sharing of power with the European Union, the nations and regions of Britain, local
government, and with the people themselves through the use of referendum. In overview the book
has three main problems. First, to con®ne the study of the British constitution to such a limited
range of essays is to entrench the very narrow conception of the constitutional sphere which the
author claims he wants to defeat. Second, the book fails to provide a satisfactory explanation of
why constitutional change has not been forthcoming in the past and why this discourse should now
be taken seriously. Finally, the analysis of constitutionalism requires an awareness of several
disciplines, most notably, political sociology, politics, history and law. Too few essays in this
collection display this range and hence the book provides little more than a rehearsal of some old
arguments.
MARK EVANS
University of York
# Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
142
Book Notes
Werner Bonefeld, Alice Brown and Peter Burnham, A Major Crisis? The Politics of
Economic Policy in Britain in the 1990s (Aldershot, Dartmouth, 1995), vii 240 pp.,
£40.00 ISBN 1 85521 544 6, £15.95 pbk ISBN 1 85521 550 0.
Bone®eld, Brown and Burnham have created a book worthy of attention. It succeeds in its primary
aim of discussing economic policy in terms beyond the Thatcher years. Not that they forget the
links between Thatcher and Major, but more that the debates are brought up-to-date. The text is
lively throughout hardly holding its breath or its punches. The initial chapters cover the relation-
ship, as they see it, between national states and the global economy, and, the politics of monetarism
and the crisis of Keynesianism. The latter sections concentrate on the Major government's
economic policy in the recession, 1990±1994, as well as its policy-making of the labour market,
welfare and, what they call, the local state. Their conclusion is an interesting one. They argue that
policy makers since 1945 have targeted the state's management of labour whilst at the same time
realizing that government is constrained by global ®nancial markets and what they consider to be
`. . . the class antagonism between capital and labour at the level of the global economy'. Even if the
work sometimes strays toward the polemic, this is a book to be put on the reading lists as a
stimulant to discussion.
R. A. ROOKE
South Bank University
David Broughton, Public Opinion Polling and Politics in Britain (Hemel Hempstead,
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995), x 229 pp., £11.95 pbk ISBN 0 13 433921 5.
Broughton is concerned `to analyse the functions and use of opinion polling and its impact on
politics in Britain. In particular, the criticisms of the role and performance of opinion polls during
the 1992 general election will be considered' (p. viii). Individual chapters deal with the history of
opinion polling in Britain; the assumptions, theory, and methodology of polling; the use and impact
of polling at national and other levels of politics; and the impact of issues in politics as based on
poll evidence. Broughton pulls together the material in the relevant literature and also provides a
very good guide to that literature both in the `General Bibliography' and in the references and
suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter. That having been said, I have the slight
feeling that there is not enough meat and intellectual substance in the whole subject of public
opinion polling to sustain a book-length study. It is not surprising, therefore, that Broughton tends
to over-write and over-categorize at the same time as he provides rather more (trivial) information
than anyone could reasonably want to encounter in order to form a rough but ready appreciation
of the place of opinion polling in British politics.
JOHN DEARLOVE
University of Sussex
Julian Critchley, A Bag of Boiled Sweets (London, Faber and Faber, 1995),
xii 244 pp., £6.99 pbk ISBN 0 571 17496 5.
No self-respecting Victorian politician went without a biography penned by an admirer. Con-
temporary politicians leave nothing to chance. Most oer an autobiographical account of their
career. These normally come in two varieties. The ®rst ± usually diaries and characteristically by
Labour politicians ± seeks to provide genuine insight into the workings of government and policy
making. The second ± with the word `years' or `power' in the title a tell-tale sign ± oers the case
for the defence. Julian Critchley's ®ne volume falls into neither category. Firstly, it is an irresistible
(and often very funny) read, preferring the well-rounded pen portrait to the exposition of policy
detail. Secondly, it is the work of a perennial Tory backbencher, the ®rst since that by Gerald
Nabarro. Thirdly, it does not deal with the type of analysis that might be considered a primary
source. What we have is a social history of the Conservative Party, seen through the eyes of one of
its astutest members. As such its citation will enliven lectures and monographs, while its account of
the tone of the Party, both in the country at large and, on such occasions as the Falklands crisis, at
Parliament, will remain indispensable.
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
University of Teesside
# Political Studies Association, 1997
Book Notes
143
Peter Dorey, The Conservative Party and the Trade Union (London, Routledge, 1995),
223 pp., £40.00 ISBN 0 415 06487 2.
Dorey has written a largely chronological study of the Conservative Party's relationship with the
trade unions since 1945. The period 1799±1945 is covered in one chapter. The account of party-
union relations follows the orthodox interpretation of post-war Conservatism as a shift from One
Nation quasi-corporatism, via disillusionment, to Thatcherism. The book's title is slightly mislead-
ing in that Dorey is primarily concerned with the parliamentary Conservative Party's attitude
towards the unions, and in particular with the growing interest in legal reform. Given his focus on
the post-1945 period it is surprising that no use has apparently been made of the Conservative Party
archive which contains a vast amount of material on the party's evolving attitude to the unions, nor
the records of the Conservative governments of 1951±64. The unions' attitudes to the Conservative
Party are insuciently considered. Dorey uses a limited conception of what constitutes the
Conservative Party and there is little attempt to analyse the complexity of the political relationship
between the party, the unions and the state. The book's reliance on printed sources and public
utterances in, for example, the House of Commons or the pages of Crossbow does not convey
adequately the politics of the party's evolving approach to the unions.
ANDREW TAYLOR
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