Book Review: Andrew Blick, Beyond Magna Carta: A Constitution for the United Kingdom
| Author | Matt Qvortrup |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917709207 |
| Published date | 01 August 2017 |
| Date | 01 August 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsBritain and Ireland |
484 Political Studies Review 15(3)
difficulties if the political winds start to blow in
a less favourable direction.
William Prescott
(University of Oxford)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917710604
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Beyond Magna Carta: A Constitution for the
United Kingdom by Andrew Blick. Oxford:
Bloomsbury, 2015. 303pp., £25.00 (h/b), ISBN
9781849463096
The famously unwritten British Constitution is
characterised by a number of tracts written by
illustrious and eminent constitutionalist. The
clear-sighted and crisp writers and books like
Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution
(1867) and A.V. Dicey’s Introduction to the
Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) stand
out as acute analyses of that unwieldy bunch
of conventions, documents and norms that
make up the British Constitution. Andrew
Blick’s book continues within this tradition.
Beyond Magna Carta is a tour de force of
Britain’s constitutional history since King John
was forced to sign the document in Runnymede
in 1215. As befits a good political historian,
Blick is careful to dispel myths and he is clear
that Magna Carta – its reputation notwithstand-
ing – is far from being a traditional constitu-
tion. Thus he writes, ‘As with many of the
documents discussed in this book, an initial
reading of this code might create doubt about
its constitutional credentials’ (p. 25). Yet the
Magna Carta did set in motion a tradition of
constitutionalism, or – if you like – a recogni-
tion of the rule of law.
The best part of the book is the chapter on
the aforementioned A.V. Dicey’s contribution
to British constitutional thinking. Blick is not
only an acute reader of Dicey’s original texts,
he is also an avid reader of how subsequent
generations have used – and abused – the great
constitutionalist.
The real strength of this book is that it
covers issues that were left out by Bagehot,
Dicey and Amery, such as the Civil Service.
This part of the book is equally enlightening.
Blick discusses the Northcote-Trevellyan
Report 1854, which established the British
Civil Service. Recently, some have complained
that the impartial Whitehall mandarins person-
ified in the barely fictional ‘Sir Humphrey’
from the television series Yes Minister is under
threat from special advisers. But, as Blick
shows, recent legislation has ‘resisted the tide
of change’ (p. 134).
It is a mark of a good historian that she – or
he – has an eye for detail, for identifying
the general tendencies in small and seemingly
idiosyncratic events. That the author manages
to include references to rapper Jay-Z as well as
to Edmund Burke is an example of the lively
and readable style in which this book is
written. This book is highly recommendable.
Matt Qvortrup
(Coventry University)
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917709207
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Europe
(Un)intended Consequences of EU
Parliamentary Elections by Wouter van der
Brug and Claes H de Vreese (eds). Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016. 296pp., £55.00
(h/b), ISBN 9780198757412
This edited volume contains 14 very interest-
ing contributions which question the conse-
quences of the European parliamentary (EP)
elections since their establishment in 1979 –
intended and unintended, from both positive
and negative perspectives. The basic assump-
tion of the book is that European elections
were supposed to foster public interest and
support for European integration among citi-
zens. Furthermore, if functioning as they
should, they were thought to increase the dem-
ocratic legitimacy and accountability of the
European Parliament.
The contributors tackle the question of how
far the elections have met these expectations
up until 2009 from very different perspectives.
The articles are clustered around three main
dimensions: consequences for public debate
and political involvement, consequences for
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