POLITICS IN THE UK

Seminar series by Principal Teaching Fellow, Roger Duclaud-Williams, PAIS

It has been noted that government spending cuts issued by the coalition government are unprecedented in living memory, in terms of their scale and magnitude. As the changes start to take effect, it is interesting to look back on how the composition and dominant characteristics of UK politics has developed.

Roger Duclaud-Williams, Principle Teaching Fellow at PAIS, leads the module Politics in the UK, which looks at how politics has evolved in the post-war period.

"The clear danger involved in organising a module on the basis of a particular nation state is that the peculiarity or distinctiveness of that nation state will be exaggerated. When we study something in isolation we are inclined to underline its specificity and to be less conscious of possible parallels with other items in the same category. In the case of Politics in the UK, we may emphasise long term decline in the international power and prestige of the United Kingdom and some of the consequences flowing from such a decline and suppose that this process has affected politics in the UK in some very specific and distinctive ways. A moment’s reflection will tell us that decline in power and prestige is an experience common to many, once imperial, European nations, and this recognition may suggest parallels and comparisons which it is not possible to develop within a module focused purely on politics within the UK. There is no ideal solution to this difficulty, but I shall seek, especially in the lectures, to incorporate some comparative reflections based on my familiarity with European and American politics.

"There is also a danger of exaggerating the distinctiveness of politics in the UK. This is counteracted by devoting considerable attention to the Europeanisation of British politics. Discussion of this topic will allow us to confront head on the extent to which politics in this country is, or is not, becoming more and more similar to politics in other European democracies. Our discussion of Scottish and Welsh devolution will also serve to avoid concentrating too narrowly on the national level."

You can listen to three seminars below:

The Changing Party System

Should we talk about the party system or the parties? This seminar explores how we can measure the shift away from the two-party system, and what the significance of this shift was. It also examines how the coalition changes our view of the party system.

Politics of the NHS

In this seminar, we looks back on the Thatcherite approach to the NHS, and why Labour was so hesitant in its approach. It also examines the problems of targets and competition.

Terrorism and the Response of the Government

This seminar examines how successful British policy was towards IRA terrorism, and how we can learn from that experience. It also explores in what ways the new terrorist threat is different, and whether the government has used the terrorist threat for other illiberal purposes.

Listen to the whole seminar series here >>

Roger Duclaud-Williams is a lecturer in Politics and took his first degree in Law at the University of Oxford. He subsequently studied Political Science at the City University of New York and later received his PhD from the University of Sussex. After a temporary post at the University of Glasgow, he was appointed to the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick in 1974 where he has worked ever since.