Suchergebnisse

THE WELSH LABOUR PARTY COULD HAVE ANTICIPATED THE FIRST elections to the National Assembly with a fair degree of equanimity, if not optimism. In the 1997 General Election, the party had won 55 percent of the vote and delivered on its promise of a devolution referendum which it won, albeit by a narrow majority. The architect of Labour's devolution policy, Ron Davies, the Welsh Secretary of State, who was widely respected within and beyond the Labour Party, had spoken of a new Welsh politics, with policy-making open to and inclusive of other Welsh parties. All this, however, was called into question by what Ron Davies subsequently described as his 'moment of madness' on Clapham Common in October 1998. Although the circumstances remain unclear, they resulted in his resignation from the post of Secretary of State and leader of the Welsh Labour Party. Alun Michael, a Cardiff MP and a minister at the Home Office, was appointed Welsh Secretary and subsequently endured a bitter and bruising leadership contest with Rhodri Morgan, during which claims were made that he was Blair's man, and not really an enthusiastic devolutionist but part of the Millbank control system. Large sections of the party were disillusioned by the process and serious questions were raised as to what extent disillusioned party activists would be involved in the Assembly election campaign.

Is Europe witnessing the death of the nation-state? In this book, leading scholars examine how European integration and regional assertion threaten this once-mighty institution and are profoundly altering the politics of Europe as it moves towards the 21st century.

THE QUESTION OF DECENTRALIZATION IS ONE WHICH THE British Labour Party has always found difficult to handle because of its inheritance of contradictory traditions in relation to the British state. Labour's roots in anti-authoritarian radicalism and in the British periphery make it sympathetic to decentralist demands and this has been reinforced by the need to compete electorally for support in the periphery. However, to gain power at Westminster it needs more than peripheral support; it needs to capture power at the centre and, in order to benefit the periphery, to strengthen the power of the centre. Ideologically, the party also possesses a socialist tradition which preaches the indivisibility of working-class interests and deplores nationalism and separatism.

Examines whether GB's traditional reputation as an "awkward partner" within the European Community (EC) will be sustained by the next generation of industrial, business, & public administrative elites, drawing on questionnaire data from 948 students majoring in natural science, engineering, or social science in 11 British universities. Results reveal significant differences between the 3 designated discipline groups, & that partisan identification was less significant than youth values in determining attitudes toward Europe. Overall, however, British students strongly support the EC as an abstract entity but are largely ignorant of its institutional structures & rather skeptical when it comes to specific EC policies. It is concluded that this cognitive dissonance reveals the fragile nature of British student support for the EC & that given the pressures toward further integration, the next generation of elites might be only marginally less skeptical than is the present. 4 Tables, 1 Figure, 17 References. Adapted from the source document.

Opinion on a common foreign policy, a common passport, removal of border controls, common currency, and an independent central bank; based on a survey of 1,000 British university students, 1993.