Rational Choice and British Politics: An Analysis of Rhetoric and Manipulation from Peel to Blair

by Iain McLean

Overview

This engaging and original study, by one of the leading scholars of rational choice theory, explores the course of British parliamentary politics over the last 150 years. It combines social science and analytical narrative history with the great turning points in British politics: the Repeal of the Corn Law; the Victorian crisis of the Liberal and Conservative Parties; the Irish Question and Lloyd George's solution to it; the New Liberal origins of the welfare state; the politics of race and empire under Chamberlain and Powell; and the politics of "there is no alternative" under Margaret Thatcher.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198295303
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/21/2001
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Nuffield College, Oxford University

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Irish Potatoes and British Politics: Peel, Wellington and the Repeal of the Corn Laws3. Dishing the Whigs: Disraeli, Salisbury, and the relaunching of the Tory Party 1846—864. The great Victorian realignment5. The failure of imperialism: Joseph Chamberlain and Enoch Powell6. Lloyd George: supreme tactician and ambitious strategist7. The patriot game: rhetoric and heresthetic in the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations of 19218. 'There is no alternative': Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair9. Conclusion