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Starts by presenting a summary of the findings of the national case studies covered in the study of political parties and democratic control in advanced democratic societies. The summary excludes the case of the European Union, and the findings are presented under the same three headings used in the case studies: party legitimacy; party organizational strength, and systemic functionality. The following section discusses political parties and democratic theory, and a concluding section looks at parties and democratic reform.

Clausewitz's famous contention about war as the continuation of politics is part of an implicit theory of civil-military relations based on the primacy of politics. Both the explicit and the implicit assumptions of Clausewitz have frequently been criticized from different viewpoints. They are, however, empirically sound and can be used as cornerstones for a normative theory of democratic control of the armed forces.

This chapter shows how Angell sacrificed his considerable popularity by first urging British neutrality towards the European conflict and then co-founding the Union of Democratic Control. He soon came to regret these controversial moves, but after a period of hesitation decided he could not disavow them. No longer in great demand for lectures and articles, he wrote several longer works, in the course of which he revised his thinking, embracing liberal internationalism and a league of nations, while trying not to be disloyal to the radical isolationism of the Union of Democratic Control. To improve his tarnished image he declared his support for the war effort and briefly undertook ambulance work in France.

Examines four objections stemming from the clash of theory (that liberalism requires the institution of compulsory, autonomy‐driven schools regardless of parental preferences) and intuition (that liberalism entails democratic control over schools and sensitivity to parents’ preferences). It argues that the ‘detached school’ should, with minor modifications, continue to provide the basis for the liberal educational ideal. Section 3.1 addresses concerns about state tyranny, arguing that the detached school both counters the threat of parental tyranny and ensures a substantive pluralism among schools and within society. Section 3.2 shows that detached schools can promote effective parental involvement. Section 3.3 addresses the hidden curriculum of schools, while Section 3.4 discusses the ability of the detached school to help children develop cultural coherence and a stable sense of identity as well as a capacity for choice.

Starts by pointing out that if the Berlin and Brussels Acts and the experience of the Congo Free State (as discussed in the last chapter) are understood as representing the internationalization of the idea of trusteeship, then the League of Nations mandates system might be understood as representing its institutionalization in international society. Examines the current of ideas from which the institutionalization of trusteeship arose out of the debates concerning the disposal of German colonies conquered during the First World War, and the subsequent compromise that resulted in the creation of the mandates system, which stands as a response to the problem of ordering relations of Europeans and non‐Europeans by reconciling the obligations of trusteeship and the search for national security in a single institutional arrangement. The victorious Allied powers divided Germany's colonial possessions amongst themselves, in no small part for reasons of national security, but in assuming administrative responsibility for these territories they also accepted the oversight of ‘international machinery’ to ensure that the work of civilization was being done. The seven sections of the chapter are: War and the Old Diplomacy; Trusteeship or Annexation?; From the New World—the effect of the Russian revolution and the entry into the First World War of the US on the French and British annexation policy and Woodrow Wilson's ideas for peace; The Mandates System—the birth of the League of Nations; Impasse at Versailles—the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Versailles Peace Treaty; Trusteeship or Deception—the obligations and defects of the League of Nations Covenant; and Novelty and Tradition—the compromise of the League of Nations system.

This chapter focuses on Ghana, Tanzania, and Botswana. During the periods under study here, Ghana experienced intermittent military rule while Tanzania was a socialist state; their armed forces were not committed to democracy and, in Ghana's case, not even to civilian rule. Unlike Ghana, Tanzania was successful in establishing civilian control over the armed forces. Civilian control must not be confused with democratic control, however. In Tanzania, civilian control was unitary, the party-state's domination of the armed forces hardly surprising considering there was no independent legislature, judiciary, or any other political organization free of TANU/CCM control. Tanzania's example demonstrates that civilian control can be successful while incorporating the armed forces into the general political arena. Botswana's situation is similar to Tanzania's insofar as one party has ruled the country since independence, but with the major difference that in Botswana, during the same time period, free elections have been held at regular intervals.

In this concluding chapter, we do not produce lists of changes required to fix the financial system, but instead reflect on the preceding analysis to find some bearings that could lead towards a much more political analysis of, and intervention against, finance. The introduction to this book reframes the crisis as an elite political debacle rather than some kind of socio-technical accident. The front half of the book describes the aggrandisement of finance under cover of a dubious alibi about financial innovation, while the back half analyses the collapse of public regulation before the crisis and the frustration of financial reform after the crisis across several different jurisdictions. In this conclusion, we draw the political corollary by envisaging a reassertion of democratic control through a combination of measures that both make finance simpler and, through cultural and political changes, change the relation between political and financial elites.

Although the PMSI does not operate in a complete legal vacuum, its inherently transnational nature makes traditional state regulation insufficient. The governance of PMCSs is thus a complex endeavour involving a broader network of actors alongside states, such as international and non-governmental organizations, the industry and its private customers. To unravel the challenges posed by the PMSI, this chapter focuses on three questions. First, it analyses what to regulate, exploring the activities of PMSCs and the dynamics of the market where they operate. It then concentrates on why the market should be regulated by drawing on the literature on civil-military relations and democratic control over the use of force. Finally, it focuses on how to regulate, analysing the potential of a combined approach based on legal regulation, market incentives, and strengthened self-regulation. It looks at the challenges and opportunities for regulation at the national, international, and EU level.

This chapter focuses on the employers of private military force. In doing so, it considers the differing ways of organizing the military. It first outlines and defends the ‘Cumulative Legitimacy Approach’ and argues that this approach should ultimately be used to assess the legitimacy of the military, rather than the prevailing theories of civil–military relations. Second, the chapter assesses the use of PMSCs according to this approach. It argues that, although the use of PMSCs does not necessarily threaten the primary understanding of the legitimacy of military force on this approach, employing private military force poses several serious moral concerns, including the lack of expected effectiveness, the undermining of democratic control, the poor treatment of PMSC personnel, and the undermining of communal bonds.

The peace movement experienced a dramatic revival from the beginning of 1919 to the eve of the Manchuria crisis and also benefited from the public's growing disappointment with the post-war world. In the early 1920s, the Labour party's success gave a boost to the Union of Democratic Control, but doubts over League of Nations gave way to the unprecedented success of the League of Nations Union (LNU) that developed as a substantial peace association. The failure of World War I in delivering international improvements as promised has only provided confidence in peace activism over the duration of this period. Another significant contribution was the development of LNU into a respectable yet vigorous peace association aiming to gain public support for the league's ideals.

This chapter examines the nature of parliamentary scrutiny of the intergovernmental pillars of the European Union. It aims to determine whether the decisions taken and the instruments adopted under the Second and Third Pillars are subject to adequate democratic control. It suggests that parliaments are generally limited in their scrutiny of foreign and security policy by the speed with which the most important events unfold and the frequent need for secrecy.

This chapter considers the relationship between two elements of the democratic ideal of self-government: political equality and citizens’ democratic control. With respect to democratic control, the author argues that we can evaluate the democratic promise of different conceptions of democracy and their proposals for institutional reform by assessing the extent to which they require or expect citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of others. Conceptions of democracy that include such expectation tacitly accept the possibility of a permanent misalignment between the beliefs and attitudes of the citizenry and the laws and policies to which they are subject. Thus, they cannot explain how citizens can identify with the policies that govern them and endorse them as their own. Since an expectation of blind deference is quintessentially incompatible with the democratic ideal of self-government, it offers a helpful criterion for identifying democratic shortcomings among conceptions of democracy that propose various “shortcuts” that would bypass political deliberation by the citizenry. It is also helpful for articulating and defending a conception of democracy “without shortcuts.”

Against a background of considerations of reasons for giving the public input into sentencing matters, this chapter recommends a citizen jury system. It is argued that sentencing by jury has several advantages over other models of democratic control.

This chapter reviews the structures, both formal and informal, through which democratic control is exercised over the formulation and conduct of Irish foreign policy. It analyses in detail the parliamentary contribution to Irish foreign policy formulation and considers public engagement in the policy process. This chapter evaluates the strength of democratic currents and their potential to transform the formulation and conduct of foreign policy. It also considers the role of narratives in Irish foreign policy construction and the way in which different narratives may become evident in the assumptions of particular sets of foreign policy actors.

This chapter discusses the mainstreaming of co-operatives against the background of the global financial crisis of 2008. It defines the concept of mainstreaming, examines the ‘debt trap’ which many organisations experienced following the crisis, notes the greater levels of resilience among co-operative and mutual organisations, and proposes an initial framework to monitor the mainstreaming of co-operatives.

This chapter explains that the psychological purpose of elections is to give citizens a sense of democratic control, and, through their cyclical nature, a sense of resolution of emerging or persistent political and ideological conflicts. This concept of electoral resolution is central in citizens' logic of elections. It is also a concept which, by its nature, generates others—such as electoral hostility, democratic frustration, or even the centrality of hope and hopelessness in electoral behaviour. Electoral resolution additionally forces one to redefine yet other notions, such as election cycles and electoral honeymoons, which take on a whole new meaning once one considers them through the prism of elections as resolution mechanisms. After empirically revisiting the notion of electoral atmosphere using two UK case studies (the 2016 referendum on EU membership, and 2017 general election), the chapter examines those concepts one by one.

The findings of this book have implications for research on important issues in contemporary European integration. First, the centrality of the European Council and the Council within the new areas of European Union activity requires the roles of key supranational actors such as the Commission and the European Parliament to be at least partially reconceptualized. Second, the new intergovernmentalism and especially the emphasis on informal working methods and confidential policy dialogue make the exercise of democratic control challenging. New scrutiny procedures and accountability mechanisms, which are or could be introduced by both the European and national parliaments, require more attention in this regard. Finally, deliberative intergovernmentalism offers lessons for integration theory. Notably, it shows that post-Maastricht integration can be conceptualized as integration outside the framework of the classic community method.

John Callaghan walks the reader through the various debates and contradictions seen in the Labour movement prior to the end of hostilities, as well as the dilemmas soon posed by the march of events thereafter. Along the way, he discusses Labour’s reactions to the diplomatic path pursued by Edward Grey in the summer of 1914, the subsequent impact of the Union of Democratic Control, and then Labour’s relationship with the Lloyd George government and Wilsonianism abroad. Callaghan also includes vital discussion of the continuation of hostilities beyond 11 November 1918. Here his article may be of particular use to those considering Labour’s later attitudes to colonialism and the League of Nations too.