Michael Rush
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198275770
- eISBN:
- 9780191684142
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198275770.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
This chapter discusses the political context within which Parliament operates. Topics covered include the growth of government in the 19th and 20th centuries, the origins and development of the party ...
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This chapter discusses the political context within which Parliament operates. Topics covered include the growth of government in the 19th and 20th centuries, the origins and development of the party system, the growth of party organization, and the development of party cohesion. Contextually, by 1900 all was in place: British politics was dominated by two, ideologically-divided parties; collectivist demands, significantly tempered by libertarian concerns, had resulted in an expansion of government, and the state now intervened in areas which were beyond the ideological pale a hundred years before; the governmental machine had expanded accordingly, with an increase in the number ministers and civil servants; and the House of Commons, the key part of the legislative machine, was controlled by party.Less
This chapter discusses the political context within which Parliament operates. Topics covered include the growth of government in the 19th and 20th centuries, the origins and development of the party system, the growth of party organization, and the development of party cohesion. Contextually, by 1900 all was in place: British politics was dominated by two, ideologically-divided parties; collectivist demands, significantly tempered by libertarian concerns, had resulted in an expansion of government, and the state now intervened in areas which were beyond the ideological pale a hundred years before; the governmental machine had expanded accordingly, with an increase in the number ministers and civil servants; and the House of Commons, the key part of the legislative machine, was controlled by party.
Craige Champion
William Joseph Sanders (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520237643
- eISBN:
- 9780520929890
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520237643.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical
Polybius was a Greek statesman and political prisoner of Rome in the second century bce. His Histories provide the earliest continuous narrative of the rise of the Roman Empire. This study, informed ...
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Polybius was a Greek statesman and political prisoner of Rome in the second century bce. His Histories provide the earliest continuous narrative of the rise of the Roman Empire. This study, informed by recent work in cultural studies and on ethnicity, demonstrates that Polybius'ss work performs a literary and political balancing act of heretofore-unappreciated subtlety and interest. It shows how Polybius contrived to tailor his historiography for multiple audiences, comprising his fellow Greeks, whose freedom Rome had usurped in his own generation, and the Roman conquerors. The author focuses primarily on the ideological presuppositions and predispositions of Polybius'ss different audiences in order to interpret the apparent contradictions and incongruities in his text. In this way he develops a “politics of cultural indeterminacy” in which Polybius's collective representations of political and ethnic groups have different meanings for different audiences in different contexts. Situating these representations in the ideological, political, and historical contexts from which they arose, the book affords insights into a work whose subtlety and complexity have gone largely unrecognized.Less
Polybius was a Greek statesman and political prisoner of Rome in the second century bce. His Histories provide the earliest continuous narrative of the rise of the Roman Empire. This study, informed by recent work in cultural studies and on ethnicity, demonstrates that Polybius'ss work performs a literary and political balancing act of heretofore-unappreciated subtlety and interest. It shows how Polybius contrived to tailor his historiography for multiple audiences, comprising his fellow Greeks, whose freedom Rome had usurped in his own generation, and the Roman conquerors. The author focuses primarily on the ideological presuppositions and predispositions of Polybius'ss different audiences in order to interpret the apparent contradictions and incongruities in his text. In this way he develops a “politics of cultural indeterminacy” in which Polybius's collective representations of political and ethnic groups have different meanings for different audiences in different contexts. Situating these representations in the ideological, political, and historical contexts from which they arose, the book affords insights into a work whose subtlety and complexity have gone largely unrecognized.
