‘Divided Within Itself’: The Parliamentary Labour ‘Right’ and the Demise of Post‐War Revisionist Social Democracy in the 1970s

The article seeks to identify a neglected dimension of the ‘crisis’ and schism of British social democracy in the 1970s from within the ranks of the parliamentary Labour ‘right’ itself. Accounts of the so‐called ‘Labour right’ and its influential revisionist social democratic tradition have emphasized its generic cohesion and uniformity over contextual analysis of its inherent intellectual, ideological and political range and diversity. The article seeks to evaluate differential responses of Labour's ‘right‐wing’ and revisionist tendency as its loosely cohesive framework of Keynesian social democracy imploded in the 1970s, as a means of demonstrating its relative incoherence and fragmentation. The ‘crisis of social democracy’ revealed much more starkly its complex, heterogeneous character, irremediably ‘divided within itself’ over a range of critical political and policy themes and the basis of social democratic political philosophy itself. The article argues that it was its own wider political fragmentation and ideological introspection in the face of the ‘crisis’ of its historic ‘belief system’ which led to the fracture of Labour's ‘dominant coalition’ and the rupture of British social democracy.     

执政党建设与中国政党制度的民主价值

当代中国正处于剧烈的社会转型期,多元利益诉求引发的政治参与膨胀,对政党制度民主价值的进一步挖掘和发挥提出了更高的要求。执政党党内民主的发展,直接影响到社会民主以及整个国家民主政治发展的进程,而加强执政党的建设则是充分发挥中国政党制度民主价值的关键路径。     

The geography of the political party: Lessons from the British Labour Party's experiment with community organising, 2010 to 2015

This paper highlights the geographical contributions made to academic debate about democracy, representation and the role of the political party. It argues that while geographers have made important arguments in relation to the structure and operation of representative democracy, there is scope for paying greater attention to the internal spatial dynamics of the political party. A successful political party requires a balance between the national party machine and its local membership base. This paper draws on research to explore the way in which the British Labour Party sought to renew its local membership base by adopting community organising techniques and establishing a new arms-length organisation, Movement for Change (M4C), between 2010 and 2015. It uses this research material to highlight the importance of the internal balance of power within any political party, and the need for a multi-scalar approach to understanding the successful operation of any political party.     

构建和谐政党关系要解决的几个问题

构建和谐的政党关系,即执政党与参政党之间的和谐政党关系,核心的问题是坚持不坚持及如何坚持中国共产党的领导,关键的问题是要进一步提高及如何提高民主党派的政党能力,基础的问题是努力营造现代民主政治的文化氛围。     

善治视野下的党政关系

善治作为一种新的治理,给政府管理改革带来了机遇,也给中国共产党的执政带来了新的要求。善治要求调整党政机构的设置,实现党政关系运转的有效性;要求理顺党政职能的定位,提高党政关系信息公开的透明性;要求规范党政运作的方式,实现党政关系规范的法制性。     

Were New Labour’s cultural policies neo-liberal?

This article assesses the cultural policies of ‘New Labour’, the UK Labour government of 1997–2010. It takes neo-liberalism as its starting point, asking to what extent Labour’s cultural policies can be validly and usefully characterised as neo-liberal. It explores this issue across three dimensions: corporate sponsorship and cuts in public subsidy; the running of public sector cultural institutions as though they were private businesses; and a shift in prevailing rationales for cultural policy, away from cultural justifications, and towards economic and social goals. Neo-liberalism is shown to be a significant but rather crude tool for evaluating and explaining New Labour’s cultural policies. At worse, it falsely implies that New Labour did not differ from Conservative approaches to cultural policy, downplays the effect of sociocultural factors on policy-making, and fails to differentiate varying periods and directions of policy. It does, however, usefully draw attention to the public policy environment in which Labour operated, in particular the damaging effects of focusing, to an excessive degree, on economic conceptions of the good in a way that does not recognise the limitations of markets as a way of organising production, circulation and consumption.     

Reconceptualising local labour markets in the context of cross-border and transnational labour flows: The Irish example

The increased prevalence of border-crossing labour of various types makes an uneasy juxtaposition of the ‘local’ and the ‘transnational’ or the ‘global’ and raises two classes of questions. These concern, firstly, the definition of the local in local labour markets and, secondly, the role of state borders in regulating and shaping flows of border-crossing workers. The paper begins to explore these issues. It questions the conceptualisation and definition of local labour markets and outlines a case for transnational labour and state borders to be included in their theorisation. Following this, drawing on studies of recruitment and interviews with labour market actors on both sides of the Irish border it discusses how state borders impact on different types of labour in different circumstances and outlines the paradoxical and sometimes contradictory nature of state borders in labour regulation and employers' strategies. It concludes by arguing that state borders might be moved from the edge of local labour market studies to a place much nearer their centre.     

营造党内民主讨论环境问题探析

营造党内民主讨论环境对于发展党内民主,实现党的团结和统一,对于科学决策、民主决策、依法决策具有重要意义。但是,当前党内仍然存在着影响党内民主讨论环境的诸多因素。对这些因素进行分析并探求营造党内民主讨论环境的对策是推进党内民主的重要环节。     

党内民主视野下党员意见表达刍议

发展党内民主要以党员为本。以党员为本必须尊重党员主体地位,而尊重党员主体地位需要提高党员的民主意识,保障党员的参与权,这一切都有赖于党员的意见表达。党员意见表达是发展党内民主的一种内在生成力,是发展党内民主的天然成分,它有利于提高党员对党内民主的参与度,有利于营造党内民主的环境。     

党要不断完善执政方略的评估体系

完善党的执政方略的评估体系具有极端的紧迫性和重要性。为了使评估科学、公正,必须增加评估主体,促进评估主体多元化,重视发挥媒体的作用,还应积极引进专家学者和专门机构参与评估实践。构建执政方略的评估体系,关键是要确定科学的评估标准。     

政党现代化视域的选人用人论析

政党现代化是一个不断制度化、规范化、科学化的过程。选人用人是政党的重要功能。选人用人的合法性和科学性,是政党现代化的题中应有之义遥。只有在厘清公共权力、执政党和民众政治参与的逻辑关系的前提下,才能科学把握政党现代化的一般规律,并遵循这个规律来选人用人。     

Labour electoral landslides and the changing efficiency of voting distributions

The translation of votes into seats under first–past–the–post electoral systems with single–member constituencies invariably results in disproportional allocations of seats relative to votes among the main two parties. It also tends to produce biased outcomes, with one party getting a more disproportionate share of the seats with a given share of the votes than does its opponent. In Great Britain, these biases favoured the Conservative party until the 1980s, but now strongly favour Labour. Production of those biases results from a variety of influences involving the interaction of the geography of party support with that of constituency boundaries. Increasingly, that interaction has favoured Labour: without any explicit manipulation of the constituency map to its own ends, it now benefits substantially from the equivalent of the malapportionment and gerrymandering cartographic abuses typical of the United States, because of its ability to manipulate its vote distribution within the constituency system.     

增强党的观念强化党员意识发挥党员作用

贯彻党章,发挥党员先锋模范作用,是巩固保持共产党员先进性教育成果的需要,也是巩固党的执政基础和执政地位的根本要求。贯彻党章,必须不断增强党的观念,不断强化党员意识,着力发挥共产党员的先锋模范作用。     

关于吸收和借鉴其它执政党执政能力建设有益经验的几个问题

加强党的执政能力建设,必须以与时俱进的时代精神把我们党置于世界政党的参照系中加以比较和审视,积极借鉴国外其它政党执政和治国的有益经验。本文就如何吸收和借鉴其它政党执政能力建设有益经验问题,从提出问题的依据、借鉴方法、借鉴内容以及吸收和借鉴应坚持的原则等方面进行了相应探讨。     

执政党意识形态中间化价值目标的多维视角分析

面对当今世界形势新变化和时代主题转换的影响以及政党政治自身不断发展的现实,世界大多数执政党都作出了积极地回应,并对各自的执政理念进行相应的调整或改革。意识形态中间化的价值理念是一种规避执政风险、适应全新执政环境的比较好的调适方式,是执政党为达到扩大政党社会基础、实现政党现代化、增强政党社会竞争力、谋求执政合法性等基本价值目标而采取的一种新的执政思路。     

Sharing a similar fate: the historical process of the Korean Communists’ merger with the Chinese Communist Party (1919–1936)

In their early history, the Chinese and Korean Communists had little contact with one another. However, similar fates brought them together, and some Korean revolutionaries in China voluntarily joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After a futile effort to establish a Communist party in Korea, the Korean Communists shifted their attention to Chinese Manchuria. Under extremely difficult circumstances, different factions of the Korean Communist organizations either willingly or under force disbanded. However, after winning support from the Comintern, the CCP recruited a substantial number of Korean Communists. Thus, within a short period of time, the CCP expanded its strength in Manchuria. It also shouldered responsibility for assisting the Korean Communists in their efforts to establish their own party. In the aftermath of the September 18th Incident in 1931 the CCP Central Committee called for an armed struggle against the Japanese invaders. The Korean Communists in Manchuria became a force to be reckoned with. After the CCP gradually shifted the focus of its policy toward the War of Resistance against Japan, the Korean Communists in China became integrated into the CCP army.