Politics

American conservatives are divided about the future of legal immigration. Whereas some assert that the US should remain a ‘nation of immigrants’, others insist that immigration levels should be reduced to a bare minimum. The divisions owe much to ddifferent conceptions of American national identity. Whereas some represent the US as a ‘universal nation’ open to all those who subscribe to particular political and philosophical principles, growing numbers within the conservative movement put forward visions of an American nation structured around a distinct ethno-culture. The rifts are deeply rooted, and have consequences for the future of both American conservatism and the Republican Party.

In this essay, I first provide reasons for the reemergence of the idea of civil society and for its subsequent importance in contemporary democratic theory, particularly on the left. I then show how this new approach to civil society is premised upon the separation of spheres between state and society. Thus the place of civil society in such accounts of democracy and democratisation, although normative and therefore putatively universal, is actually based on western liberalism. This feature of civil society theory obscures democratisation as a contextualised process and therefore distorts descriptions of a normative core to democracy that it truly universal in scope.

In this paper a conceptual model is developed that relates loyalty to a community of countries to the material benefits derived from it, measured by the transfer of extra income. We argue that the extent of a country's welfare, and consequently its acceptance to participate in a community increase together with the latter's scope for influence on the former. We use the paradigm of Greece, which is one of the main recipient countries in the EU. It was found that financial transfers concerning regional policy affect in the long-run ‘the acceptance of European integration’ by the public in Greece while social policy funds appear to have short-run positive effects on public opinion.

Looking for one specific point of origin of the far reaching transformation of the Labour Party obscures rather than illuminates the complex process which lies behind its ideological self-redefinition. This response to Adam Lent's article in Politics Volume 17, ‘Labour's Transformation: Searching for the Point of Origin’, argues that the long march from the party of Michael Foot to that led by Tony Blair is more usefully explored in terms of a gradual, staged process This transformation, evidenced in alterations in Labour's programmatic stance, electoral strategy and stated political objectives, was enacted in the period 1983–1997 as a whole. While several significant ‘moments of transition’ can be identified none are by themselves a single ‘point of origin’.

I examine Seglow's critique (Politics 17(3) 1997) of my assessment of Parekh's theory of operative public values (Politics 16(3) 1996). This examination has four main stages: (a) the rejection of crucial aspects of Seglow's interpretation of my argument, (b) the rejection of his claim that my argument is logically committed to certain other specific positions which I do not support, (c) the rejection of his claim that I my argumentative strategies are misleading, (d) the consideration of possible similarities and disagreements between our respective positive positions on cultural pluralism.

Labour Party policy developments in the 1980s have been well-documented. However, the focus has tended to be on intra-party organisation and aspects of domestic and defence policy, with Labour's policy on international issues receiving comparatively little attention. Yet, some of the most interesting debates occurred in this area. One such concern was that over the party's policy towards the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a set of nationalist rivalries that has long been a source of dilemma for the left. This paper examines how the party's previous pro-Israeli consensus broke down during the 1980s and the processes behind the eventual policy outcome, shedding light on the wider issue of policy change.

This article compares the economics and ethics of Anglo-American individualistic market capitalism with its rivals – notably the ‘social market’ model and communitarian capitalism. It argues that ‘business ethics’ is a threat to economic efficiency and does not guarantee higher moral standards in commerce.