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Many states use a classificatory approach to foreign policy: they put other states into particular categories and structure their engagement and relations partly as a result. There is one prominent modern international political theory – Rawls’ Law of Peoples – that seems to adopt this approach as an account of justified state behaviour. But should we expect this type of theory ultimately to prove attractive, justified and philosophically distinct compared to more instrumentalist rivals? This paper explores the challenges generic to any such account, not merely those relating to Rawls’ specific version, and surveys possible responses and their shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years there has been a re-appraisal within political science of the characteristics of various kinds of public policy failure. At the same time, the political significance of education has grown in most liberal democracies. The present paper examines public policy in British education since the mid-1970s and asks: What goes wrong in policy-making and when does manageable failure slide into full-scale crisis? Various episodes of policy are explored and set against the theoretical framework developed by Mark Bovens and Paul t'Hart in an attempt to distinguish those policies in recent British education that have been controversial, those that have been manageable failures and those that turned into disabling fiascos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to suggest alternatives to the modes of conceptualization of education and schooling which have predominated in contemporary sociological theories of education and have influenced the Left in Great Britain. In the theoretical debate in sociology of education during the 1970s, it is clear that radical rather than Marxist theory had more appeal among those who regarded themselves as Left-radicals and Left-libertarians working in the sphere of education either as teachers or in some other related capacity. It is precisely in the area of educational policy and the means of affecting it, that a major distinction is to be found between the traditional sociology of education and its radical challenge. The work of the traditional sociologists of education, and in particular their exposition of the inequalities in educational opportunity and achievement, provided much of the argument for the reform of educational provision in the parliamentary struggle and the struggle at the level of local government. The future of democratic socialism lies not in dogma and the rhetoric of empty slogans but in informed, democratic political debate. The role of education in the struggle for democracy and democratic socialism is to contribute to the development of conditions of existence of informed, democratic political debate.

The article discusses the relation of Brexit, the British referendum on leaving the European Union (EU), to democracy. Topics include the relation of the European Commission and the European Parliament to democracy, the role of national sovereignty in relation to democracy, and British resistance to free trade agreements.

Citizenship as a compulsory subject was added to the National Curriculum in England in 2002 following the 1998 report, ‘Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools’. It was little noticed at the time that the report stressed active citizenship much more strongly than democracy. The underlying presupposition was what historians call ‘civic republicanism’, the tradition from the Greeks and the Romans of good government as political government, that is, citizens reaching acceptable compromises of group interests and values by public debate. This is contrasted to modern liberalism. To stress ‘democracy’ unduly in citizenship education can lead to definitional dogmatics about multiple meanings of the term, even to disillusionment. Democracy is a necessary element in good government but not a sufficient one, unless subjective opinion is enshrined over knowledge through education. The practices of free politics are both historically and logically prior to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenges to modern national statistical systems, with emphasis on that of the UK, are reviewed and likened to those facing Olympic athletes. I argue that the uses of official statistics to ensure political accountability vary in degree between countries and that this affects the pressures on the system. Many of the pressures exist because official statistics are at the heart of democratic accountability and the political process. Some of these uses and the connection to the pressures on the statistical system are explored together with some ways in which the system needs to respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluates the effect of introducing markets into the institutional system of education and promotes the claim of a learning democracy in Great Britain. Chubb and Moe's arguments on markets and democratic control; Markets' promotion of autonomy; Suggested reading by Ministers of Education for their civil servants.

The article focuses on the education systems of Germany and Great Britain. According to the author, who has been the observer from the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the recent developments in the British education system presents a fascinating spectacle. The dismantling of elements which he had seen as patterns of the British liberality and democracy was also perceived by him. The observer sympathizes with the infuriated reactions of his liberal colleagues in Great Britain and their protest against Thatcherism in education. Nevertheless, at the same time the observer from the FRG cannot but regard their annoyance as a manifestation of an insular limitation of their horizons. It is further noted in the article that the British education system as a whole, however has attracted only little attention in the ERG, comprehensive descriptions of education in Great Britain, accessible to a wider public are virtually non-existent. The author finally comes out with the conclusion that the present British interest in the education system of the FRG has one distinctly recognizable motive.