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This article contributes to debates about how Covid-19 became a dilemma of procedure inside the UK Parliament. Specifically, the article attempts to give an answer to the puzzle of why in-person proceedings and traditional approaches to representation were more important than adopting new and different ways to support representatives through, digital forms of participation. In order to answer this question, the article outlines and develops a theoretical argument, namely an interpretive approach to political science, and identifies a conceptual framework of beliefs, traditions and dilemmas. The article’s main focus is to develop this theory and apply it, in particular the concept of dilemma, in order to understand Covid-19 in Parliament. The article argues that the clash of beliefs that resulted from Covid-19 was ultimately won over through conservative webs of belief that relied on embedded and historical parliamentary practices and the power relations of MPs. This article therefore offers a conceptual contribution, specifically the importance of ideas and dilemmas to understanding politics, and an empirical contribution, by examining the case study of Covid-19 in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the relations between the House of Lords and House of Commons in Great Britain and their influence in legislative proposals. According to the author, the British House of Lords has the ability to defeat the government and to influence the content of legislation. The author explores the ability of House of Lords to alter bills.

The article focuses on the House of Lords in Great Britain in the 1840s. During the 1940s the duke of Wellington's mental, physical and political powers were in decline. His almost complete deafness shut him off from what was happening around him. He has been relegated to the sidelines politically by his colleagues.

The concept of the political settlement has risen to occupy a central place in British policy toward conflict-affected and fragile states. Yet, at around the turn of the millennium, the term was barely mentioned in official circles and the so-called ‘good governance’ approach held sway as the dominant operational mode. So, how had this transformation in policy approach come about and what was the role of research? In this article, we demonstrate that research played a central role in influencing the rhetoric of policymakers through a process we term ‘cumulative influence’. Indeed, the subject of political settlements represents an excellent case study for understanding the dynamics of research utilisation. It allows us to build on existing models and suggest useful ways forward in this important area of public policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using primary sources (oral tradition, archival materials, archaeological evidence, 19th century European explorers’ and missionaries’ accounts) and secondary sources (historical, anthropological, archaeological, etc.), this article reevaluates, in a historical perspective, the decline and diminishment in political power and scale as well as in population and landmass of Bunyoro-Kitara, the earliest kingdom in East Africa’s lake region. It concludes that, contrary to the conventional wisdom proffered by 19th century Europeans and sanctified by Makerere University scholarship, the kingdom declined essentially because of the extraordinary errors of judgment and incompetence of most of its rulers from the close of the 17th century to the close of the 19th century, devastating deceases (human and animal), and brutal British conquest resulting in the death of thousands of individuals and loss of territory. By 1900 the kingdom’s population had declined by about four-fifths and landmass by about two-thirds. No major African kingdom experienced such an enormous outcome. Herein lies the fascination with this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social scientists and historians writing on techniques of contemporary rule, particularly those influenced by post-Marxist paradigms such as governmentality, have become increasingly preoccupied by the expanding role of standardization and the subjection of an ever-expanding array of spheres of activity to inspection (or self-inspection), audit, and certification. In the course of their investigations, the elements of a common narrative are emerging. This links standardization, audit, and certification with neoliberalism and contraction of the state, on one hand, with a reconfiguration of everyday life in business, communication, and social provision on the other (see Power 1997; Brunsson and Jakobsen 2000; Strathern 2000; and Higgins and Larner 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the first sections of this article I give a simple and general account of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and how it might contribute to the theoretical and methodological repertoire of political studies through its discourse-dialectical theory of how discourse figures as an aspect of social practices without reducing those practices to discourse. In the final section I give a short illustrative example of how a CDA approach to detailed textual analysis might also be applied to specific texts (or groups of texts) in the political arena: in the example I take the press release in which the national UK government heralded its recent ‘empowerment’ White Paper, ‘Communities in Control’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the royal prerogative of Great Britain. It discusses that the royal derogative refers to the executive powers of the British constitution. It discusses a court case "R (Bancoult) v. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs or Bancoult (No. 2)" case where Great Britains's highest court, The House of Lords has been asked to decide on the limits of the prerogative powers. It also discusses the legal control of the prerogative powers in Great Britain. It further discusses the House of Lords concerns of the prerogative powers issue in Great Britain.

Discusses imperial Britain's strategies, successes and failures in attempting to prepare its far-flung possessions for democratic self-government. Attempt of Great Britain to do what the U.S. and the United nations have been trying to accomplish on a shorter timetable in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor; Exploration of several examples to illustrate these efforts of Great Britain on these countries; Suggestion that in countries with weak political institutions the transition to democracy carries a higher risk of civil or international war.

It is argued that institutional features of the British state create collective action problems for the mobilization of corporations as donors to the Conservative Party. Social factors are necessary for overcoming these problems. Using social network analyses, the effect that interlocking directorates have on 250 large British corporations' decisions to donate are analysed. Instead of the central mobilizing factor being diffuse inner circle mechanisms positively influencing the decision to make a donation, the results show that more particularistic mechanisms such as information bias and control are equally important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines whether the concept of social capital advances the understanding of social democratic politics in another European democracy. Social capital is a significant resource, according to its proponents, because of the outcomes it facilitates. Where members of a community enjoy high levels of trust, benefit from good dispersion of information, and share effective norms, they are able to attain ends which would otherwise be prohibitively costly. Such capital improves human capital, it can be a silent background, sustaining unproblematic and smooth-running cooperative relations.

A succession of Acts of Parliament passed between 1988 and 1990 mark the most decisive break in British social policy since the period between 1944 and 1948. This paper examines the extent to which common principles underlie this legislation. One of the most important common elements has been the reduction in the powers of local government and in the presumption that local authorities should be the main providers of social welfare outside the social security system. Schools, housing estates and social care services are to be given greater powers to run themselves or to become separate organisations. Local authorities are to use their resources to fund and contract with external agencies. The possible outcomes of this change in governance are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to an article written by scholars Roy Hattersley and Kevin Hickson concerning British political movements. The author discusses the relationship between power and community in politics and the role of so-called Blue Labour in British politics. He also discusses how social democrats view political power and examines whether social capital and power can create what he terms bridging capital. The author states that while he does not adhere to the philosophy of Blue Labour, he argues that the Blue Labour movement can demonstrate how community-based power challenge political inequality.