In this study of the changes in the social and political thought of the Edwardian Liberal Party, Dr Emy charts the process of internal conversion by which the Party came to favour an advanced social policy. He links these changes with important developments in the internal composition of the Party, in particular the emergence of a new group of social radicals, and claims that these two factors were responsible for the Liberals' commitment to advanced measures of social reform. The author also maintains that the entry of the social radicals into Parliament marks the origins of a significant debate in modern British politics - the economic problem. He argues that the central issue of the problem - the degree to which social and moral priorities are both entitled to and are able to displace the primacy of deterministic economic assumptions about how society must work - was the critical issue of post-1906 politics, and also came to form the touchstone of modern party allegiances.
This paper discusses mandate doctrine against the background of both recent empirical research and controversy surrounding the term in Australia. It defends the concept as a normative term which belongs with the responsible party model and consent theory. It further concludes that the Dem ocrats' claim to enjoy a m andate equal to that of the coalition government is not justi® ed from the perspective of responsible government. However, Senator Kernot' s position m arks another step in the constitutional evolution of the Senate. Final judgment on the meaning of mandate depends on what kind of polity emerges.
Critical research into the motivation and content of Liberal social policies before 1914 has qualified much of the credit the party's accomplishments originally received. Yet such qualifications may go too far and in the struggle to do justice to all the facts, historical accuracy may suffer both from tendencies to look for dominant motifs or patterns, and from the temptation to emphasize the ‘real’ empirical nature of politics, so losing sight of all purposes and patterns – especially value-patterns. For example, the emphasis upon nineteenth century administrative development may certainly correct the previously overdrawn distinction between, firstly, individualism and the negative state, and secondly, collectivism and the positive state, but if such emphasis is carried too far it may appear that the social reforms passed after 1906 were no more than the logical continuation of a legislative trend already well-established. It may appear through the simple cataloguing of administrative growth, in conjunction with the attention focused on the rise of the Labour movement and the ensuing attempt to place both in a long-term historical perspective, that the Liberal party was largely the passive instrument of movements and ideas which passed around and about the party, rather than through and within it; and, this being so, that interpretations such as those of Laski, dating the emergence of ‘fundamental’ party divisions from post-1914, may be too easily accepted.
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