The Anonymous Empire

Finer, S. E.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.1958.tb00790.x

Cited by 42 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…The policy community approach built on an established British perspective reflected in the work of Beer (1966), Finer (1958, Stewart (1958), Self and Storing (1962), Eckstein (1960) and Banting (1979). In other words, it was consistent with the dominant perspective that developed in British academic work.…”

Section: The Lijphart Interpretation Seems To Be At Odds With the Evimentioning

confidence: 88%

What is the ‘dominant model’ of British policymaking? Comparing majoritarian and policy community ideas

Jordan

Cairney

2013

Br Polit

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The aim of this article is to help identify the fundamental characteristics of the British policymaking system. It highlights an enduring conflict of interpretation within the literature. On the one hand, most contemporary analysts argue that the 'Westminster model' is outmoded and it has been replaced by modern understandings based on 'governance'. On the other, key ideas associated with the Westminster Model, regarding majoritarian government and policy imposition, are still in good currency in the academic literature which holds firm to Lijphart's (1984;1999) description of the UK as a majoritarian democracy. These very different understandings of British government are both commonly cited, but without much recognition that their conclusions may be mutually incompatible. To address this lack of comparison of competing narratives, the article outlines two main approaches to describe and explain the 'characteristic and durable' ways of doing things in Britain: the 'policy styles' literature initiated by Richardson in Policy Styles in Western Europe (1982) and the Lijphart account found in Democracies (1984) and revised in 1999 as Patterns of Democracy. The article encourages scholars to reject an appealing compromise between majoritarian and governance accounts.

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Section: The Lijphart Interpretation Seems To Be At Odds With the Evimentioning

confidence: 88%

What is the ‘dominant model’ of British policymaking? Comparing majoritarian and policy community ideas

Jordan

Cairney

2013

Br Polit

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“…(Mackenzie, 1955b). Finer (1966) made a distinctive contribution. This was an era in which case studies of particular areas of interest group activity were still produced and made a real contribution to understanding.…”

Section: Interest Groups: a Fading Paradigm?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Forty years studying British politics: The decline of Anglo-America

Grant

2012

Br Polit

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Abstract:The still present belief some forty years ago that British politics was both exceptional and superior has been replaced by more theoretically sophisticated analyses based on a wider and more rigorously deployed range of research techniques, although historical analysis appropriately remains important. The American influence on the study of British politics has declined, but the European Union dimension has not been fully integrated. The study of interest groups has been in some respects a fading paradigm, but important questions related to democratic health have still to be addressed. Public administration has been supplanted by public policy, but economic policy remains under studied. A key challenge for the future is the study of the management of expectations.Keywords: Anglo-America; interest groups; public administration; public policy; governance; expectations.Any assessment of the state of discipline in British politics has to take account of two factors: intellectual developments in the discipline itself and changes in the system of higher education. There is no doubt that the study of British politics has become more sophisticated over the last forty years. When I started to publish in 1968, there were still traces of the Whig view of history, reflected in the assumption that the British system of government and politics was both exceptional and superior, at least that it was particularly well adapted to British (read English) culture. Of course, already by that time more sophisticated treatments were available, notably Beer's historically grounded analysis (Beer, 1965) and the fresh textbook perspective provided by Richard Rose. (Rose, 1974) Both of these authors were Americans.

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“…The role of interest groups lobbying for their sectional interests is not without its dangers, however. Some interests are better organised and resourced than others, and groups representing producers can inflict greater political damage on domestic governments than those representing consumers (Finer, 1958). The degree to which particular interest groups are effective also depends on the nature of the government itself, including whether government officials are formally or informally members of the interest group in question (Truman, 1951).…”

Section: Interest Group Organisation and The Dynamics Of 'Capture'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has long been acknowledged that democratic deepening and consolidation depends on the creation of effective organisations for the aggregation and mobilisation of group interests (Finer, 1958;Harriss & Törnquist, 2004;Schedler, 1998;Truman, 1951). Such organisations allow for the generation of horizontal linkages that may enable groups of people with similar interests, who would otherwise be dispersed and disorganised, to articulate their voice and exert collective power.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Double Capture’ and De-Democratisation: Interest Group Politics and Uganda’s ‘Transport Mafia’

Goodfellow

2016

The Journal of Development Studies

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This article analyses problems of interest representation and democratic consolidation, using a case study of the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (UTODA). It shows how apparently representative organisational forms can exploit the majority of their members, bolstering the power of political-economic elites who straddle the statesociety divide, as well as how such organisations can undermine the foundations for democratic consolidation more broadly. Challenging conventional understandings of 'state capture', the paper argues that UTODA's organisational power instead evolved through processes conceptualised as 'double capture': first, the government infiltrated the informal transport sector, but subsequently the transport organisation came to wield disproportionate influence over the state itself, with detrimental effects on both urban services and popular representation. The long-term domination by this authoritarian organisation meant that even after its downfall in 2011 there was little organisational capacity to build on in the sector, facilitating the reassertion of top-down governmental control.

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The Anonymous Empire

Cited by 42 publications

References 0 publications

What is the ‘dominant model’ of British policymaking? Comparing majoritarian and policy community ideas

What is the ‘dominant model’ of British policymaking? Comparing majoritarian and policy community ideas

Forty years studying British politics: The decline of Anglo-America

‘Double Capture’ and De-Democratisation: Interest Group Politics and Uganda’s ‘Transport Mafia’

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