The Blair Legacy: Politics, Policy, Governance, and Foreign Affairs

357 Pages·2009·1.2 MB·English

by  Terrence Casey (eds.)

The Blair Legacy
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The Blair Legacy
Politics, Policy, Governance,
and Foreign Affairs
Edited By
Terrence Casey
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, USA
Selection and editorial matter © Terrence Casey 2009
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-21661-7
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this
work in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England,company number 785998,of Houndmills,Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue,New York,NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom,Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-0-230-21662-4 ISBN 978-0-230-23284-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230232846
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managed and sustained forest sources.Logging,pulping and manufacturing
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Blair legacy :politics,policy,governance,and foreign affairs / edited
By Terrence Casey.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Great Britain—Politics and government—1997–2007.2. Blair,Tony,
1953– I.Casey,Terrence.
JN238.B55 2009
320.95109'0511—dc22 2008041051
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
This book is dedicated to my wife, Allison, who is more
wonderful than she realizes and more tolerant of me than
she ought to be, and to the best three things to come out of
the Blair years – Maria, Jack, and Oliver.
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Contents
List of Tables ix
List of Figures x
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Notes on Contributors xiii
Introduction: How to Assess the Blair Legacy? 1
Terrence Casey
Part I Politics
1 Blair’s Electoral Record 23
David Denver and Justin Fisher
2 The Party is Over: The “Modernization” of the British 39
Labour Party
Florence Faucher-King
3 The Conservatives: Trounced, Transfixed – and Transformed? 52
Tim Bale
4 The Liberal Democrats after Blair 65
Andrew Russell and David Cutts
5 The Pressure Group Challenge 80
Wyn Grant
6 New Labour, the Third Way and Social Democracy:
An Ideological Assessment 94
Nick Randall and James Sloam
Part II Policy
7 Blair and the NHS: Resistible Force Meets Moveable Object? 109
Calum Paton
8 Reformulating Social Policy: The Minimum Wage, the
New Deal, and the Working Families Tax Credit 122
Jerold Waltman
9 New Labour and the British Model of Capitalism 135
Terrence Casey and Alistair Q. Howard
vii
viii Contents
10 Judicial Reform and Human Rights 150
Mark Bevir and Richard Maiman
Part III Governance
11 Tony Blair as Prime Minister 165
Mark Bennister
12 The Role of Parliament under Blair 178
Mark Stuart
13 The Blair Government, Devolution and Regionalism
in the United Kingdom 190
Jonathan Bradbury
14 Mayors, Monitors and Measurers: Blair’s Legacy to
Local Democracy 204
Chris Game
15 The Constitutional Revolution of Tony Blair 219
James E. Alt
Part IV Foreign Affairs
16 What Difference Did He Make? Tony Blair and
British Foreign Policy from 1997–2007 235
Stephen Benedict Dyson
17 The Mistake Heard Round the World: Iraq and
the Blair Legacy 247
David Coates and Joel Krieger
18 A Just War: Prime Minister Tony Blair and the
End of Saddam’s Iraq 260
Ted R. Bromund
19 US-UK Relations: Structure, Agency and the
Special Relationship 273
John Dumbrell
20 Blair and the European Union 285
Scott James and Kai Oppermann
Conclusion: The Legacy of Tony Blair 299
Jonathan Tonge
References 311
Index 335
Tables
Table 1.1 Results of general elections, 1997–2005 26
Table 4.1 Modelling Liberal Democrat voting in 2005 68
Table 5.1 Stakeholders responding to consultation on the
future of PSD 88
Table 7.1 Key New Labour health policies 110
Table 9.1 Comparative capitalism index scores, 1997–2006 137
Table 9.2 Comparative economic performance, 1997–2007 144
Table 14.1 Labour’s 1997 manifesto pledges concerning
‘Good Local Government’ 206
Table 14.2 Measures of local government scale and fiscal
centralisation 210
Table 20.1 Ministerial Committee Structures for EU
policy since 1997 294
ix