The evolution of 'new' Labour's European Policy : Europe as the 'New Jerusalem'

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2006

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Keser, Hasan

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British Labour Party’s attitudes and policies towards European integration have historically oscillated between varying degrees of support for concrete integration steps and obstinate opposition to it. A major and pronounced volte-face on European policy occurred after 1983 and the aim of this study is to locate the causes of this shift in European policy and its subsequent course under ‘New’ Labour period. The causes and motivations are searched within the general transformation of the party and they are assessed according to the changes in party’s ideology and its perceptions about the needs of British national political economy. The scope of the study covers the intersection area between intra/inter-party politics and political economy. On these areas, Neo-Marxist theories of state and Regulation Approach are utilised, as well as the classical political sociology models on party politics. An historical inquiry on party policy encompassing the post-war period has been undertaken. In a similar vein, in order to compare it on ideological grounds, other European social democratic-socialist party policies are analysed alongside the British Labour case. It is argued that party’s policy preferences are strongly influenced by and shaped according to the national socio-political institutional structure. The thesis comes to the conclusion that historical institutionalist analysis coupled with a ‘structural dependency to capital’ theory offers a highly plausible explanation for the evolution of Labour Party’s policy course on Europe, including the recent ‘New’ Labour period.

Subject Keywords

Socialism., Anarchism., Utopias., Communism.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12607578/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/16421

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

H. Keser, “ The evolution of ‘new’ Labour’s European Policy : Europe as the ‘New Jerusalem’,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2006.