1st Edition

Party, Parliament and Personality Essays Presented to Hugh Berrington

By Peter Jones Copyright 1995

    This is a collection of essays on political psychology commissioned to commemorate the retirement of Hugh Berrington and to celebrate his contribution to the field, the authors comprise some of the best known names in Political Science in the UK, including Ivor Crewe, Vincent Wright, David Hine and Iain McLean. The central focus of the volume is British Politics, but the book also contains a number of comparative chapters including David Hine's on the political psychology of corruption, which focuses on Italy. The book also contains theoretical chapters, including Albert Weale's on the central nature of disagreement in democratic politics. The bulk of the chapters are concerned with the psychology of individual political actors, but there is also a chapter on the psychology of individual political theorists, which focuses on Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

    Introduction 2 Hugh Berrington: a profile and an appreciation 3 Democracy and disagreement 4 The awkward art of reconciliation 5 Loyalists and defectors: the SDP breakaway from the parliamentary Labour Party 1981–2 6 ‘The poison’d chalice’: the European issue in British party Politics 7 The industrial privatisation programmes of Britain and France: the impact of political and institutional factors 8 Backbench opinion revisited 9 Members of Parliament and issues of conscience 10 Parliamentary sovereignty and public opinion 11 Party, personality and law: the political culture of Italian Corruption 12 Psychology and political theory: does personality make a difference?

    Biography

    Peter Jones is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Newcastle. He is the author of Rights and has also written on liberalism, toleration, democracy and social policy. He is currently working on political strategies for dealing with diversities of belief and culture.