Conservatism: A Philosophy of Inequality?
July 10, 2015
Conservatism is often described as a philosophy of inequality, Dean Blackburn writes. Whereas socialists and social democrats are concerned, above all else, with achieving egalitarian objectives, conservatives, it is argued, are committed to preserving disparities of wealth and status. In a recent article, which has been published by Political Studies (see link below), I challenge …
The Habsburg Empire and Italian Nationalism, 1815-66
October 23, 2014
The Habsburg Empire that was finally extinguished in 1918 was made up of numerous nationalities. The national sentiment that developed within the Empire’s various national groupings in the nineteenth century is usually seen as a force for division within that empire, leading first to the independence of Italy between 1859 and 1870, and ultimately to …
Strongbow: the Anglo-Normans in Ireland
October 25, 2013
The first intervention of the Normans into Irish affairs resulted from a bitter local feud that, in 1171, allowed Henry II to become the first English monarch to set foot on Irish soil. This moment was portrayed by historians and writers of the early twentieth-century Irish national movement as a pivotal one: the first step …
Public Opinion/Public Policy
September 6, 2013
According to Abraham Lincoln, “public opinion is everything.” A massive industry now exists to measure public opinion – organisations like YouGov, Gallup, and Ipsos MORI, as well as companies devoted to organising focus groups to test everything from instant soup to the policies of major political parties. And that is without mentioning informal (and misleading) …
The Chinese in Britain
August 5, 2013
In The Great Gatsby (1926), obscenely rich philistine Tom Buchanan obsesses over the latest racial theories, not least a book entitled The Rise of the Coloured Empires, by “this man Goddard.” This was a thinly-disguised reference to a popular work of 1920, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy by the American writer …
US Foreign Policy in the American Century and After
June 14, 2013
Two key arguments have dominated the historiography of international relations since 1945 – the last half of the “American century.” The first of these stresses that US foreign policy since that date has been guided mainly by economic interests, while the second supposes that the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the …
Angry white men?
May 1, 2013
Have you ever wondered why the political beneficiaries of the current crisis tend to be right-wing populist parties such as UKIP in Britain, the Tea Party in America, or the Five Star movement in Italy? With UKIP now contesting 73 % of seats in the local council elections in Britain on the 2nd May, as …
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