British Journal of Politics & International Relations最新文献

What are the ethics of foreign policy? How do foreign policymakers decide between competing ethics? Could policymakers make more ethical decisions? These questions achieved prominence in the UK context when Robin Cook—then Foreign Secretary—announced in 1997 that British foreign policy should have an ‘ethical dimension’. Subsequent commentary on New Labour's foreign policy would often use the phrase ‘ethical foreign policy’ to disparage the moralistic rhetoric of Tony Blair and Robin Cook. This article utilises interviews with former Foreign Secretaries and Ministers of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to explore why ethics should be so controversial in British foreign policy discourse. Using Mark Bevir's concepts of the ‘traditions’ and ‘dilemmas’ of governance, it conducts an interpretivist analysis of this data; aiming to understand how policymakers posit themselves as ethical agents, define what it means to be ethical, and rationalise their own ethical judgments in policymaking.

From 1997 onwards the FCO was reshaped by New Labour. The removal of responsibility for overseas aid to a new Department of International Development (DFID) was perhaps the most dramatic change. Successive cuts to the FCO budget and the progressive centralization of foreign-policy decision-making in Number 10 also had their effects, as did a series of government-directed reforms to recruitment practices. In an effort to make it more accountable to the public, the FCO was also bound by Public Service Agreements specifying targets for service delivery, publish Strategy Reports and mission statements, and Annual Departmental Reports setting benchmarks for performance. Together these reforms were designed to transform the FCO‘s culture, replacing inherited traditions of thought and practice with new ones believed better suited to contemporary world politics. This paper examines these inherited and new traditions, as well as the dilemmas they addressed.

This article advances the interpretivist perspective on British foreign policy by studying Tony Blair's difficult encounter with the Eurosceptic tradition in Britain, popularized by Margaret Thatcher from the late 1980s. Using discourse data taken from key foreign policy speeches by the two leaders across their periods in office, the article investigates the problems Blair and his New Labour team faced when trying to justify and legitimize Britain's more constructive approach to the European Union from 1997. The article argues that Blair failed to modernize public attitudes and build support behind a Europeanist consensus in Britain because, contrary to the reputations they have built up over the years, the two leaders’ webs of belief about the British in Europe were remarkably similar. Blair reworked rather than undermined core themes within the British Eurosceptic tradition.

The New Labour governments viewed Iran as one of their most significant foreign policy challenges. This article argues that they drew heavily on Labour traditions of international order, interests and community in framing and understanding the kinds of threat presented by Iran, as well as in seeking policy responses to meet them. Iran presented a serious challenge to the authority of international organisations and regional and global non-proliferation regimes, all of which were cherished within Labour's internationalist traditions. UK policy towards Iran remained consistent with these internationalist traditions through successive iterations, including support for international institutions, diplomatic engagement and multilateral sanctions. Yet the Blair and Brown governments also faced a mounting policy dilemma by which the application of cherished internationalist traditions failed to achieve desired results, while Iranian centrifuges continued spinning.

An interpretive approach to foreign policy explains the beliefs of actors and the meanings of their actions by locating them in their respective historical traditions and in response to particular dilemmas. This article explains how the British Press constructs ‘secularism’ as a requirement for Turkey's potential future membership in the European Union (EU) as a response to the rise of the Islamically-identified Justice and Development Party (AKP). By emphasizing Turkey's secularism as a precondition for entry into the EU, the press effects a significant departure from the dominant British foreign policy traditions with respect to Turkey and the EU, which have highlighted considerations of material benefits. These arguments are pursued through a close analysis of how the British Press covered the attempted election of the country's next president in 2007 and the resulting conflict.

Since the United Kingdom began its devolution programme in 1999 governments operating at four different territorial scales—embracing the EU, the UK, the national and the local—have played a part in the governance of Wales. Multi-level governance of this type can be likened to a layer cake, in which each government operates in its own distinct jurisdiction, or to a marble cake in which governments have overlapping and interlaced responsibilities. Drawing on a survey that asked senior officers in Welsh local government to rate the impact of different levels of government, this article finds support for both interpretations of multi-level governance. Although largely discredited as a description of American federalism, the layer cake simile may have a new lease of life in the analysis of Europe's devolved nations and regions.

Echoing Plato's banishment of artists, mainstream political scientists have excluded serious consideration of art from their discipline. Yet, there are grounds for believing that it can help address what Gerry Stoker suggests is one of social science's greatest failings: understanding ‘what politics means to citizens’. This study of New Labour's television dramatization suggests it can help political scientists better appreciate the dynamics underpinning the much-noted decline of popular trust in representative politics. It looks at the reasons for the narrowing of the public's picture of politics by focusing on the changing production context for television drama during the New Labour period, something that led it to emphasise ‘sleaze’. The article suggests such dramas consequently helped make more credible the public's pre-existing prejudices about what they supposed was the corrupt nature of Britain's political class.

This article argues that the Beatles were instrumental in bringing together the hitherto divergent and mutually uncomprehending realms of politics and pop. Though not innovative political theorists, the Beatles were inventive political strategists who rehearsed virtually every technique subsequently used by politicised musicians. They practised consciousness-raising, lobbying, patronage, abstentionism and civil disobedience. They founded utopian institutions and considered the relative merits of anarchy, democracy and revolutionary socialism. The multitude of political strategies adopted by the Beatles testified to their difficulties in finding one congruent with their outlook and temperament. Furthermore, the anti-authoritarianism which formed the one consistent aspect of their political worldview was simplistic and their solutions were correspondingly unrealistic. They nevertheless did much to legitimise pop music as a means of political expression, to devise organisational structures to support such political activity and to politicise those who produced and consumed pop.

Baha Mousa died in September 2003 in British Army custody in Basra. A public inquiry reported in September 2011, and allows for the first assessment of British military detention and interrogation policy in the War on Terror. This article explains the Inquiry's remit and findings, showing how the failure to institutionalise a ban on interrogation methods in 1972 led to them re-appearing in 2003. Poor policy, doctrine and training meant soldiers were ill prepared for dealing with detainees when Iraq was invaded in 2003. The article assesses the army's efforts to learn from the mistakes of Iraq, including reforms to policy, doctrine and training on interrogation and detention. The article's final part assesses the limitations to these reforms in practice in Afghanistan, arguing that there are still important areas demanding improvement to prevent future abuses.