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A landmark history of the men and women who have defined the UK's role in the modern world - and what makes them special - by a seasoned political journalist.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Theresa May, and Donald Trump: each had different motivations, methods, and paths, but they all sought the highest office. And yet when they reached their goal, they often found that the power they had imagined was illusory. Their sweeping visions of reform faltered. They faced bureaucratic obstructions, but often the biggest obstruction was their own character. However, their personalities could help them as much as hurt them. Arguably the most successful of them, LBJ showed little indication that he supported what he is best known for - the Civil Rights Act - but his grit, resolve, and brute political skill saw him bend Congress to his will. David Runciman tackles the limitations of high office and how the personal histories of those who achieved the very pinnacles of power helped to define their successes and failures in office. These portraits show what characters are most effective in these offices. Could this be a blueprint for good and effective leadership in an age lacking good leaders?
Over 300 years, fifty-seven individuals have held the office of British Prime Minister - who have been the best and worst?
This book looks at the ways in which prime ministers manage and fail to manage their public communication. A timely examination of the ways in which prime ministers manage and fail to manage their public communication. Original in scope, covering political rumours, political cartoons and capital cities, in addition to more familiar topics. Sets contemporary analysis of Downing Street press secretaries, media barons and press conferences in fuller historical context than usual. Draws on public records, private papers and interviews by the author dating back to the 1960s.
Britain has one of the oldest and most developed democracies on earth. It is admired and copied the world over. Yet at home British politics is frequently viewed with a mixture of derision and contempt. Why? Our democratic system may be mature but the politicians we elect and the media we rely on to tell us what they are up to often behave like difficult teenagers, calling each other names, arguing for the sake of argument and pointing the finger of blame rather than accepting responsibility. Little wonder that the public switches off, tired of all the racket and fed up with the lot of them. How did we get into this sorry state, or was it ever thus? With first-hand experience of the worlds of both journalism and politics, Lance Price looks back over almost a century of battles between the media and our political leaders to find out who is to blame. He exposes liars in Downing Street and scoundrels in Fleet Street, bullies and megalomaniacs in both. There are many wiser heads, too, who see the madness and try to find a better way of doing things. Yet are all in pursuit of the same objective? Power. They want power over each other and power over the rest of us. It is a battle without end and too often the truth is the first casualty. Where Power Liesis the story of how powerful men and women have tried for generations to twist the facts to their own ends. It puts the struggle for supremacy between journalists and politicians into perspective. And it offers a glimmer of hope for a future in which both sides grow up, learn to respect each other and trust the rest of us with that most precious of all commodities, the truth.
This book is concerned with a large question in one small, but highly problematic case: how can a prime minister establish control and coordination across his or her government? The Greek system of government sustains a 'paradox of power' at its very core. The Constitution provides the prime minister with extensive and often unchecked powers. Yet, the operational structures, processes and resources around the prime minister undermine their power to manage the government. Through a study of all main premierships between 1974 and 2009, Prime Ministers in Greece argues that the Greek prime minister has been 'an emperor without clothes'. The costs of this paradox included the inability to achieve key policy objectives under successive governments and a fragmented system of governance that provided the backdrop to Greece's economic meltdown in 2010. Building on an unprecedented range of interviews and archival material, Featherstone and Papadimitriou set out to explore how this paradox has been sustained. They conclude with the Greek system meeting its 'nemesis': the arrival of the close supervision of its government by the 'Troika' - the representatives of Greece's creditors. The debt crisis challenged taboos and forced a self-reflection. It remains unclear, however, whether either the external strategy or the domestic response is likely to be sufficient to make the Greek system of governance 'fit for purpose'.
This book is about presidents in parliamentary systems. One commonly recurring political debate within parliamentary systems is over whether or not the public should directly elect the head of state. Despite the importance of this topic in practical politics, political scientists have offered little empirical evidence, yet made bold assumptions about the consequences of popular elections for heads of state. A common argument is that direct elections enhance presidents' legitimacythereby increasing their activism and encouraging authoritarian tendencies. Another popular assumption is that direct presidential elections are more heavily contested and partisan, polarizing and dividing political elites and the electorate. Proponents of direct elections argue that such electionswill help decrease voter alienation and apathy. This book challenges the conventional wisdom. Using both quantitative and qualitative empirical evidence from democratic systems across the world, this book demonstrates that compared to indirect selection methods, direct elections do not yield more active and contentious presidents, do not polarize political elites or society, and do not remedy political apathy. Rather, presidential activism in both "semi-presidential" and "pure parliamentary"systems is shaped by political opportunity framework - the institutional strength and partisan composition of both parliament and government. Further, because holding the presidency provides parties with an electoral asset, direct and indirect presidential elections can be equally contentious andpolarizing. Last, but not least, rather than decreasing apathy, direct election is associated with increased voter fatigue and decreased turnout in parliamentary elections by about seven percentage points.
A study of prime ministerial leadership in Britain and Australia. Tony Blair and John Howard were election winning leaders in two similar countries. They succeeded in dominating politics for over 10 years, but both fell dramatically from office. This book asks how these prime ministers established such predominant positions.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century prime ministers loom larger in the consciousness of their nations than perhaps in any previous era. But how well do we really understand the variables of prime-ministerial performance, and, specifically, why some prime ministers apparently flourish in the role while others wither? This study examines how prime ministers perform as leaders of their governments, parties, and nations. It offers new ways of thinking about prime-ministerial power and leadership, and systematic empirical studies of prime-ministerial leadership practices in four Westminster democracies: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The volume features contributions from leading political scientists from all of these countries and is organised into three major sections: understanding power in prime-ministerial performance, prime ministers and their parties, and evaluating prime-ministerial performance. Through its collaborative and multifaceted approach the volume demonstrates that there are no hard and fast propositions or rules of thumb to capture what it is that makes us think of some prime ministers as so much more effective than others. Instead it highlights the importance for students of executive government to grasp the contingent interplay between personal, institutional, and contextual factors in understanding and evaluating prime-ministerial performance.