Author(s): Randall NJ
Abstract: This chapter explores contending interpretations of the dynamics of ideological change in the Labour Party. After outlining and critiquing existing theories of ideological change it proposes an alternative critical realist interpretation of these processes.
Notes: The chapter represents perhaps the first comprehensive attempt to draw together and critique theories of ideological change in the Labour Party. It addresses literatures on ideological change in political parties in general, in social democratic parties and in relation to the Labour Party itself. These varied literatures are given a distinctive categorisation of materialist, ideational, electoral, institutional or hybrid. It is here that I would make the claim for the rigour of the piece. The remainder of the chapter argues that the defects of these existing approaches, particularly the tension between structure and agency in the process of ideological change, is best resolved by the author's own critical realist interpretation of ideological revisionism. It is here that the chapter's best claims for originality lie.
Keywords: Labour Party, ideological change, New Labour, Old Labour, social democracy, structure and agency
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Dr Nick Randall
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