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Books for Teaching British Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
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To review books introducing students to the British political system will not strike everyone as an edifying experience even when, as here, the task includes only some of many available textbooks plus a few supplemental works. Focusing on textbooks, despite their often admirable scholarship, reflects primarily our concern as teachers. My concern comes from almost forty years of teaching British politics in American classrooms. What I look for in a text probably differs from expectations of teachers in Britain. But I may also evaluate such books differently from American colleagues who teach British politics only within a broader and more popular course covering several nations. I am among the modest number of American professors devoting an entire semester to British subject-matter, and I can only try to take into account other teaching experiences when I describe the books at hand.
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References
1 The small scale of the British enterprise in political science through the 1950s is clearly evident in Chester, Norman, ‘Political Studies in Britain: Recollections and Comments’, Political Studies, XXIII (1975), 151–64, p. 161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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3 SirJennings, Ivor, Cabinet Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936).Google Scholar
4 Muir, Ramsay, How Britain is Governed (New York: Richard R. Smith, 1930).Google Scholar The book was evidently first published in Britain.
5 Greaves, H. R. G., The British Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1941)Google Scholar, published in Britain by Allen & Unwin, 1938.
6 Laski, Harold J., Parliamentary Government in England (New York: Viking, 1938), published in Britain by Allen & Unwin, 1938.Google Scholar
7 Gooch, Robert K., The Government of England (New York: Van Nostrand, 1937).Google Scholar There were, I believe, one or more other interwar American-authored texts comparable to Gooch's.
8 Ogg, Frederic Austin, English Government and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1929, 1936).Google Scholar A most distinguished American-produced predecessor of Ogg's book was the two-volume work by Lowell, A. Lawrence, The Government of England (New York: Macmillan, 1908).Google Scholar Despite its length, it might have served as a text in the absence of works designed primarily for the purpose.
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10 Harrison, Wilfrid, The Government of Britain (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1948).Google Scholar Later editions were published in the 1950s.
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12 I have no full count of how many American political science departments offer an exclusively British politics course for undergraduates. Among five large mid-western state universities whose catalogues I looked at, two listed such a course.
13 Beer, Samuel H.. The British Political System (New York: Random House, 1974).Google Scholar Its 243 pages are reprinted as a paperback from Beer, Samuel H. and Ulam, Adam B., eds, The Major Political Systems of Europe (New York: Random House, 1973).Google Scholar
14 Dragnich, Alex N. and Rasmussen, Jorgen S., Major European Governments (Chicago: Dorsey, 1986).Google Scholar Rasmussen is a well-known specialist on British politics and is the executive secretary of the British Politics Group, which serves American academics interested in Britain.
15 Bailey, Sydney D., British Parliamentary Democracy (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1958Google Scholar; 1978 reprint of 1971 edition still available); Moodie, Graeme C., The Government of Great Britain (New York: Crowell, 1961 and later editions)Google Scholar; and Rose, Richard, Politics in England (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964)Google Scholar and in successive editions, including that of 1986 whose British publication in 1985 I shall note later.
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38 Beer, Samuel H., Modern British Politics: Parties and Pressure Groups in the Collectivist Age (New York: Norton, 1982).Google Scholar Earlier editions of this important book (going back to 1965) were published under slightly different titles in Britain and the United States.
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44 Borthwick, R. L. and Spence, J. E., British Politics in Perspective (New York: St. Martin's, 1984; Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
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