TY - JOUR
T1 - The british political tradition and the material-ideational debate
AU - MARSH, David
AU - Hall, Matthew
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2015.
PY - 2016/2/1
Y1 - 2016/2/1
N2 - Recently there has been a revival of interest in debates about the British political tradition. In part, this is a reflection of the 'ideational turn' in Anglophone comparative politics. However, this ideational turn immediately raises two of the most important meta-theoretical debates in social science; the relationships between institutions and ideas and the material and the ideational. In our view, anyone who suggests that political traditions shape political outcomes has to take a position on these debates, although they are rarely addressed. This article seeks to address that omission. We argue that, while the predominant ideas about democracy and political practice in the UK, what we term the British Political Tradition, do affect the institutions and processes of government, these ideas exist in a dialectical relationship with those institutions and, more broadly, with the material context within which the tradition, and indeed the institutions, operate(s).
AB - Recently there has been a revival of interest in debates about the British political tradition. In part, this is a reflection of the 'ideational turn' in Anglophone comparative politics. However, this ideational turn immediately raises two of the most important meta-theoretical debates in social science; the relationships between institutions and ideas and the material and the ideational. In our view, anyone who suggests that political traditions shape political outcomes has to take a position on these debates, although they are rarely addressed. This article seeks to address that omission. We argue that, while the predominant ideas about democracy and political practice in the UK, what we term the British Political Tradition, do affect the institutions and processes of government, these ideas exist in a dialectical relationship with those institutions and, more broadly, with the material context within which the tradition, and indeed the institutions, operate(s).
KW - British politics
KW - Material relations
KW - Political traditions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84958879504&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1467-856X.12077
DO - 10.1111/1467-856X.12077
M3 - Article
SN - 1369-1481
VL - 18
SP - 125
EP - 142
JO - The British Journal of Politics and International Relations
JF - The British Journal of Politics and International Relations
IS - 1
ER -