Michael Kenny

Review Article: Isaiah Berlin's Contribution to Modern Political Theory

Three recent studies of Isaiah Berlins moral and political thought stress the significance of value pluralism for his oeuvre. Whilst this emphasis enables us to dispense with some rather misleading characterizations of Berlins liberalism, it is less apparent that his political thought can be successfully grounded within moral pluralism. Indeed his liberal beliefs sit rather more awkwardly within this ideological family than is usually assumed. Scholars seeking to revive Berlins value pluralism in relation to contemporary challenges, such as multiculturalism, have not successfully demonstrated the utility of his thinking in relation to such problems, and have developed their arguments by downplaying the geo-political contexts which shaped his intellectual purposes. Yet his critics have neglected the fertility and range of his thought, aspects of which remain pertinent for those studying political thought in general and liberalism in particular.

Public intellectuals and the question of British decline

This article proposes a refocusing of the debate on British decline, to concentrate attention on declinism rather than on historical decline itself. In particular, it addresses the ways in which intellectuals have perceived, diagnosed and proposed remedies for decline. Public intellectuals have exerted significant influence on British politics in ways not usually acknowledged in scholarly analysis. We explore three key themes in intellectual declinism: ideology, methodology and national identity. Declinism has proved rhetorically enriching to intellectuals of a variety of ideological hues, the latter drawing on a paradoxically shared reservoir of cultural and symbolic resources. Declinist intellectuals have influentially framed arguments about the English nation, the British state and the supposedly exceptional British developmental experience.

Global civil society: a liberal-republican argument

This article highlights two of the most influential normative perspectives upon the ethical character of global civil society in Anglo-American political thought. These are considered under the headings of liberal cosmopolitanism and subalternist radicalism. Within international political theory, the main alternative to cosmopolitan arguments is usually regarded as provided by moral theories that invoke the continuing significance of national boundaries in relation to political community. The rivalry between cosmopolitan convictions and nationalist ethics is deeply entrenched within Anglo-American thinking. As a result, international political theory seems to throw up a fundamentally antinomian choice: either we possess overriding duties and obligations to others, irrespective of our nationhood; or the borders of a settled nation-state substantially define our sense of political identity and justify a marked ethical partiality towards our fellow nationals. Such is the hold of this antinomy upon the Western political imagination, it seems, that alternative conceptions of the relationship between territory, community and ethicality have been neglected or dismissed as unduly heterodox. Given the continuing purchase of this dualistic approach on international political ethics, the recovery and normative evaluation of various alternatives is a task of some intellectual importance.

The Case for Disciplinary History: Political Studies in the 1950s and 1960s1

This article proposes a greater emphasis upon the intellectual history of political studies in the UK. The limitations of conventional understandings of the disciplinary past are considered in relation to the 1950s and 1960s. The author seeks to challenge contemporary views of this period in two respects. First, he shows how the key institutions of the emergent discipline were formed for highly contingent reasons, and how they were underpinned by a disciplinary ethos that was inherited from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Second, he draws attention to an important, and neglected, shift in disciplinary self-understanding in the late 1950s and 1960s, as figures like W. J. M. Mackenzie blended aspects of the dominant approach to political inquiry with newer ideas, thus generating an influential conception of a distinctively British political science.

Englishness Politicised?: Unpicking the Normative Implications of the McKay Commission

Research Highlights and Abstract This article Analyses a major shift in elite-political perceptions of the national identity of the English and current debates on Englishness. Is the first major evaluation of the arguments and implications of the McKay Commission. Gives a distinctive overview of academic and political debates about Englishness which assesses both sociological and political-science contributions and data, and argues the case for their better integration. Provides an original assessment of the implications of debates about Englishness for constitutional debates about the UK and normative arguments about national representation within the UK legislature This article draws attention to signs of an emerging consensus within British politics about the significance of recent shifts in the national identity favoured by the English. It focuses on the nature and assumptions of this emergent perspective, and critically evaluates the prevalent understanding of the ‘politicisation’ of Englishness and the different kinds of constitutional and normative argument that have become prominent in response to the resurgence of this form of identity. Drawing upon a bevy of recent social-scientific studies of the qualitative dimensions of Englishness, I make the case for a different, interpretive approach to ‘politicisation’, which reflects a richer and broader understanding of the causes and implications of the renewal of English nationhood. The article then explores the findings and underpinning arguments of one particular expression of this new consensus about the politicisation of English identity—the report published by the McKay Commission in March 2013. Attention is drawn to the particular blend of arguments that undergird its proposals for reform in relation to the West Lothian issue. Tensions between some of its main normative claims are, it is suggested, symptomatic of a deeper set of dilemmas facing the UK policy community.

The Political Theory of Recognition: The Case of the ‘White Working Class’

This article explores the normative dimensions of a growing political focus upon the grievances of the white working class. It asks whether these can be considered as forms of recognition claim, rather than framed simply as expressions of resentment. I assess the character of three different forms of ‘recognition’ that are invoked in the rhetoric which this group has attracted—recognition as (i) liberal-egalitarian restitution; (ii) political inclusion; and (iii) cultural politics. And I observe the difficulties and dangers of pursuing the third of these strategies, while pointing to the potential significance for liberals of the first two. I conclude by alluding to the difficulties that the political theory of recognition faces from the proliferation of claims to recognition among groups in contemporary democratic society.

The Genesis of English Nationalism

POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2016 E nglish nationalism is best understood as a bundle of sentiments and convictions which are closely aligned to Euroscepticism, though not in any straightforward way a cause of anti-EU feeling. A stronger sense of Englishness represents both a manifestation of, and vehicle for, a gathering seam of political disenchantment. Perhaps the most important role played by English nationalism in the EU referendum was in relation to the terms and tenor of the campaign that led up to the vote. English nationalism primed audiences for some of the main rhetorical gambits of the ‘Leave’ campaign, and helped engender a sense of conviction and a greater commonality of outlook for groups of voters increasingly disenchanted with the political mainstream. Without the cadences, rhetorical flourishes and mental frameworks associated with a loose form of English nationalism, the referendum campaign would have felt and sounded very different. Various polls conducted during recent The Genesis of English Nationalism

The ‘Politicisation’ of Englishness: Towards a Framework for Political Analysis

The constitutional position of England has become the subject of intense focus following the decision by the Conservative Party to table the question of English devolution in the immediate aftermath of the Scottish Referendum. Various pundits have argued that English nationalism has become a major factor in British politics and a source of deepening territorial tension. Academic commentators have been slower to interrogate the nature and implications of these assertions and, despite the ubiquity of references to English interests and anxieties in political discourse, there is a much less extensive analytical literature on the make-up and political dimensions of the national identity of the largest people of the United Kingdom. How, then, should the political status and character of the English identity be understood and studied? Notions of a politicised Englishness reflect various, often contentious, judgements of both interpretive and empirical kinds. This article highlights the different ways in which ‘politicisation’ in this context has been characterised, and shows that each of these established perspectives yields a different sort of political response and policy approach. I finish with some observations about how politicisation might be conceptualised, and identify the elements of a more comprehensive and fluid understanding of this phenomenon.

Britain's Anti-Intellectual Intellectuals: Thoughts on Stefan Collini's "Absent Minds"

This weighty volume offers a multilayered analysis and sharp critique of the largely unquestioned orthodoxy that intellectuals have either been absent from,or have ceased to be a presence within, British culture and public life. It deserves and rewards reading for many different reasons. I restrict myself at the outset of this piece to the mention of three that may establish its pertinence for the academic communities served by Political Studies.

History and Dissent: Bernard Crick's The American Science of Politics

This article revisits the critique of political science outlined in Bernard Cricks (1959) The American Science of Politics. Although this work inspired a number of subsequent critics of the discipline and survives in the footnotes of many historical accounts of political science, its contents are now largely overlooked or forgotten. Having reconstructed its main arguments, I explore the mixed critical response this work elicited on publication, and then seek to explain why its influence was so short-lived. An important reason for its inability to deflect the discipline from its chosen course lies in the very distinctive republican–liberal project that guided Cricks thinking in these years. A critical reengagement with this text is worthwhile, I argue, both because it illustrates the importance of the migration of ideas and thinkers to the tradition of political science critique, and because Crick provides a strikingly different kind of argument for methodological pluralism and political relevance than that which is offered today by critics of political science.