Module Content and Indicative Topics
This module will introduce you to the structure of the British political system and the functioning of British politics in practice. We will start by exploring the social foundations of politics in the UK, looking at the roles of various national identities and of class, gender, and ethnicity. We will also explore the main institutions and players in the UK system, setting these within a comparative context. And we will seek to understand how the various parts of the system interact with each other in determining the character of the democratic process and the nature of policy outcomes.
The module has a contemporary and practical flavour, taking full account of recent developments, including those related to Brexit and Covid-19, and using case studies and official documents to illustrate the roles of different actors in policy development. One key aim of the module is to help you bridge between what you can learn from the scholarly literature and what is happening in the real world of politics around you.
Some students taking the module will already be deeply engaged with British politics, while others will have no background in the subject. All are welcome: we will all learn from this range of different perspectives.
The module will cover the following topics, which may be subject to variation depending on real-world developments in British politics and the interests of the class:
• What is the ‘UK’? What is ‘British’?
• Class and Voting
• Gender
• The Constitutional Framework
• Parliament
• Government
• The Judiciary
• The EU in British Politics
• The Form and Future of the Union
• How Well Does the System Work?
The module runs separately in both Term 1 and Term 2. The topics are the same in each term, subject to variation caused by real-world developments.
Teaching Delivery
The module is taught through ten lectures and ten seminars. In preparation for each seminar, you will be expected to read and reflect on assigned texts and complete a short groupwork task. Seminars will be highly interactive: your ideas and questions will be important.
Objectives
By the end of the module, you should:
1. be familiar with the building blocks and functioning of the contemporary British political system, and understand how that system is situated in comparative context
2. be able to critically assess the operation of the system, citing evidence and the arguments of key commentators
3. understand the main influences on policy-making within the British context and how these interact with each other
4. be able to bridge between what can be learnt from the scholarly literature and what is happening in the real world of politics, and reflect critically on how each can enrich understandings derived from the other
5. be able to conduct and communicate a cogent, structured analysis of an empirical question, drawing appropriately on both theory and evidence.
Recommended Reading
Given that students taking this module have very diverse levels of prior engagement with British politics, there is not a single set of recommended readings for all. Rather, we encourage you to think about how you can best engage with real-world British politics in a way that you have not done before.
If you have no background in British politics (you have never studied it, never followed it in the news, and perhaps never lived before in the UK), then it will be important for you to start getting familiar with how British politics works and feels. You might, for example:
• start reading the BBC News website each day, focusing particularly on stories about UK politics
• watch parliamentary proceedings on the UK Parliament website (note that most debates are very low-octane affairs; if you want to see moments of parliamentary drama, you might search on YouTube for great parliamentary speeches, and then click on further videos that look interesting)
To the extent that you already know about British politics, you might do some of the following:
• read a newspaper or political magazine that you wouldn’t normally read – particularly one with a different political perspective from what you normally read; newspapers include the Guardian, Telegraph, Times, and Financial Times; magazines include the Spectator, New Stateman, and Economist; note that many of these require a subscription, but you can access most of their content through the UCL Library
• read Anthony King’s Who Governs Britain? (Pelican Books, 2015); this isn’t available online, but is the best short introduction to British politics – though notice that it was written before the Brexit referendum
• read Tony Wright’s British Politics: A Very Short Introduction, 3rd edition (Oxford University Press, 2020); this is available for purchase as a book or e-book; be sure to get the 3rd edition!
• go to the British Politics section of a good (online or physical) bookshop, have a good browse, find something that really interests you, and read that.