Changing Parties

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. An Anthropological Approach to “Conventional Politics”

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 1-24

3. Why Do People Attend Conferences?

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 25-43

4. Imagined Communities

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 44-70

5. Constructing Leadership and Authority

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 71-93

6. Setting the Agenda

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 94-120

7. Making the News

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 121-143

8. The Public Performance

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 144-166

9. The Discourse of Deliberative Democracy

   • Florence Faucher-King

   Pages 167-190

10. Direct Democracy: The Vote as Fetish

    • Florence Faucher-King

    Pages 191-213

11. Fringe Benefits: Dissent vs Commercialisation

    • Florence Faucher-King

    Pages 214-235

12. Conclusion — Politics in the Age of the Individual

    • Florence Faucher-King

    Pages 236-245

13. Back Matter

    Pages 246-315

    PDF

Party conferences are central to the life of political parties. They contribute to setting policy agendas, developing policy options, legitimizing policy choices, building party cohesion, motivating activists and publicizing party activities to the wider public. An analysis of their evolution in Britain helps us understand the ways in which political parties change. This book combines anthropological methods with political science to analyze changing power relationships, party organizations and political culture in British political parties: Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, The Greens.

• anthropology
• democracy
• Policy
• Political Parties
• political science
• British Politics

' Changing parties is a welcome in-depth study of the transformation of the British party conferences...This is a thoroughly-researched book which provides a welcome insight into the transformation of these annual seaside gatherings and the changes within British political parties in the 1990s; it is a welcome addition to the study of political parties and more generally to British political ethnography'. - James Stanyer, Political Studies Review

FLORENCE FAUCHER-KING is a Professor at the CEVIPOF in Sciences Po, Paris, France, where she teaches and researches. Her interests include political parties, new social movements and green politics. She has previously taught at Stirling University and she is the author of Les Habits Verts de la Politique (1999).

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