This student text brings together and discusses different principles and ideas that are used in the description of policy making and administration in Britain. These include Collective Responsibility, Individual Ministerial Responsibility, Arms Lenght Control, Organisation by Function, Judicial Review of Administration. The problem for those advancing these concepts and those receiving them, is that there is a massive gap between theory and practice. Grant Jordan reassesses the tool kit of terms to help students achieve a more practical understanding of modern British administration.

This student text brings together and discusses different principles and ideas that are used in the description of policy making and administration in Britain. These include Collective Responsibility, Individual Ministerial Responsibility, Arms Lenght Control, Organisation by Function, Judicial Review of Administration. The problem for those advancing these concepts and those receiving them, is that there is a massive gap between theory and practice. Grant Jordan reassesses the tool kit of terms to help students achieve a more practical understanding of modern British administration.

The global phenomenon of decolonization was born in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The First Wave of Decolonization is the first volume in any language to describe and analyze the scope and meanings of decolonization during this formative period. It demonstrates that the pioneers of decolonization were not twentieth-century Frenchmen or Algerians but nineteenth-century Peruvians and Colombians. In doing so, it vastly expands the horizons of decolonization, conventionally understood to be a post-war development emanating from Europe. The result is a provocative, new understanding of the global history of decolonization.

This guide is an updated version of Mandy Banton's indispensable introduction to the records of British government departments responsible for the administration of colonial affairs, and now held in The National Archives of the United Kingdom. It covers the period from about 1801 to 1966. It has been planned as a user-friendly guide concentrating on the organisation of the records, the information they are likely to provide and how to use the contemporary finding aids. It also provides an outline of the expansion of the British empire during the period and discusses the organisation of colonial governments.

The British constitution is regarded as unique among the constitutions of the world. What are the main characteristics of Britain's peculiar constitutional arrangements? How has the British constitution altered in response to the changing nature of its state - from England, to Britain, to the United Kingdom? What impact has the UK's developing relations with the European Union caused? These are some of the questions that Martin Loughlin addresses in this Very Short Introduction. As a constitution, it is one that has grown organically in response to changes in the economic, political, and social environment, and which is not contained in a single authoritative text. By considering the nature and authority of the current British constitution, and placing it in the context of others, Loughlin considers how the traditional idea of a constitution came to be retained, what problems have been generated as a result of adapting a traditional approach in a modern political world, looking at what the future prospects for the British constitution are. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Britain's famous overseas civil services - the Colonial Administrative Service, the Indian Civil Service and the Sudan Political Service - no longer exist as a major and sought-after career for Britain's graduates. In this detailed study the history of each service is presented within the framework of the need to administer an expanding empire. Close attention is paid to the methods of recruitment and training and to the socio-educational background of the overseas administrators as well as to the nature of their work. The prestigious incumbents of Government House are revealingly examined. The impact of decolonisation on overseas officials and the kinds of 'second careers' which they took up are documented. This authoritative narrative history is enlivened by recourse to Service lore and anecdotes.

“Hamburger argues persuasively that America has overlaid its constitutional system with a form of governance that is both alien and dangerous.” —Law and Politics Book Review While the federal government traditionally could constrain liberty only through acts of Congress and the courts, the executive branch has increasingly come to control Americans through its own administrative rules and adjudication, thus raising disturbing questions about the effect of this sort of state power on American government and society. With Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, Philip Hamburger answers this question in the affirmative, offering a revisionist account of administrative law. Rather than accepting it as a novel power necessitated by modern society, he locates its origins in the medieval and early modern English tradition of royal prerogative. Then he traces resistance to administrative law from the Middle Ages to the present. Medieval parliaments periodically tried to confine the Crown to governing through regular law, but the most effective response was the seventeenth-century development of English constitutional law, which concluded that the government could rule only through the law of the land and the courts, not through administrative edicts. Although the US Constitution pursued this conclusion even more vigorously, administrative power reemerged in the Progressive and New Deal Eras. Since then, Hamburger argues, administrative law has returned American government and society to precisely the sort of consolidated or absolute power that the US Constitution—and constitutions in general—were designed to prevent. With a clear yet many-layered argument that draws on history, law, and legal thought, Is Administrative Law Unlawful? reveals administrative law to be not a benign, natural outgrowth of contemporary government but a pernicious—and profoundly unlawful—return to dangerous pre-constitutional absolutism.