Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This chapter covers the processes and politics of constitutional refoundation and analyzes reflections on the need for a broader revival of civic and democratic values beyond the constitution. It draws on the experiences of other Westminster Model and Commonwealth democracies to consider how a new constitution for the United Kingdom might be adopted. It also examines what the process of constitution building might look like and what institutions should be responsible for negotiating and drafting the constitution. The chapter elaborates how the participants of policy making should be chosen, the process of final adoption of the agreed draft, and the scope at different stages of the process for both political consensus and public engagement. It claims that participants in a constitution-building process may be motivated by reason, interest, and passion in order to pursue their goals through a mixture of arguing and bargaining.
This chapter reviews the earliest Westminster Model constitutions that took unambiguously monarchical forms, namely those of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. It talks about the power that was vested in the Crown, which was an integral part of the legislature even in the post-war era. It also mentions former colonies that became independent from the British Empire and did not cease to be part of ‘Her Majesty’s dominions’ as they continued as Commonwealth realms with the functions of the Head of State being performed by a Governor-General nominally appointed by the Queen. The chapter explains how Ireland and Burma retained Westminster Model constitutions in republican guise, with a ceremonial figurehead president that take over the functions that would normally be performed by a Governor-General. It identifies Bangladesh, Dominica, India, Ireland, Malta, Samoa, and Trinidad & Tobago as current examples of Westminster Model republics.
This chapter diagnoses Britain’s constitutional crisis and sets it in historical context. It traces the decline and fall of the British constitution over the space of 80 years, from its Churchillian triumph, through new challenges it could not meet and reforms that were not equal to the task, to its current Johnsonian catastrophe. It also describes Britain’s current constitutional crisis as the final unravelling of what might be termed the ‘Hanoverian constitutional settlement’. The chapter mentions the Hanoverian monarchs who kept the system of constitutional settlement until it defined the constitutional order in which British democracy grew and flourished several decades later. It explains the constitutional nature of the Hanoverian constitutional settlement as it represented a strategic agreement between all then-relevant institutional, political, and social groups.
The chapter describes a written constitution as both a moral and legal document and as a charter of self-government that provides a covenantal statement of identity, purpose, and values. It discusses how a written constitution proclaims the highest aspirations and deepest sentiments of the community, affirming the common things that unite Britain as a res publica despite many differences of party, ideology, or interest. It also cites Westminster Model constitutions that express a ‘liberal-procedural’ constitutional order based upon democratic procedures, fundamental rights, and guarantees to minorities. The chapter points out that Many Westminster Model constitutions declare a country to be a democracy, such as the Constitution of Antigua & Barbuda that opens with the words, ‘Antigua and Barbuda shall be a unitary sovereign democratic State’. It discusses particular constitutional design choices that are likely to arise in the United Kingdom to cover foundational principles, rights, and religion.
This chapter emphasizes that a particular care must be taken by the judiciary to perform its functions properly and ensure that the mechanisms for the appointment of judges, the rules protecting their neutrality and independence, and the procedures for their removal from office are sufficiently robust. It recounts the practice in early Westminster Model constitutions wherein judicial appointments were made by the Crown and acted on the advice of the prime minister. It also examines the Ontario Judicial Appointments Board and the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board in Ireland that apply executive-centred appointment mechanisms. The chapter mentions that the Indian constitution sought to regularize the practice of informal consultations and put it upon a constitutional footing. It considers Article 124 of the Indian constitution, which states that judges of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president.
This chapter talks about Sir Ivor Jennings, who observed in the context of decolonization in the 1950s that one must first decide who are the people before one can decide how the people are to govern themselves. It proposes a constitutional renewal project that must recognize the United Kingdom as a complex ‘Union state’ made up of distinct nations. It also describes the United Kingdom as a messy amalgam of two kingdoms, a principality, and a dismembered province that were forged together by civil wars, bribery, and dynastic wrangling. The chapter looks at the geographical, cultural, historical, and demographic complexity of the polity being constituted that will determine much of its constitutional architecture even when fairly standard Westminster Model constitutionalism is applied. It illustrates India and Bangladesh, two countries whose constitutions are thoroughly Westminster influenced but show different design because of the demands of context.
This chapter focuses on Westminster Model constitutions around the world that prescribe the composition of parliament, such as the manner in which members are chosen, qualifications and disqualifications for being a member, and their terms of office. It highlights the functions that a parliament is expected to perform in a Westminster Model democracy by synthesizing several classic authorities, namely Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution. It also mentions Sir Ivor Jennings’ Parliament, which outlines seven main functions of parliament. The chapter explains how parliament in a Westminster Model democracy does not actively govern, but it does make and break governments. It examines the parliamentary duty to determine who will have the authority to make decisions or conditions on policy making.
This chapter delves into the privileges of parliament as an integral part of the Westminster System, going back to Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689. It lists freedom of speech, the immunity of members from legal liability for statements made in the House, and the freedom of each House to order its own affairs without interference by the Crown as the privileges of Parliament. It also refers to Westminster Model constitutions that replicate privileges in the parliament by directly specifying and enumerating them in the constitution, or by conferring on parliament the power to determine its own privileges. The chapter cites the Constitution of Trinidad & Tobago as a typical example that applies the privileges of the House of Commons. It discusses how the constitution gives parliament the power to prescribe the powers, privileges, and immunities of each House.
This chapter attempts to identify the deep constitutional crisis of the British body-politic and introduce a remedy in the form of new constitutional settlement founded upon a written constitution. It explains the ‘unwritten constitution’, which grew up over the centuries from a hotchpotch of statutes, judicial decisions, disputed conventions, and half-remembered traditions has reached the end of its useful life. It also emphasizes the revival of the British democracy through a written constitution, a supreme and fundamental law that is founded upon a broad political and societal consensus. The chapter reviews constitutional proposals that reflect the ‘Charter 88 agenda’, which has motivated constitutional reformers in Britain for the last three decades. It responds to the new constitutional crisis that was unanticipated by the reformers of the pre-1997 era.
This chapter provides answers to some common objections to the case for a new written constitution. It refers to the argument against written constitutions that state they are unnecessary or insufficient for a flourishing democratic state. It reviews cases where seemingly well-intentioned democratic written constitutions have failed and were unable to contain or withstand the forces of oligarchy or authoritarian populism. The chapter talks about the German Constitution of 1919 as the most notorious example of such a failed constitution, which ultimately could not save the Weimar Republic from Adolf Hitler and Nazi tyranny. It claims that many of the European constitutions of that era suffered a similar fate as inter-war Germany, such as the Polish Constitution of 1921 that failed to provide a stable foundation for democracy and was replaced in 1935 by an authoritarian constitution concentrating power in the hands of the President.
