Dennis Grube

Why is cabinet government so resilient? Despite many obituaries, why does it continue to be the vehicle for governing across most parliamentary systems? Comparing Cabinets answers these questions by examining the structure and performance of cabinet government in five democracies: the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia. The book is organised around the dilemmas that cabinet governments must solve: how to develop the formal rules and practices that can bring predictability and consistency to decision making; how to balance good policy with good politics; how to ensure cohesion between the factions and parties that constitute the cabinet while allowing levels of self-interest to be advanced; how leaders can balance persuasion and command; and how to maintain support through accountability at the same time as being able to make unpopular decisions. All these dilemmas are continuing challenges to cabinet government, never solvable, and constantly reappearing in different forms. Comparing distinct parliamentary systems reveals how traditions, beliefs, and practices shape the answers. There is no single definition of cabinet government, but rather arenas and shared practices that provide some cohesion. Such a comparative approach allows greater insight into the process of cabinet government that cannot be achieved in the study of any single political system, and an understanding of the pressures on each system by appreciating the options that are elsewhere accepted as common beliefs.

Victorian Britain, at the head of the vast British Empire, was the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, yet not all Britons were seen as possessing the characteristics that defined what it actually meant to be 'British.' At the Margins of Victorian Britain focuses on the political means of policing unwanted 'others' in Victorian society: the Irish, Catholics and Jews, atheists, prostitutes and homosexuals. In this groundbreaking study, Dennis Grube details the laws and conventions that were legally and culturally enforced in order to bar these 'others' from gaining power and influence in Victorian Britain. Utilising a wide-ranging analysis, the book focuses on key case studies including the anti-Semitism implicit in Lord Rothschild's barring from the House of Commons, the fine line between accepted male love and companionship and homosexuality, culminating in the Oscar Wilde trials of the 1890s, and how laws against disease were used to police prostitutes and correct moral vices.As Jews, Roman Catholics and atheists were brought into a genuine sense of partnership in the British constitution by being allowed to seek election to Parliament, homosexuals, prostitutes and the allegedly innately criminal Irish found themselves further and more vehemently displaced as the nineteenth century progressed. 'Otherness' stopped being a religious question and instead became a moral one. That fundamental shift marks the moment that 'Britishness' became a values-based question.This will be essential reading for those working in the fields of Victorian studies, social and cultural history and constitutional identity.