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Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission

In its 2019 manifesto, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party pledged a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission, to consider far-reaching constitutional change. This appeared to signal a radical departure from UK precedent in approaching constitutional reform. In this paper, we examine the Johnson...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Schleiter, Petra, Fleming, Thomas G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Palgrave Macmillan UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8938215/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36909778
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41293-022-00206-x
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author Schleiter, Petra
Fleming, Thomas G.
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Fleming, Thomas G.
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description In its 2019 manifesto, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party pledged a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission, to consider far-reaching constitutional change. This appeared to signal a radical departure from UK precedent in approaching constitutional reform. In this paper, we examine the Johnson government’s initial proposals and subsequent actions, placing them in comparative context and contrasting them with UK precedent. We show that the government’s explicit pledge to appoint a single Commission to develop the reforms along with its emphasis on restoring public trust in politics through the constitutional reform process, reflected several internationally recognized principles and models for constitutional reform. In practice, however, the government abandoned these potentially radical procedural ambitions, and instead appointed several issue-specific elite-led reviews. We argue that the government’s procedural approach has so far closely followed recent UK precedent, and that the Commission turned out to be an opportunity not taken rather than the radical departure that initially seemed possible.
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spelling pubmed-89382152022-03-22 Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission Schleiter, Petra Fleming, Thomas G. Br Politics Original Article In its 2019 manifesto, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party pledged a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission, to consider far-reaching constitutional change. This appeared to signal a radical departure from UK precedent in approaching constitutional reform. In this paper, we examine the Johnson government’s initial proposals and subsequent actions, placing them in comparative context and contrasting them with UK precedent. We show that the government’s explicit pledge to appoint a single Commission to develop the reforms along with its emphasis on restoring public trust in politics through the constitutional reform process, reflected several internationally recognized principles and models for constitutional reform. In practice, however, the government abandoned these potentially radical procedural ambitions, and instead appointed several issue-specific elite-led reviews. We argue that the government’s procedural approach has so far closely followed recent UK precedent, and that the Commission turned out to be an opportunity not taken rather than the radical departure that initially seemed possible. Palgrave Macmillan UK 2022-03-22 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC8938215/ /pubmed/36909778 http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41293-022-00206-x Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2022 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Original Article
Schleiter, Petra
Fleming, Thomas G.
Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission
title Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission
title_full Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission
title_fullStr Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission
title_full_unstemmed Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission
title_short Radical departure or opportunity not taken? The Johnson government’s Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission
title_sort radical departure or opportunity not taken? the johnson government’s constitution, democracy and rights commission
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8938215/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36909778
http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41293-022-00206-x
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