This book offers much-needed insight into the Oxford and Cambridge Unions and the important role they have played in nineteenth-century British political culture. Despite this role, or perhaps for that very reason, the Unions have received very little scholarly attention as to their political activities. This study will focus particularly on debating practices through which their members became knowledgeable of the parliamentary way of doing politics. More significantly, it uses the original Union records as primary research material to show that they also had unique political practices of their own. Presenting a detailed analysis of their debates, the book argues that the Unions should be appreciated as independent political arenas, not mere extensions of Westminster politics.
Table of Content
Chapter 1: Introduction: The rhetoric of parliamentary debate.- Chapter 2: The Union Societies’ role in the formation of a parliamentary culture of debate.- Chapter 3: Procedure and debate in the British parliamentary culture.- Chapter 4: The politics of agenda in the Union debates.- Chapter 5: The politics of debate in the Union Societies.- Chapter 6: Conclusion: Transfer of the rhetoric of procedure to British debating societies.- Appendices.- Bibliography.- Index
About the author
Taru Haapala is Research Fellow in Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
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