ABSTRACT
The Conservatives since 1945: the drivers of party change, by Tim Bale, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, 384 pp., £52.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-0199234370
Review
David M. Walker
As those familiar with his previous works will already know, Bale has a complete command of his subject matter, the British Conservative Party, from details of policy papers to defects of politicians’ personalities, and pretty much everything in between. Bale’s concern in this book is with the drivers of party change, in other words, what prompts organisational, policy and other change in political parties. The three key drivers of change that he considers are electoral performance, change of leader and change in the dominant political faction. Bale is sufficiently subtle and sophisticated in his reflections to appreciate that an endogenous-exogenous categorisation of causes is liable to mislead, because they are not entirely distinct, and he similarly highlights the fact that causation can run both ways, for example, electoral failure prompting change of leader, or vice versa.
