A politics of transition in Britain, France and Spain

Abstract

The decade of the 1990s saw the beginning of a new phase of globalisation and continuing European integration, the collapse of socialism and the triumph of neo-liberalism, the mainstreaming of cultural postmodernism and the intensification of identity politics. It was a period of transition in political institutions, demands and expectations. The political discourse associated with these changes was radical: this was a global age, hybrid, regionalist, postnationalist, and above all 'new'. But just how radical were the political changes, and did they signal a new convergence across European states? This book is a study of the changing forms of the state, and in particular of changing centre- periphery relations, in Britain, France and Spain. It analyses the character and extent of the changes and their causes and consequences, not just territorially but also institutionally in the area of policing. It identifies the degree of convergence in the three states.