Material Detail

The module is designed to provoke thought, challenge preconceptions, stimulate questions about the nature of government in the UK and Ireland. Thus, it considers key concepts such as political culture, socialisation, devolution, and governance. This module aims to provoke thought, challenge preconceptions, stimulate questions and to nourish inquisitive minds more than to provide a set diet of ready-made `answers'. What are the contextual parameters within which modern government functions? What is the political culture within British and Irish society and what is the role of the media? What is the appropriate spatial distribution of governmental power, i.e. the territorial dimension? Inevitably, the issues raised by these questions make for argument and introduce conflicting interpretations. The module promotes familiarity with the alternative perspectives advanced on these questions as a foundation to a more sophisticated and systematic treatment subsequently.

This resource has been created within the Open Educational Resources project "Evaluating the Practice of Opening up Resources for Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences" [C-SAP OER], undertaken by the Subject Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics based at University of Birmingham, for further information see here: http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/subject_areas/elearning/oer/default.htm. The project is part of UK-wide Open Educational Resources programme [UKOER]. Within the programme, JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and the Higher Education Academy are collaborating on the with the aim of enabling higher education institutions, consortia and individuals to share learning materials freely online. The programme supports universities and colleges in exploring processes and policies, intellectual property rights, cultural issues, technical requirements and data management issues.

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!