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Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on February 27, 2009
Parliamentary Affairs 2009 62(2):364-369; doi:10.1093/pa/gsp002
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© The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Democratising Conservative Leadership Selection: From Grey Suits to Grass Roots

Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron

Tim Bale

Politics and Contemporary European Studies
University of Sussex

Correspondence: t.p.bale@sussex.ac.uk

ANDREW DENHAM and KIERON O'HARA, Democratising Conservative Leadership Selection: From Grey Suits to Grass Roots, Manchester University Press, 2008, 230pp, pb. £14.99 and hb. 60.00.

TIMOTHY HEPPELL, Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron, Tauris Academic Studies, 2007, 254pp, hb. £52.50.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In an era of valence rather than position politics, an era in which some see parliamentary systems becoming ever more presidentialised, party leadership is clearly crucial. Just as importantly, one can argue that contests to elect leaders provide something of a window into the soul of a particular party. They not only help determine its electoral fate. They also expose fault-lines. They show what really matters to those involved. They demonstrate strengths and weaknesses, collective and individual. They mark turning points. Or they show that the party in question is not yet ready or able to change. They also reinforce the feeling that politics is an art as well as a science.

Leadership, of course, has always mattered a great deal in the British Conservative Party—an organisation which . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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