phew! i thought paper 6 was so much better than papers 4 and 5, or mabye i was just in a better frame of mind.............its definitely worth 120 marks, and unit 4 and 5 are worth 90, even though on the question paper it states they all carry 100 points-im positive of this one!
did the law and order one, and the comparision with european/westminster parliament-thought it was quite a simple question-
put it stuff about executive dominance of uk parl, whereas executive(ie commission and c of ministers) dont sit in euro parl,
parlimentary sovereignty-only uk parl can make leg, euro parl has a say but so does c of ministers
voting systems, which lead to a lack of cohesion in euro parl
unicameral/bicameral
keeping executive in check-much easier in uk parl
all in all thought it was pretty good, thank goodness tho cos my units 4 and 5 were really terrible-there were three exams going on in the same exam room(a tiny classroom) and so there were people finishing and starting, and going to the loo, and coming back..........it was a nightmare! also, did u guys get a breka between the units? we didnt, just striahgt into it...
found it quite hard to mention as stuff on the law and order question-really just talked about A2 themes,
anyways, pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew! massive sigh of relief! :smile:

for the law and order q did

Reply 26

jobin

why was you disapointed with b. thats alright isn't it. what question did you do in reatke then. northern ireland?

Reply 27

JayJay

jobin

why was you disapointed with b. thats alright isn't it. what question did you do in reatke then. northern ireland?

i have an aaa offer and it put me back just right on the bubble of an a... didn't want to take the risk in the summer...

i did the LAQ on the welfare state

Reply 28

JayJay

missyb

phew! i thought paper 6 was so much better than papers 4 and 5, or mabye i was just in a better frame of mind.............its definitely worth 120 marks, and unit 4 and 5 are worth 90, even though on the question paper it states they all carry 100 points-im positive of this one!
did the law and order one, and the comparision with european/westminster parliament-thought it was quite a simple question-
put it stuff about executive dominance of uk parl, whereas executive(ie commission and c of ministers) dont sit in euro parl,
parlimentary sovereignty-only uk parl can make leg, euro parl has a say but so does c of ministers
voting systems, which lead to a lack of cohesion in euro parl
unicameral/bicameral
keeping executive in check-much easier in uk parl
all in all thought it was pretty good, thank goodness tho cos my units 4 and 5 were really terrible-there were three exams going on in the same exam room(a tiny classroom) and so there were people finishing and starting, and going to the loo, and coming back..........it was a nightmare! also, did u guys get a breka between the units? we didnt, just striahgt into it...
found it quite hard to mention as stuff on the law and order question-really just talked about A2 themes,
anyways, pheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew! massive sigh of relief! :smile:

for the law and order q did

did you make the comparison between EP and HoL... lot of similarities really..

Reply 29

jobin

i felt that qu 1 tried to trick us out a bit by asking for the role and importance. the imortance part was easy but the role was more tricky.

Reply 30

JayJay

role..

legislative
budgetary
scrutiny of executive

Reply 31

missyb

hhhhhhhm, i guess you can talk about the importance of the role-well i did anyway! how it had much less scrutiny over proposed legislation, and much less power over the executive,
neways, off to bed now nite nite!

Reply 32

krow1209

JayJay

I think its 100 UMS for each unit

units 1, 2, and 3 are worth 100 each, units 4 and 5 are 90 and unit 6 is worth 120.

Reply 33

jossy

1

kingslaw

Route B was pretty good. The conservatism question was the easiest we could have possibly hoped for. The Labour one was pretty good too. How did you construct the Labour one?

basically, i set out an argument at the beginning of the essay, saying how it had moved away from social democracy and then what it seemed to have adopted, then i moved on to different areas of policy, which they've seem to have adopted a 'third way' then i concluded it saying how it's definately not socialist anymore and it does seem to have adopted a 'third way'
but obviously it was much more in detail than that! what about u? i also did the liberalism one which was amazing!

Reply 34

kingslaw

14

jossy

basically, i set out an argument at the beginning of the essay, saying how it had moved away from social democracy and then what it seemed to have adopted, then i moved on to different areas of policy, which they've seem to have adopted a 'third way' then i concluded it saying how it's definately not socialist anymore and it does seem to have adopted a 'third way'
but obviously it was much more in detail than that! what about u? i also did the liberalism one which was amazing!

I started off by saying outlining the arguement by Leach that said it wasnt a third way as it was simply "modernised social democracy" because Blairism still holds the key Labour principles of ethical socialist, Fabianism and radical liberalism - although it had relinquished the trade unionist element as the Winter of Discontent had shown how corporatism was no longer viable in the global economy. However, I criticised this view for not taking into account the full implications of the global economy, changing class structure and how the fall of Communism discredited the "top-down" social democratic ideology. I then went on to Heywoods arguement, saying it was a Third Way because where social democracy and Thatchers neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism saw the state as playing a role in socio-economic engineering, Blairism views the state as a tool of culutural engineering (creating a balance of rights and responsibilities - that is why it was an ideological third way.

Phew!

Reply 35

markh86

I think you missed an important bit on the 3rd way one.

the word "ideological"

the 3rd way seems less ideological and more prgamatic.

there is no ideological base to the 3rd way- in my opinion it is just a pragmatic selection of popular policies from neo lib and social dem.

that was my conclusion- that they have created a way which is above the spectrum, non ideological, certainly not ideological in the same way as social democracy is.

anyway-

regarding question 4- you did look at our system right and not parties?

talking about things like- constitutional reform, proprotional rep and stuff didn't you- rather than saying how each party in the UK had liberal democratic principles behind them.

Reply 36

kingslaw

14

markh86

I think you missed an important bit on the 3rd way one.

the word "ideological"

the 3rd way seems less ideological and more prgamatic.

there is no ideological base to the 3rd way- in my opinion it is just a pragmatic selection of popular policies from neo lib and social dem.

that was my conclusion- that they have created a way which is above the spectrum, non ideological, certainly not ideological in the same way as social democracy is.

There is a massive ideological shift within Blairism - the whole concept of cultural enginering. In ideological terms this is a giant shift away from the old consensus and Thatcherite belief of using the state (or lack of the state) as a tool of social and economic reform - a point which, as the chief examiner Andrew Heywood said himself in many of his articles, is an ideological development which cant be underestimated, which academics like Leach appeared to have done.

On the other hand, yes this ideology could simply be a ploy by new Labour to simply hand pick the best policies from social democracy and Thatcherism, and personally I may agree with you, but we were told as a group constantly to shy away from such conclusions. The whole focus of our teaching over for this unit (and the other two this year, as it was a synoptic) has been aimed at ideology, and applying ideology to Blairism - for such reasons I felt that to declare that Blairism is no ideology was slightly missing the point of this years syllabus. Heywood said himself in his article "Its the Culture, Stupid" that the interpretation of Blairism as simply pragmatic and power-preserving has drastically declined since Blair & co took government in 1997.

However, everyone has different interpretations.

Reply 37

Elle

6

I did route C... its was pretty good. I guessed right about the Supreme Court/UK Courts coming up so I think I did well on that and I think I did average on the other question (decline in UK and US legislatures). I'm not confident about getting the A in politics I need to get into Uni though as I messed up Unit 5.

Reply 38

krow1209

did route c too and did the same questions as you elle. i had real timing problems on the legislatures question. thought the paper was quite nice but didn't do enough revision. had no motivation cos it was the last exam!

Reply 39

Elle

6

What grade do you think you'll get? I ran out of time on the legislature question too, but it was a broad question so there were loads of things you could write. I only realised right at the end that I hadn't included anything about the impact that devolution had on the UK legislature.. ah well.. no more exams :smile:

Politics Synoptic: What did you think?

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