I never liked the catty reactionarism of the Peterhouse school but I loved much of their approach to politics: the political elite seen as a semidetached speech community, a subculture in many ways distanced from the general public and hiding that distance with very deceptive, rationalizing public speech that was in fact full of codes and nuances referring to rather cynical and irrational power struggles below the surface. I think it's still a rather illuminating approach to many dark and hidden corners of the political world. But even then I thought that the social dimension is missing or neglected, that it is not a totally closed or totally cynical world. So, today coming accross this article was rather encouraging - there seems to be at least some signs of a synthesis maybe approaching:
'High politics' and the 'New political history'
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