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Descriptive representation occurs when elected politicians are typical of the larger class of persons that they represent, such that blacks represent blacks, disabled people represent disabled people and so on. Research undertaken in the context of the UK government's devolution programme helps us to judge the strength of the demand for descripted representation amongst political activists and elites. In the case of women, one grouping where proportional descriptive representation has (almost) been achieved, substantial benefits are perceived, for example in relation to improvements in the deliverative function of democracy. In the case of other 'minority' groupings the absence of descriptive representation is thought to have entailed significant costs. This failure has necessitated the development of complex bureaucratic structures that are seen as a poor substitute for descriptive representation. In this and other respects the innovations in governance introduced with devolution have helped to stimulate demand for descriptive representation. This demand exceeds the supply of representation on offer and descriptive representation will be the focus of an increasing amount of debate and controversy in future.

Mila's story can help you understand what the point of sociological theory is and it shows you how you can learn theory, use it and criticise it. In this specially [...]

This paper develops an explanation for the simultaneous surge in support of both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary nationalism in North West Wales. Close analysis of the way in which the concept 'community' is used within the process of political mobilisation provides the key to this understanding. By demonstrating that a number of social constructions of community co-exist within the same social space (in this instance, North West Wales), the paper contributes an added dimension to the understandings of community current within sociology. The paper identifies four social constructions of community, each relating to a different variant of Nationalist ideology. The capacity within the concept community to legitimate a locality simultaneously as a place of resistance and of conflict is demonstrated to be central to the explanation for the dual rise in nationalist support.

Interest in informal recruitment methods, and workers' informal job search and acquisition methods, has increased since the recession began. Although evidence (for example, the General Household Survey) does not suggest that the recession has led to a general increase in employers' use of informal methods, significant advances have been made in the theory of informal practices. These ideas are tested against some new evidence from South Wales, and the results are incorporated into a simple model of informal practices which introduces the idea of a 'private labour market'. The model suggests that some 'recruitment' methods are best seen as contingent and sometimes as the absence of recruitment methods. Finally, the importance of the various stimuli to change in informal practices in considered in the light of the GHS and South Wales evidence.

Everyone knows about the historic decline of the UK economy from its nineteenth century position of prominence, but the very recent evidence of decline is more striking. In 1961 the [...]