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Do corporations wield undue influence in politics? If so, how do they achieve this? And if business interests are so powerful, why do they sometimes seem to lose political battles, e.g. against trade unions or environmental groups? This paper investigates the claim of signaling models of lobbying that business can wield political influence by advising policymakers about the consequences of policy on the ground. To this end, a dataset of almost 200 policy proposals advanced by the UK government between 2001 and 2007 has been compiled to measure central variables in informational accounts of lobbying: the lobbying effort made by firms and trade associations, their reputation in the eyes of policymakers, the commitment to the policy made by the policymakers, and the costs and benefits of the policy in the view of the lobbyist and policymaker, respectively. The paper will present results from the initial analysis of these new data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between government policy and public preferences is a core concern of democratic theorists. One particularly powerful method of relating policy to opinion is the 'dynamic representation' approach. Scholars in this tradition test to what extent current policy changes are a function of past public preferences. This paper derives hypotheses from the dynamic representation approach and tests them for the United Kingdom in a left-right context from 1976-2006. First, it is shown that government policy on the left-right scale changes as a consequence of changing public preferences (the direct mechanism of 'rational anticipation'). Second, a right-wing public results in the election of the Conservative Party, which consequently pursues right-wing policies in office (the indirect mechanism of 'electoral turnover'). Third, government responsiveness is found to be conditional on electoral vulnerability. Popular incumbents are less likely than unpopular incumbents to adjust their policy position to the public. While the Westminster system has received much criticism for its failure to reliably link rulers to the ruled, this paper finds that dynamic representation on the left-right scale in the United Kingdom functions quite admirably. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law and order is a collective good, enabling all groups to plan their lives, free from coercion. However, the police are also agents of the prevailing regime. As such they may target dissenting groups, particularly when socio-ethnic divisions threaten regime stability. Policing may therefore exacerbate conflict rather than contain it. The democratic response to this danger is to subject the police to the scrutiny of elected representatives. However, does this oversight encourage impartial policing, or do politicians seek protection for their own group(s), at the expense of minorities? This paper uses debates and questions from the UK and Canadian legislatures to determine the kind of policing demanded by politicians from Northern Ireland and Quebec - regions with deep divisions. Data is compared to the interventions of politicians from more homogenous regions. I therefore examine the reciprocal relationship between conflict and police accountability. Firstly, I detail the impact of inter-group conflict on the type of policing favoured by politicians. Secondly, I assess the likely effect of such demands - are the police cast as the defenders of one group to the exclusion of another, or do politicians co-operate to resolve conflicts over policing? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important property of any party system is the range of issues it presents to the electorate. Party systems are often characterized in terms of the level of ideological polarization, but rarely in terms of the relative amount of issue choice afforded to voters; what we refer to as issue fractionalization. In this paper, we present an innovate approach to measuring issue fractionalization and we examine what explains variation in issue fractionalization over time. Following the issue competition literature, we would expect that parties emphasize different issues (issue divergence is the norm) and that parties in opposition are more likely to diversify their issue appeal than parties in government. This theoretical approach does not, however, explain why issue fractionalization changes over time. We present an alternative explanation that draws upon the dynamic representation model. We argue that issue fractionalization is primarily driven by public opinion, and that parties in government as well as opposition parties are driven by the same incentives to diversify (or narrow) their issue appeal (issue convergence is the norm). These propositions are tested by analyzing party leader speeches in two parliamentary systems, Britain and Denmark, in the period 1953-2007, using time series analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this essay is to examine the future of Britain and Britishness considering simultaneous challenges of immigration, devolution, and further integration into the EU. There are two manners of interpreting the meaning of Britishness. One group emphasizes the formal characteristic of Britishness, which has no substances and is seen as soon disappearing in the face of devolution and European integration. The other perspective stresses the positive contribution of Britain to the development of democracy and expects the nation’s core values to continue after adjusting themselves to various challenges. I explore whether Britishness has been shared or denied and reinforced or weakened among six different groups, namely Welsh and Scottish separatism, English nationalism, Conservative and Labor’s British nationalism, and that of ethnic minorities. I also explore how these groups justify their position on devolution, European integration, and multiculturalism. This essay eventually focuses on New Labor’s rationales to reshape Britain and reinforce Britishness. I analyze New Labor’s project in terms of a multilevel governance entity that has different power of self-government according to regions, and address a possibility of success in terms of a combination of pride and interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses elements of structural and public choice approaches, and bases its analysis on the notion that academic evaluation of fiscal allocations should focus on the central government interests rather than mainly or exclusively on territorial demands. The paper concludes that in the British context in the period discussed, the continuously shifting ordering of government priorities is determined on the basis of some specific features of public policies, such as the policy’s relevance to the government support groups, the policy’s electoral and political visibility, the policy’s convenience for the central government and the ideas and individuals pursuing those ideas present in a specific public policy area. The paper has substantial theoretical significance in that it goes beyond evaluation of specific fiscal arrangements to discern the factors most relevant to the analysis of public policies at large and fiscal policies in particular. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent public management reforms have emphasised the importance of a comprehensive approach to strategy, and governments in various nations have exhorted public agencies to align their internal arrangements with their service objectives. Very little research has been conducted however, on patterns of organizational strategy in the contemporary public sector, or on the links between strategies, other organizational characteristics and the environment in which public services operate. In this paper we explore these issues by applying Miles and Snow's (1978) seminal model of strategic management to a set of public organizations using data drawn from a large-scale four year multiple informant survey of English local governments. Miles and Snow argued that organizational success depended on the adoption of a consistent strategy for aligning an organization with its environment. Organizations without a clear, well-aligned and, at least in the short or medium term, 'stable' strategy, were likely to perform worse than their rivals. Furthermore, the successful pursuit of whatever strategy was selected would depend on adopting the appropriate internal structure and processes. In other words, it was necessary to establish a fit between strategy and environment, and the internal characteristics of an organization. We develop and apply the Miles and Snow model in order to answer three main research questions. First, do public organizations follow the strategies that are postulated by Miles and Snow? Second, to the extent that such strategies exist, are they related to internal structures and processes in the ways predicted by Miles and Snow? Third, are strategies and their internal correlates aligned with the organizational environments faced by public organizations? In the first part of the paper we review the Miles and Snow model and derive hypotheses from their arguments. In the second part, we outline our data and empirical methods. We then investigate whether public organizations have distinctive strategies, and whether each of these strategies is associated with different operational environments and internal structures and processes. Finally, our results are summarised and the implications for public management theory are discussed. Miles, R., & Snow, C. (1978). Organizational strategy, structure and process. London: McGraw Hill. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to reveal the asymmetrical nature of the United Kingdom Devolution and how nationalist parties namely Plydd Cymru (the party of Wales) has forced the national assembly of Wales into coalition governance and the SNP pushed ...... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the role of money in policymaking is a central question in political economy research, surprisingly little attention has been given to the rents politicians actually derive from politics. We use both matching and a regression discontinuity design to analyze an original dataset on the estates of recently deceased British politicians. We find that serving in Parliament roughly doubled the wealth at death of Conservative MPs but had no discernible effect on the wealth of Labour MPs. We argue that Conservative MPs profited from office in a lax regulatory environment by using their political positions to obtain outside work as directors, consultants, and lobbyists, both while in office and after retirement. Our results are consistent with anecdotal evidence on MPs' outside financial dealings but suggest that the magnitude of Conservatives' financial gains from office was larger than has been appreciated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ascriptive group theory, while prizing nationality as a justification for secession, has proved unable to account for what can be termed as overarching nationalities. Examination of these scenarios forces the adoption of a new approach to secession. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout political history there have been constants; one such constant is political scandals. The British electorate has recently been privy to an increasing number of them. So much so that a new word (sleaze) entered national jargon just to des ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Machiavelli turns to Rome as his model for good government, with important modifications, Montesquieu turns instead to England as his model in an effort to cure the world of Machiavellianism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary data on the prices of bribes and overall campaign costs show that the decline in electoral corruption in Victorian Britain was independent of franchise expansion; earlier changes in the rules on election petitions were the critical factors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ineffective political marketing resulted more from questionable decision-making on the part of the respective party leaderships before the official campaign began than from ill-considered political marketing choices made during the campaign, itself. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]