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The current article studies the influence of attitudes toward immigration on state legitimacy. We analyzed the European Union countries that received the greatest immigrant inflows in 2014: Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, through data from the latest edition of the European Social Survey. Our results show that citizens with negative attitudes toward immigration consider their states to be less legitimate. Conversely, positive attitudes toward immigration are not associated with increased state legitimacy (except in Spain). Based on these findings, there is a clear need for communication strategies that provide information on the actual effects of immigration. In their absence, the political discourse on this matter will continue to be co-opted by power-grabbing actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the extent and nature of the press coverage of the personal lives and personal qualities of contemporary British political leaders. In particular, it explores the legacy of the politicization of Blair's private persona, or the Blair effect. Was Blair's era a temporary anomaly, or did it have a transformative effect on the way that parties, politicians, and journalists conceive the role of the personal in public discourse and in the construction of a leader's public persona? This research demonstrates that the degree of politicization of private persona still depends, to an important extent, on the personality of the leader and on the leader's communication strategies, and that it is still possible to have a prime minister such as Gordon Brown, who tries to keep his personal life mostly private. But this is only part of the story. Blair's era altered expectations about the role that the personal plays, and ought to play, in public discourse, and how much significance is given to it as a criterion of leadership evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from part of an evaluation study of the Communication Aids Project (CAP), a government-funded project in England which provided communication aids to school-aged children. The paper focuses on parents' views of the CAP process and the impact of the aid. Fourteen parents were interviewed twice over the telephone: once before or just as their children received communication aids and again six to eight weeks later. Parents expressed satisfaction with the impact of the aid on their children's lives and showed they had realistic expectations concerning potential short- and long-term benefits. They raised two main concerns regarding the provision of aids, namely the timescale involved and access to accurate information and advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]