Search

Introduction: Despite the relative harmony of the Western states on essential security issues, the July 2024 parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom (the UK), ending with the overwhelming victory of the Labour Party, who has returned to power after 14 years, may have a significant impact on the relationship this country has with the European Union (the EU). Since Brexit, the diminished trade has contributed to a decline in the economy of the United Kingdom and it is one of the countries most significantly impacted by the "increasing cost of living” crisis. Methods: Using an Impulse Response Function (IRF), this paper will assess the impact of a further decline of EU-UK relations as well as the policy implications of some proposals supported by significant fractions of the Conservative Party, namely tax cuts. Results and discussion: The paper concludes that a further decline in trade relations between the EU and the UK will lead to a further decline in the economy of the UK that has few feasible alternatives in terms of trading partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 1989, fascism had long been defeated in Europe, and reforms in the Soviet Union appeared to signify the collapse of communist ideology, prompting Francis Fukuyama to famously declare the 'end of history'. Since then, neoliberalism has been rolled out globally. This paper argues that, with regard to higher education, Fukuyama's claim that the pursuit of knowledge will be replaced by the 'satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands' is prescient. What, then, prompted Fukuyama to qualify his predictions in 2018? Citing both the turmoil of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, Fukuyama blames identity politics for the breakdown of consensus over what the nation is, or should be, and suggests that the promotion of creedal identity might rescue Western democracy from populism. This paper disagrees: using the examples of Brexit and the promotion of Fundamental British Values in schools, it argues that creedal identity has become another expression of populism. Rejecting the claim that identity politics are the ultimate source of populism, it argues that populism is the predictable outcome of recession in the market economy.

The humble ballot paper is a defining technology of elections throughout the world. This article interrogates its contested past by demonstrating - over a long period and in the context of three contrasting countries - how and why it emerged in the early modern period and how it was then used, abused and regulated in the context of the expanded, and eventually mass, electoral arenas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ironically, by the time that the ballot paper was firmly established, its monopoly was already being challenged by mechanical and then electronic media, which may eventually condemn it to extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is aimed at highlighting the problem of the use of emotive-evaluative vocabulary in the English-language mass media political discourse, which is a relevant topic since the scope of media texts in English is widespread in the information community and the media language is the basic means for communication, phrasing, conveying and storing information. Political discourse is a popular area of research of linguistics, as it covers all aspects of modern life and society. Being mainly broadcasted by the politicians, it is considered a complex linguistic phenomenon, whose objectives, direct or indirect, are aimed at disseminating, implementing political authorities and obtaining the majority of votes during the election campaigns. The article is devoted to the evaluation categories, which refer to the semantic and pragmatic categories and can be one of the strongest tools of influence on the public. Within the framework of our research 29 English articles, posted on the Internet, concerning the political leaders of the United States and Great Britain, attributing the personal characteristics to them, were analysed. Using the continuous sampling method there was found 214 examples of English emotive-evaluative vocabulary. During the study, the methods of compilation, interpretation, and descriptive methods were used.

A growing body of literature has found that photographs of politicians can influence electoral preferences. In this article we assess whether candidates rating higher on electoral attractiveness perform better in a series of hypothetical elections, and whether their advantage is magnified when their appearance is printed not only on campaign materials but also on ballot papers. We find that candidate appearance only had a significant impact on vote choice when photographs were printed on ballot papers, and even then there was an impact on only some of the elections, notably those pitting male against female candidates. Photographs had most impact on the choices of those least interested in politics and least likely to vote, and magnified a tendency (among voters of all ages) to favour younger candidates and to penalise older candidates. Findings suggest that the addition of photographs to ballot papers could affect the outcomes of marginal British constituency races. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student evaluations of quantitative methods courses in political science often reveal they are characterised by aversion, alienation and anxiety. As a solution to this problem, this paper describes a pedagogic research project with the aim of embedding quantitative methods by stealth into the first-year undergraduate curriculum. This paper describes the development and evaluation of new teaching and learning materials using active learning pedagogies. The learning activities were designed to develop introductory-level quantitative skills and create a positive first impression of quantitative methods by clearly communicating their value and relevance. The paper demonstrates how the study of psephology--electoral and polling data--can be used to embed quantitative methods within the substantive political science curriculum. This involved devising effective ways of not only teaching psephology but also recreating the experiences of 'being a psephologist' as a learning experience in a way that develops quantitative skills and embeds quantitative methods. This study illustrates how quantitative methods can be successfully embedded into the substantive curriculum and explores a range of relevant debates for pedagogical practice and curriculum design.

Farzana Shain reviews two books: (1) Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, edited by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang and George Lipsitz, 2019; and Education and Race: From Empire to Brexit, by Sally Tomlinson, 2019, Bristol, Policy. Shain begins this review by saying that we are now entering a new period for race relations in the US and UK. What Gramsci (1971) described as the 'morbid symptoms of the interregnum', can be seen in the revival of populist politics and renewed enthusiasm for nationalist policies across a number of countries as they respond to the impact of the global crash in 2008. Immigrants, those seeking asylum and minorities were the first to be blamed for the failures of flawed neoliberal financialisation policies and the wild speculation that went with it, which most economists now agree caused the crash (Bresser-Pereira 2010; Pettifor 2017). From the UK's Brexit referendum in 2016, the Trump election in 2016, to the nationalist policies pursued by Prime Ministers' Narendra Modi in India, Shinzo Abe in Japan, Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, the minority groups within each nation-state are being blamed for declining living standards. Similar trends have been identified in the Philippines, China and India and in South Africa. Across European countries, recent elections have seen a rise in support for parties that promote xenophobic nationalism, economic protectionism and anti-immigration rhetoric. There has been a shift to right populism by existing parties in order to win votes (Inglehart and Norris 2016; Dennison and Geddes 2019) in the particularly volatile and uncertain economic and political context following the global crisis of 2008, the effects of which are still continuing -- this is the 'new interregnum'. Political analyses of events such as the Brexit referendum and Trump's victory in the US election in 2016, and a number of right populist parties' performances in the European elections in 2019, have noted that a significant proportion of the electorate was motivated to vote for anti-immigration parties not only because of economic insecurity but for long standing reasons of cultural insecurity, racial resentment and a marked hostility to 'others', most notably, Muslims and asylum seekers. These sentiments are captured within the cultural backlash theory of voting behaviour. Slogans such as 'Take Our Country Back' (Brexit, UK, 2016), 'Make America Great Again' (Trump election campaign 2016), and 'Get Brexit Done' (UK General Election 2019), do not explicitly mention race but speak to the cultural insecurities of many whites through plugging into a nostalgia for the 'good old days'. In this review, Shain asks the following questions: (1) What is the cultural nostalgia for? and what role does education play in feeding it? Shain identifies these questions as at the heart of the two books under review and she discusses those questions in detail in the sections of this review that follow. She notes that the books contain many rich examples of the methods that sustain white supremacy including the operation of apparently race and power-blind discourses such as merit and opportunity. Both books speak to these decolonising movements which are still in the process of agreeing what decolonise means and how it must be achieved. Shain closes the review by saying that while neither book offers a substantive conclusion chapter, both books make an invaluable contribution to current debates at a time when the right populism is on the rise again. She states that there are, inevitably, some gaps in the books however she found them extremely timely and will no doubt be referenced widely in interdisciplinary conversations focussed on challenging new racisms in education.

This paper will examine the different funding streams associated with the levelling up agenda pursued by the Conservative government elected in the United Kingdom in 2019. It will explore in detail a number of funding streams that this government has associated with levelling up to understand their relationship to the levelling up agenda. The article will also analyse the relationship between the levelling up missions and the funding associated with levelling up. The Levelling Up White Paper released in February 2022 included 12 missions that were intended to provide a 'targeted, measurable and time-bound objective, or set of objectives, from which a programme of change can then be constructed or catalysed'. The analysis of the funding streams outlined in this paper shows that the relationship with the missions is overall a tangential one. The lack of clarity on what is and is not a levelling up fund, coupled with the loose relationship with the levelling up missions may diminish the impact that the levelling up agenda will have on regional inequality in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section offers news briefs on politics and education in the United Kingdom as of September 1, 2022. It includes the results of the Northern Ireland Assembly elections held on May 5, 2022, the launch of consultation on the proposals for local area special education needs and disabilities provision reviews, and the announcement of a national discussion on education in Scotland.

The global rise of 'neo-populism', culminating in the election of the populist Republican candidate Donald Trump to the US presidency, has been accompanied by a notable backlash and resistance to what has been categorised as governing/dominating 'elites', including HE academic institutions. Populist critiques centre on a perceived climate of censorship on campus in the name of 'political correctness'. In this paper I examine some of the arguments put forward by proponents and detractors in these debates, utlising some examples from empirical data from a study of online student newspaper posts in 2016 and 2017 from campuses in the US and the UK. In doing so I will be exploring the ways in which the debates are underpinned by distinct gendered, classed and 'raced' discourses that are linked not only to differing conceptions of 'truth' but also the nature and purpose of learning in the university itself.

A unifying setup for opinion models originating in statistical physics and stochastic opinion dynamics are developed and used to analyze election data. The results are interpreted in the light of political theory. We investigate the connection between Potts (Curie–Weiss) models and stochastic opinion models in the view of the Boltzmann distribution and stochastic Glauber dynamics. We particularly find that the q-voter model can be considered as a natural extension of the Zealot model, which is adapted by Lagrangian parameters. We also discuss weak and strong effects (also called extensive and nonextensive) continuum limits for the models. The results are used to compare the Curie–Weiss model, two q-voter models (weak and strong effects), and a reinforcement model (weak effects) in explaining electoral outcomes in four western democracies (United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany). We find that particularly the weak effects models are able to fit the data (Kolmogorov–Smirnov test) where the weak effects reinforcement model performs best (AIC). Additionally, we show how the institutional structure shapes the process of opinion formation. By focusing on the dynamics of opinion formation preceding the act of voting, the models discussed in this paper give insights both into the empirical explanation of elections as such, as well as important aspects of the theory of democracy. Therefore, this paper shows the usefulness of an interdisciplinary approach in studying real world political outcomes by using mathematical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the impact of the national daily press on general elections turnout during 1992 and 1997 in Great Britain. Interdependence between mass media and their audiences; Overflow effect of news paper reading on voting turnout; Impact of reinforcement and cross pressures on the voting patterns of the newspaper readers.

Full Fact is an independent, non-partisan fact-checking charity. A particular focus is the analysis of factual claims in political debate in the UK; for example, fact-checking claims and counterclaims made during Prime Minister's questions. Facts do not appear in a vacuum as they are often used as key elements in an effort to make a coherent argument. This paper describes a number of case histories where facts are disputed, drawn from our election work, to give an overview of the contemporary state of statistical literacy among politicians and the media. Common pitfalls in politicians' claims are set out, along with descriptions of our attempts to close the communication gap between different communities.

Explaining ideological conflict has always been a classic theme of studies of party organizations. The aim of this paper is to re-examine May's law, based on rational choice theory, which suggests that due to differential incentives sub-leaders are likely to prove the most extreme stratum in parry organizations, while non-leaders are the most moderate, and top leaders are located equidistant between these groups. The study, based on large-scale surveys of politicians, local constituency officers, party members and voters in the 1992 British general election, throws considerable doubt on this proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In November 2012, 300 students came together in the Media School at Bournemouth University in the UK to report the US Presidential Election. Over the course of 10 days, students published 176 articles on a rolling news website, garnering more than 20,000 hits. On election night itself, students produced 10 h of live coverage on both TV and radio, airing 30 pre-recorded video packages and 35 pre-recorded radio packages. This experiential project adopted a so-called "live case" methodology that encapsulated a high degree of application and a certain level of structure, which allowed for the "variety and uncertainty" or reality to intervene. It also empowered and enabled students to reflect on and evaluate their individual experiences in light of their own learning styles. This paper will discuss the challenges and successes experienced during this experiential project, and will provide a nine-step guide on how others could replicate a similar project.

Duverger's law holds that single member district rules produce two-party systems, but third party voting remains an important feature of these institutional contexts. To explain the discrepancy between theory and empirical reality, Gary Cox specified four conditions that are necessary for the theoretical expectations to bear out. Yet, subsequent research has focused mostly on just one of these conditions, namely, that voters have correct information about the competitiveness of their preferred party in the district. The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of all four conditions. Using original survey data from the 2015 United Kingdom general election, the analysis suggests that violations of the information condition matter, but that violations of the short-term instrumental rationality condition can be a significant factor as well. Consequently, future research should pay more attention to this condition when seeking to explain third party voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government in power has implemented a range of reforms in relation to assessment at all stages of education in England. This paper focuses on two assessment reforms relating to children aged five and six years old, and considers their evolution from manifesto commitments to practice in classrooms. These reforms are the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check at age six, and the revised Early Years Foundation Stage Profile at age five. The main focus is on the coherence of these policies, both over time and as part of an overall government strategy on assessment in early years and primary education. It is argued that, despite claims of reducing bureaucracy, these assessment policies are driven by an agenda of increasing accountability in the first years of primary school.

'The Electoral Management of the Yorkshire Election of 1784'. In the general election of 1784 the Fitzwilliam Whig candidates for Yorkshire declined the poll the night preceding the county election and conceded victory to the pro-Pitt nominees who received organisational support from the Yorkshire Association. This paper uses the Yorkshire county election to provide a detailed case study of electoral organisation and management. It outlines the national and regional political contexts of the election and examines the political and religious prejudices of the protagonists. Furthermore, it details the costs involved and explores the logistics of bringing the enfranchised freeholders, in England's largest constituency, to poll. This paper compares the organisations set up by both sides to direct the election, demonstrating the increasingly professional approach taken by election committees towards the end of the eighteenth century. It demonstrates how in this election the experienced and near-professional committee established by the Yorkshire Association overwhelmed the amateur committee of aristocrats convened by the Earl Fitzwilliam, prompting the latter to make significant changes to his electoral organisation and electioneering strategy for future elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various research have been directed towards investigating the behaviour of political parties engaging in attacks. However, this topic has predominantly been studied in campaigning venues while focusing only on the attacker (parties that are attacking). This study contributes to the existing literature by (i) studying attack behaviour in the parliamentary venue, and (ii) analysing the interactions between both the attacker and the target. To this end, this paper uses longitudinal data on attacks during question time sessions in the parliaments (2010 to 2020) of Belgium, Croatia and the United Kingdom. More specifically, I investigate the conditions that make parties engage in mutual attacks. These conditions can be characterised along three dimensions: time (proximity to elections), status (government vs. opposition), and ideology (close vs. distant). The results confirm the overarching argument that: (i) more attacks in parliaments happen closer to election day; (ii) opposing parties are more likely to attack the government rather than vice‐versa; (iii) governing parties equally attack the opposition and themselves; and finally, (iv) the larger the ideological distance between parties, the more likely attacks happen (with mainstream parties engaging equally in attack behaviour compared to radical parties). As such, these findings contribute to our understanding of attack strategies between parties in regular day‐to‐day politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks, in the context of recent legislative changes, what can be done to support more citizens in England and Wales with learning disabilities to vote in national elections? This issue is addressed through (i) a review of recent disability access campaigns that have reported discrimination against, and the under-representation of, adults with disabilities in UK elections; (ii) a review of recent research undertaken in the USA into the assessment of competence to vote and research undertaken in England that conclusively documents the under-representation of voters with learning disabilities in the 2005 general election. It is proposed that a "functional approach" to developing an individual's capacity to vote could help to fulfil Article 29 of the United Nations' "Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities" that gives all people the same political rights.

The Symposium on Sustainable Schools (SOSS), an independent publishing operation, has contributed several pamphlets critical of Coalition policy in specific issues. The alarming lack of serious debate about education in the May election, and the radical Conservative programme operated as soon as the election was over, demand a wider perspective. This Open Letter is a contribution to an analysis of the big picture of education policy as it is now developing.

The past 18 months have delivered a series of "surprising" electoral outcomes. In the USA, the election of Donald Trump confounded expectations. In the UK, the leave result from the EU referendum and the subsequent snap General Election which saw the Conservative Party lose their majority have been heralded as knife‐edge moments and a new period in politics. This paper makes an alternative contention. It posits that the electoral outcomes of 2016 and 2017 were not arbitrary or new occurrences, but instead represent the latest expressions of long‐standing historical trends towards increased inequality across the West. Recognising that the impacts of economic and political restructuring have been unevenly distributed between different groups and geographical areas, the paper makes the case that these electoral outcomes must be seen in the light of policy moves creating a more polarised social and spatial structure. Using the UK as an illustrative case, the paper explores the developments that have reinforced spatial opportunity structures and the reproduction of disadvantage over time. In doing so, the paper contextualises the revanchism resultant from processes of social residualisation and articulates the need to focus on the long‐run effects of rising inequality now being seen to shape voters' choices. This paper critically explores the outcome of the 2016 referendum vote in favour of Britain leaving the EU. With the narrow Brexit majority attributed to long‐standing historical trends towards increased inequality in the UK, the paper makes the case for geographical research to focus on the series of policy moves that have helped widen the gap between rich and poor, leaving an elongated middle group itself experiencing substantial fracturing within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between candidates' position on a ballot paper and vote rank is explored in the case of 5000 candidates for the UK 2010 local government elections in the Greater London area. This design study uses hierarchical spatially arranged graphics to represent two locations that affect candidates at very different scales: the geographical areas for which they seek election and the spatial location of their names on the ballot paper. This approach allows the effect of position bias to be assessed; that is, the degree to which the position of a candidate's name on the ballot paper influences the number of votes received by the candidate, and whether this varies geographically. Results show that position bias was significant enough to influence rank order of candidates, and in the case of many marginal electoral wards, to influence who was elected to government. Position bias was observed most strongly for Liberal Democrat candidates but present for all major political parties. Visual analysis of classification of candidate names by ethnicity suggests that this too had an effect on votes received by candidates, in some cases overcoming alphabetic name bias. The results found contradict some earlier research suggesting that alphabetic name bias was not sufficiently significant to affect electoral outcome and add new evidence for the geographic and ethnicity influences on voting behaviour. The visual approach proposed here can be applied to a wider range of electoral data and the patterns identified and hypotheses derived from them could have significant implications for the design of ballot papers and the conduct of fair elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political science asks how women navigate gender on the campaign trail – do they run "as women" or do they exhibit more "masculine" behaviours to increase credibility. The role of masculinity in men's campaigns has received less attention. Yet, men "play the gender card" too. This paper analyses the use of gender in the campaign imagery of the two male party leaders in the 2019 UK General Election campaign via an examination of their campaign tweets. It finds that the male leaders did, indeed, "play the man card". Both leaders overwhelmingly used masculine visuals on Twitter during the campaign. Johnson demonstrated elements of "hypermasculinity" exaggerating his strength and dominance in images of traditional, working-class masculinity. Despite calls for more compassionate, read feminine, politics, Corbyn's campaign remained located in masculine imagery through consistent displays of agency. This paper makes three main contributions to current understandings of gender and election campaigning. Firstly, it offers the beginnings of a framework of types of masculinity in campaigning. Secondly, it adds support to the thesis that men play the gender card, and that it can take different forms. Thirdly, it raises questions about the use of binary frameworks in studying gender's role in campaigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the British media's coverage of the 2015 British Parliamentary elections and opines that the press needs to be monitored in order to prevent political bias. Information is offered about the elections and the lack of neutrality of British newspapers including "The Daily Telegraph" towards left-leaning parties like Britain's Labour Party and its leader Ed Miliband.

This editorial article discusses how televised debates transformed the British General Election campaign of 2010 and impacted upon political leader standing in the election. Papers are introduced in a number of areas including political branding, analysis of attack advertising and its implications, channel experience effectiveness measurement, consumption and co-creation in the sensitive policy area of immigration, the Europeanisation of British political marketing, and how UK expatriates could be targeted by political parties. In addition, we consider continuing gaps in political marketing research including ethical considerations, the application of frameworks from social and not-for-profit marketing, and the link between lobbying and political marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of immigration proved to be a crucially important flashpoint for all three parties in the 2010 British General Election. In this paper, we focus on a citizen-centred perspective on the 2010 British General Election by analysing the views of the electorate on this pivotal issue in the as blogosphere. Using thematic and discursive analysis, we examine how voters articulate their opinions and concerns on immigration in the blogosphere and how these discursive practices can be studied to enrich political market research. The findings show that a complex issue such as immigration is a dynamic expression of, and between, multiple, competing, contradictory discourses, and interests. As such, the blogosphere provides an invaluable tool for in-depth political market research because it can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the co-production and co-consumption of current affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers not only the nature of segmentation, but in particular political segmentation. It suggests that currently political parties utilise a simplistic type of segmentation and that they need to be more aware of the complexities of the electorate. In particular, the political parties need to be aware of the preferences of those who make up 52% of the population - women. The literature on attracting women voters is explored indicating that women have different perceptions of politics and politicians. To illustrate the point a discussion group with black and Asian women is presented. The campaigns and the results of the 2005 election are also explored to further illustrate the point. The paper concludes that the issues of importance to politicians are not in line with the aspirations and requirements of the female voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on Electoral Reform Services' (ERS) reassurance that the 2012 election of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) Council in Great Britain was fair. On May 15, RCVS said that the ballot papers were designed and printed by ERS, but were not distributed by the independent body. In a letter by ERS senior consultant Adrian Wilkes to RCVS on May 1, he explained several aspects of the election, including internet voting, postal votes, and the number of voters.

Examination of ward-level aggregate data for English local council elections that employ a form of block voting demonstrates that 7-15% of total potential votes are unused. We test two possible explanations for this phenomenon. Firstly, unused votes occur when electors have a restricted choice of candidates, principally when parties fail to field as many candidates as there are available seats. Secondly, unused votes stem from a misunderstanding of the voting procedure. We find that both sources make statistically significant contributions to the explanation of the level of unused votes. The number of unused votes does decrease when more candidates stand for election. However, we also find that within each party's slate of candidates those placed higher on the ballot paper have a clear advantage over those lower in the alphabetic order and hence lower in ballot paper order. Moreover, the level of educational attainment of a ward's population is a statistically significant predictor of unused votes, suggesting perhaps that some voters are failing to understand the voting system. This analysis raises issues concerning voter awareness of block voting procedures and whether ballot paper order should be randomized in such cases in order to eradicate alphabetic bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience of politicians leaving elected office is under-researched. This paper examines the experience of leaving political office drawing on empirical research in the United Kingdom with 30 elected politicians, including 20 who had left office, either having been defeated in election or having chosen not to stand for election, and where possible their partners. The sample also included 10 interviews with current politicians about their expectations of transition from elected office. The paper considers the findings from a psychological and a sociological perspective and suggests features that predict a problematic adjustment to the loss of political office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much work done investigating the adoption of online campaigns in UK general election campaigns. Although some research has focussed on the candidate-level (Gibson, R., W. Lusoli, and S. Ward. 2008. "Nationalizing and Normalizing the Local? A Comparative Analysis of Online Candidate Campaigning in Australia and Britain." Journal of Information Technology and Politics 4: 15-30; Lee, B. 2014. "Window Dressing 2.0: Constituency-level Web Campaigns in the 2010 UK General Election." Politics 34 (1): 45-57; Southern, R. 2015. "Is Web 2.0 Providing a Voice for Outsiders? A Comparison of Personal Web Site and Social Media Use by Candidates at the 2010 UK General Election." Journal of Information Technology & Politics 12 (1): 1-17), this is an under-researched area. This is despite early web-campaign scholars (Margolis, M., and D. Resnick. 2000. Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace Revolution. Sage) maintaining that e-campaigning could provide the most important advantages to campaigns at the candidate level. In light of this, the paper aims to provide the most comprehensive study of candidate-level online campaigning carried out in the UK to date. This paper employs original data, measuring website and social media use by candidates during the 2015 UK general election campaign. These data allow for a detailed explanation of the normalization thesis, one of the leading theories in the field of e-campaigns. The findings here are significant as there are several instances where normalization does not hold, suggesting that online tools are contributing to campaign change. Green Party candidates subverted normalization to a significant degree, particularly on social media. Assessing the campaign content, a quarter of candidates adopted more than one interactive feature on their website and furthermore, interactive use of Twitter was the most common type of Twitter use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on the article "Political engagement in the 2019 UK general election of patients with autism and/or a learning disability detained in a psychiatric hospital". Design/methodology/approach: This paper considers the wider issue of political participation by persons with disabilities, especially those whose freedom is restricted. Findings: Access to voting rights remains problematic for many disabled people. It is crucial that this basic form of political participation is ensured, but there is further to go. Originality/value: This paper suggests the need for greater attention to and support for disabled peoples' right to political participation, including people with learning disabilities and autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about how local context influences radical right voting. This paper advances the theory that the degradation of local socio-cultural hubs is linked to radical right support by contributing to loss of community and cultural identity. I examine this thesis by exploiting an original dataset on British community pub closures. I argue that the disappearance of community pubs triggers social isolation and signals the decline of the British working class condition, which is associated with UKIP support. Combining district-level data with UK panel data (2013–2016), I show that individuals living in districts that experience one additional community pub closure (relative to the total number of pubs per district) are more likely to support UKIP than any other party by 4.3 percentage points. The effect is magnified under conditions of material deprivation. This paper highlights the significance of local socio-cultural degradation as a mechanism to explain radical right support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accepting defeat in the aftermath of elections is crucial for the stability of democracies. But in times of intense polarization, the voluntary consent of electoral losers seems less obvious. In this paper, I study whether affective and perceived ideological polarization amplify the winner–loser gap in political support. Using multilevel growth curve modelling on pre and post-election panel data from the British Election Study Internet Panel collected during the 2015 and 2019 UK general elections, I show that the winner–loser gap is indeed more pronounced amongst voters with higher levels of affective and perceived ideological polarization. Moreover, the results illustrate that polarized voters experience a stark decrease in their support for the political system following their electoral loss. Given the high and, in some Western democracies, rising polarization levels, these findings have important implications for losers’ consent and the stability of democracies in election times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens' trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to 'have their say' – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)‐invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi‐experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust‐inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent‐triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust‐inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May‐led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left‐wing or non‐Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many scholars, mainly those focusing on populism, have analysed the role of 'the people' in politics. This has allowed us to understand how many political actors emphasize the central position of this term. Today, 'the people' has different meanings depending on how politicians use it in specific contexts. In this paper, the reference to 'the people' was measured using the following question: How do political leaders use the word 'people'? The analysis was conducted on Twitter through the study of the accounts of the foremost political leaders in the UK during the 2019 general election campaign. The results highlight three key attitudes related to the use of 'people': a direct and immediate relationship between a leader and a wide people; a calling to a specific people, described as a strong and cohesive group; an appropriation of the voice of the people, grouping people without borders into the classic contraposition between a pure people and the corrupt elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine three forms of regret in relation to the UK's hugely significant referendum on EU membership that was held in June 2016. They are: (i) whether 'leave' voters at the referendum subsequently regretted their choice (in the light of the result), (ii) whether non-voters regretted their decisions to abstain (essentially supporting 'remain') and (iii) whether individuals were more likely to indicate that it is everyone's duty to vote following the referendum. We find evidence in favor of all three types of regret. In particular, leave voters and non-voters were significantly more likely to indicate that they would vote to remain given a chance to do so again; moreover, the probability of an individual stating that it was everyone's duty to vote in a general election increased significantly in 2017 (compared to 2015). The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the referendum's outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the design and implementation of the two recent models or strategies adopted for the intervention and turnaround of poorly performing local authorities in England in the two distinct periods of 2002-2008 and 2011-2015. The first was integral to the Comprehensive Performance Management regimes, while the second was developed under the Sector Led Improvement regime. The intention is not to determine which regime has, or had, the most merit or inadequacies, but rather to synthesise knowledge and identify areas that could be improved as policy and practice moves forward, particularly in the light of the recent general election in the UK. The paper finds that both models have merits as well as weaknesses, dependent upon context and policy priorities. It provides a review of when and where alternative models should be used, and a contribution to the development of the next regime. This, the authors contend, should have a greater emphasis on achieving more appropriate levels of public assurance than the current model is providing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The involvement of celebrities in politics raises issues of legitimacy and representation, and fuels concern over the impact on traditional or conventional political activity. This paper analyses the 2015 UK general election campaigns of the comedian Al Murray, who stood against UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and the artist Bob and Roberta Smith, who stood in the constituency of Conservative minister Michael Gove. Conceptions of public representation via Nancy Fraser's notion of subaltern counterpublics are considered, and definitions of celebrity politics are briefly explored. Each of these celebrity candidates displayed elements of theatricality in their campaign techniques, and the paper argues that while the campaigns could be seen as a form of electoral guerrilla theatre, the news coverage of the period leading up to the election suggests that neither campaign provided the kind of critical satirical edge that such a term might suggest. Consequently they were incorporated into the electoral process rather than providing any direct challenge to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twelve years after coming to office, Labour has still not achieved the second stage of House of Lords reform that was promised in 1997. In July 2008 a White Paper—the government's fifth on the subject—was published, setting out plans for an 80 or 100 per cent elected upper house. This article reviews its prospects. It concludes that although the government is now apparently more in line with the views of its supporters, there are many other obstacles. Fundamental differences remain both within and between the political parties, and several key principles remain unresolved. Progress is therefore unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2010 British Election Study and the 2012 Taiwan Election and Democratization Study, this paper investigates the impact of political predispositions on the association between election campaigns and voting choice in Britain and Taiwan. Findings show that the political predispositions of partisanship (strength), political sophistication and election interest do play moderating roles in the association between campaigns and voting choice in Britain and Taiwan. Of these predispositions, the study finds no differences in the moderating roles of partisanship and political sophistication in Britain and Taiwan. However, election interest plays a moderating role differently in Britain and Taiwan. This paper argues that this finding may be attributed to differences in the political contexts of the two democracies. The findings of this study offer new insights into comparative political communication, indicating that the impact of election campaigns depends on individuals’ political predispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interest in electoral integrity and the validity and accuracy of election results has come to the fore as a topic of concern both among politicians and academic researchers in the last twenty years. The literature has identified a number of key variables and processes associated with electoral fraud, and lower levels of integrity. However, one deficiency with this research is that it has relied on the perceptions of fraud and malpractice, rather than first-hand data on the extent of such behaviour. In this paper we report on the results of a novel small-scale survey of people in Britain in which respondents reported some of their direct experiences of electoral fraud in recent national elections. The results indicate that the rates of electoral fraud are currently around six to eight per cent, but that this rises for members of some ethnic minority groups. We end by raising another question: if we can identify victims of electoral fraud, how are we to redress this victimisation? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the shortcomings in the UK government's Brexit negotiation strategy which reflected Prime Minister Theresa May's weak political leadership which focused on securing the short-term political survival of her government amidst turbulent and fractious domestic politics, over negotiations with the EU27. Brexit negotiations were poorly planned, and the UK government was woefully unprepared. Brexit also threatened a serious re-opening of old wounds in Northern Ireland, as debate grows around the prospect of a united Ireland inside the EU. UK politics is in turmoil and in a chronic crisis. What route the Brexit saga takes next is uncertain. But the crossroads is approaching – either the UK leaves by 31 January 2020 with no deal or passes the deal the Boris Johnson has negotiated with the EU27. The Brexit process has revealed the weakness of Westminster's insular politics seemingly incapable of running a modern economy and society. Westminster's politics are becoming more not less dysfunctional. The phenomenon of British exceptionalism towards the EU is set to take a new dramatic turn, while the UK's chaotic political divisions will not disappear any time in the foreseeable future. The result of the 12 December 2019 General Election may even complicate the Brexit Conundrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this special edition, the editors have asked us to consider how political marketing has been used in the 2010 British Election, how it is evolving, and the prospects for its future use. We do this with specific reference to the attack advertising employed. Having empirically investigated British Election advertising campaigns since 1997, we also offer contrasts with 1997, 2001, and 2005. In evaluating the use of attack advertising in elections, we reveal how its future needs to be significantly different from its past. In this paper, we begin by examining some of the central contextual issues that were purported to inform the campaigns, and that also influenced public opinion towards parties, leaders, and voting itself. We then present the core arguments that both support and reject the use of attack advertising in election campaigns. We then move on to present detailed accounts of the advertising campaigns for the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat parties - using a combination of primary interview and secondary data. Our evaluation of these campaigns focuses on the consequences of attack advertising for political engagement and trust, and thus the reputation of political marketing. This analysis will also include comparisons with the 1997, 2001, and 2005 elections. The paper will conclude by considering the future of political advertising in British elections - as it is theorised and practised in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]