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Since coverage in the press, in the summer of 2008, of concerns about quality and standards in English higher education, there has been a continuing debate about the nature and extent of the issues and about who is responsible for assuring quality. This article charts the background to these discussions and highlights the characteristics of the English system based on autonomous institutions and self-regulation. It also identifies the role played by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), and its predecessor organisations, in shaping the debate and determining the systems and processes that are used to demonstrate the security of academic standards. (Contains 7 notes and 1 figure.)

In this article we examine the emerging party systems of the devolved environments, with an eye toward shedding light on the factors that influence the number of parties in a system where parties are already mobilized but the institutional context is new. Our findings demonstrate that electoral rules have an independent effect on the number of parties. More specifically, the use of proportional representation has increased the number of parties. In addition, two social cleavage structure,factors appear to affect the design of the party system: class and center-periphery. All of these forces lead to a more complex governing arrangement in the devolved settings than that of the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections to the devolved assemblies in the United Kingdom were held under electoral laws distinct from those used for the House of Commons. Comparing the results of the devolved elections using mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation in Scotland and Wales and the single-transferable-vote (STV) system in Northern Ireland to results from the same regions held under plurality rules in UK elections in 1992, 1997 and 2001 provides a quasi-experimental test of Duverger’s Law and Hypothesis. We find support for both mechanical and psychological effects in this comparison and the results indicate that the devolved bodies have more proportional outcomes. The outcomes result in more political parties represented and as a consequence, the single-party majority governments typical in the UK govern none of the devolved assemblies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]