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PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR: The aim of this paper is to explain the roots and successes of contemporary anti- Europeanism in Great Britain. The contention is that the politics Euroskepticism provides a legitimate framework for otherwise explicitly racist and xenophobic attitudes. The past couple of years have seen a changing of the guard amongst extreme parties on the issue of immigration, from the racist politics of the British National Party (BNP) to the anti-EU xenophobia of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). The paper proceeds in explaining this change by way of three parts; part one examines the historical context of modern anti- Europeanism, looking specifically at institutions, traditional intergovernmentalism towards Europe and cultural protectionism as important historical themes. Given this context, part two seeks to explain what factors impel xenophobic voting. It tests the theory that economic and societal competition produce opposition to immigration (Money 1999) using cross-county descriptive statistics. Concluding that these factors are conditions, not explanations, part three asserts politics of perceived competition as bearing explanatory weight. Mechanism of politicization include the institutional characteristics of opposition in parliamentary democracy, newspapers and readership, and most importantly, campaigning. The paper conclude that anti-Europeanism heard on the continent is a projection of anti-immigrant voices politicized in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes advantage of the development of social-scientific textual analysis computer software, capable of processing vast amounts of material (Laver, Benoit and Garry, 2003; Young, 2000), in order to generate extensive data on the last 11 British Prime Ministers. Indeed, despite the importance of the Prime Minister to both British and international politics, systematic quantitative approaches to its study are extremely scarce. This reflects an as yet untaken opportunity to apply sophisticated methodological techniques to the vast amount of public-domain source-material available (Rhodes, 1995). In this study, the universe of Prime Minister responses to foreign policy questions, available through the Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates series, are collected and analyzed from the words as data perspective. Specifically, the content-analysis software program Profiler+ is applied. Developed specifically for use in conjunction with M.G. Hermann’s (1980/1999) Leadership Trait Assessment technique, Profiler+ generates data reporting an individual’s likely information processing style and choice propensities. These measures are supplemented by a quantitative investigation of the extent of prior experience of Prime Ministers on taking office. The resulting data-set allows for systematic analysis of variation and comparability in 11 post-1945 Prime Ministers, and can be linked to theories of individual impact on executive organization and operation. The paper will be of interest to those who study executive operations and decision-making in Prime Ministerial systems, individual political leaders, British politics and foreign policy, and those involved in the emerging words as data approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awareness of voter dissatisfaction has prompted various attempts at institutional reform in Westminster political systems. Such reforms have attempted to increase the influence of backbench members, strengthen the role of committees and improve opportunities for public participation. Those pushing for change argue that such changes will have a positive impact on popular estimations of politics and the political system. In the absence of a clear understanding of the predictors of voter dissatisfaction, however, it is not clear what reformers are reacting to, nor what voters see as the source of their malaise. This paper examines voter satisfaction with democracy in Westminster systems in an effort to determine which factors can best account for declining confidence, satisfaction, efficacy and trust in politics. It pays particular attention to the influence of electoral systems, the role of politicians, and other civic institutions to determine whether the Westminster system itself is producing citizen malaise, or whether certain design features can be held responsible. In its analysis the paper relies on data from election studies in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following methodology employed in the United States (Lieske 1993) this paper examines the existence of regional political cultures in Canada, the UK and Australia. Existing literature in all three cases suggests that political boundaries, whether provincial, regional or state, create political sub-cultures. An examination of existing data suggests, however, that these are not sub-cultures, nor are they created by sub-state politics. Rather, they are regional variant cultures encouraged by differing patterns of treatment from the parliaments in Ottawa, London and Canberra. Building on methodology adapted from Lieske’s article on “Regional subcultures in the United States” and presented at the recent Canadian Political Science Association Conference the analysis draws on aggregate data for constituencies and then identifies coherent cultural clusters. Data from election studies allow for an analysis of the dominant attitudes and behaviours in each cluster. The paper argues that such clusters operate across and within sub-State political boundaries and urges a conceptual distinction between political sub-cultures and regional variations of a dominant culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between the state and nonwhite civil society, specifically the connection between social policy regimes and the activities and ideologies that nonwhite organizations adopt. This paper conducts binary-logistic regression analysis of New York City Nonwhite Associational Dataset and the London Nonwhite Associational Dataset. This paper finds a relationship between governmental funding and the lack of a racial ideology in New York City and a relationship between governmental funding and the presence of a racial ideology in London. These findings reveal the influence of the neo-liberal social policy regimes of the United States and the United Kingdom, suggesting that the imperatives of the state more so than socioeconomic exigencies define the organizational tendencies of nonwhite communities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a 'feminist institutionalist' approach to explore and understand the gendered dynamics of change and innovation in the institutions of candidate selection and recruitment in the United Kingdom. The focus of the paper is on multiple inter-connected 'paths' of institutional reform in the British Labour Party: situating the specific case of institutional innovation and (re)design of the institutions of political recruitment in post-devolution Scotland within a background of party reform processes at the UK level. Drawing on the findings of a micro-level case study of a Scottish constituency selection contest, the paper argues that the 'success' of institutional reform in the Labour Party is a complex and contingent question. Drawing on the insights of both feminist and new institutional theory, the paper attempts to theorize these institutional interconnections, illustrating the difficulties of reforming and redesigning the institutions of selection and recruitment in a multi-level party system. The paper concludes by offering some theoretical suggestions as to the complex and gendered dynamics of institutional innovation, design, continuity, and change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh assembly in 1999 brought a new electoral system to mainland Britain, mixed-member proportional (MMP). This paper examines the electoral effect of having two types of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). Lundberg (2006), using an elite survey in 2000 and 2003, has shown that MSPs elected through the constituency part of MMP spend more time doing constituency service than MSPs elected thought the list. This paper looks at the effect of these different types of incumbency on constituency vote totals in the 2003 and 2007 Scottish Parliament elections. While it finds that both types of incumbents have an incumbency advantage, this effect is small for list MSPs and is also affected by the party affiliation of the MSPs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

'Nested newness' is a way of theorizing the bounded nature and contradictory outcomes of institutional innovation by highlighting the complex configurations and interconnections of political institutions in multi- level systems. Constitutional and institutional restructuring in the UK in the 1990s resulted in the creation of new parliamentary spaces and structures of governance. Women activists and feminist ideas were important elements in the shaping of constitutional reform. The inclusion of women and the promotion of gender equality were seen as emblematic of a wider aspiration for 'new politics' in Scotland and Wales: a more inclusive politics departing from the zero-sum games of the Westminster model. The paper draws upon new institutionalist and feminist insights to examine the general and gendered difficulties of institutionalising 'new politics' in the devolved institutions. The new institutions are not blank slates but are 'nested' within older ones and shaped by political continuities and path dependencies. The paper seeks to identify gendered mechanisms of institutional resistance and reproduction and the specific dynamics and institutional interconnections that underpin gendered institutions and limit change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will assess the influence of mobility and migration on citizens’ satisfaction with local public services in the UK. The paper uses UK Census data and the Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPI) survey on the provision of local services. ..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]

The importance of trade and its significance to national power and state survival has always been well appreciated and studied. While much attention has been lavished on the possible correlation between interdependence and conflict, unfortunately, an important variable has been largely left ignored. This "ignored" variable centers on the dependence countries possess not with one another, but with "third party markets." How does trade competition over third party markets factor in a country's cost/benefit calculations regarding the likelihood of war? Can this variable play a role in creating disincentives for conflict, as many argue interdependence can? Or do trade rivalries over markets create fears of vulnerability when the competition becomes asymmetrical? Consequently, by simply examining the levels of interdependence between states and its relationship between war and peace, scholars are missing an important element in the study of trade and conflict. Rectifying this omission is the central theme of this paper. The Genoese-Venetian rivalry of the 12th and 13th centuries and the Anglo-Dutch rivalry of the seventeenth century offer important insights into the exploration of how and why competitions for markets create the conditions for war or peace. This paper will argue that Trade Expectations Theory provides a more complete understanding of trade competition over third party markets and its casual relationship to conflict can be obtained. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A (re)emergence of identity in England is occurring following the allocation of devolution to Scotland and Wales. This paper discusses why English identity is forcing Westminster to overhaul the administrative structure of the UK once again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper connects the formal theory surrounding Duverger's Law with an empirical specification and test to examine the empirical evidence for strategic voting in the 2001 General Election in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on the experimental findings of the motivated reasoning literature to numerous election studies in the U.S., Britain, and Germany. Conclusions inform both the information processing and campaign effects literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women’s chronic under-representation in both elected and appointed elite office has unfortunately been an enduring feature of many nations’ political systems. Comparative research in this field has concentrated largely on system-level factors or large-n quantitative studies to shed light respectively on which conditions tend to be more conducive to progress toward parity and both how electable women are perceived to be and how much they act differently than men once elected. We know for instance, that women are better represented PR list systems, particularly when they are affiliated with parties possessing internal quotas or target parity goals. I would argue, however, that this work although quite important tends in composite to treat women simply as a case upon which variables operate, thereby effectively removing women themselves from the politics of their political place. Similarly, it also largely ignores the role of women elites within their own party structures in any period, but particularly any time prior to the so-called second wave of feminist mobilization in the 1970s. This study hopes to address what I believe to be weaknesses in the literature by examining comparatively a previously neglected institutional component - namely the intial conditions of entry negotiated, accepted or imposed upon the first cadre of elite partisan women post-suffrage. Using data from primary research in women’s organization and party archives, private papers of notables and other sources, I will argue that the formation of separate and definitely unequal women’s divisions in all major parties of Great Britain and the United States, was to have lasting deleterious effects on partisan women’s ability to successfully pursue any distinct women’s agenda once they had formally joined men’s parties. I will also argue that this strategic error was compounded by an political landscape charged by sex antagonism and competition for the loyalities of millions of new voters. It was also in many ways, one from which partisan women have never fully recovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies have examined the economic status of immigrants, most studies of immigration have neglected immigrant opinions. When immigration is addressed at all using survey data, studies almost exclusively focus on native attitudes toward immigration and not on attitudes of immigrants themselves. In this paper, we investigate whether immigrants and natives have systematically different attitudes toward social spending and redistribution. We employ surveys from Germany and Great Britain that sample a relatively large number of immigrants compared to typical national election surveys. In addressing this potential “opinion gap,” we control for socioeconomic characteristics, such as income and education as well as immigrants’ ability to assimilate into their new country’s labor market by comparing an immigrant’s skill level with his or her actual occupation in the new country. We also include contextual covariates to account for potential network effects. Our statistical analyses use ordered logistical regressions and are fully interactive (following Franzese 1999), consistent with our theoretical expectation that the models’ independent variables affect natives differently than they do immigrants. Once these controls are included, we observe that immigrants are never more likely than natives to favor increases in social spending or to endorse redistributive measures. In instances where we do find a significant opinion gap between natives and immigrants, the latter tend to support more conservative positions, favoring tax cuts at the expense of social spending. While some of our findings are preliminary in nature, they nevertheless represent a significant contribution to the extant literature, which, to our knowledge, does not include comparative studies on the political attitudes of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is considerable agreement that economic conditions affect electoral outcomes, there is less agreement as to exactly how. Scholars have spent a great deal of effort exploring the links between economics and vote choice but have generally ignored the potential that economic perceptions could also affect the likelihood of voter abstention. I explore that possibility in this paper. First, I develop a theory of how economic perceptions affect the likelihood of abstention. I argue that the relevant factors in this relationship are one?s retrospective and prospective judgments of the economy and the ideology of the respondent and government. Hypotheses are generated and tested using national election survey data from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. The results show that economic perceptions have an effect on the likelihood of electoral abstention. This effect is mediated by the ideology of the respondent and party and appears to be weakened in situations of greater coalitional complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the 11 years that Margaret Thatcher occupied the office of prime minister in the United Kingdom, the economy was transformed away from its quasi-corporatist roots toward a more market-centered, laissez-faire system like that of the United States. The power of the unions was diminished, monetarist programs were introduced, substantial privatization occurred, and the legacy of Keynesian politics faded away. At the same time, the welfare state was restructured to put more focus on market forces and flexibility. Of particular interest is the relative tameness of the welfare state changes as compared to those in the economic sector. What caused Thatcher to hold back on serious welfare state retrenchment? The argument presented in this paper is that the extent of liberalization that occurred in the United Kingdom can best be understood by recognizing the particular economic and electoral pressures that faced Thatcher’s Conservatives. While Thatcher’s government was capable of passing legislation in keeping with its neo-liberal agenda for the country, the cultural preference for some government provision of social services (such as the National Health Service) became a constraint on policy-making. Furthermore, the effect of popular pressure was felt not only in the electoral realm, but also within the Conservative Party itself. Thatcher would have preferred to cut deeper and retrench more, but the preferences of her caucus and party members, and the power that they yielded over her position as party leader, forced her to check her own instincts and institute a milder version of neo-liberal welfare state reform. In the end, the Thatcher governments of the 1980s produced a liberal economy-welfare state combination that had a market focus but also a (seemingly contradictory) measure of social democracy in its social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and compares occasions when foreign/defense policy has become atypically salient in British Public opinion by examining public opinion data on the Suez crisis, the Falklands war, the Gulf War, Kossovo, and the Iraq war. Our preliminary finding is that these issues are not generally seen as significant by UK voters, but surge to the fore in crisis periods, usually, but not always, to the benefit of the government of the day. The effect on public opinion tends to be short-term however, and foreign policy has not been a decisive issue in recent British General elections [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young adults have since long been identified as a group of the electorate least likely to vote. Recent research suggests, however, that turnout among young cohorts is declining rapidly in some countries. It does so at a much faster pace than the turnout among older age groups. In sum, today's youth turns out at lower levels than their parents or grandparents did when they were young. Consequently, the turnout gap between younger and older voters enlarges. The trend towards a widening generational divide has been particularly well documented in Canada and Great Britain. In other countries, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, the turnout difference between younger and older citizens is however stable through time. This paper contributes to the literature on youth participation by assessing the age gap in voter turnout in a longitudinal and comparative way. After observing patterns in the age gap in turnout, competing hypotheses explaining trends are put to the test. Using time-series cross-sectional analysis, the impact of both characteristics of elections and characteristics of voters on the age gap are assessed. The focus is exclusively on Western democracies for which the age gap can be estimated through election survey data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do governing parties voluntarily transfer significant political and/or fiscal powers to subnational authorities? Contributing to the literature on the origins of institutions, this paper views decentralization as an electoral strategy. Unlike existing strategic explanations, however, I argue that decentralization is a means to bolster a governing party's national-level electoral strength. It is a tool, akin to policy appeasement, used to co-opt pro-decentralization regionalist party voters. By conceiving of decentralization in this manner, we can understand why parties propose devolution reforms that would sabotage their control of the newly created subnational bodies. Because the costs of this institutional strategy are disproportionately concentrated at the subnational level, the policy will only be adopted and implemented by centralized parties that prioritize national-level power. I illustrate the power of the institutional appeasement theory by examining intranational variation in the degree and timing of decentralizing reforms in the regions of Great Britain. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While priming is often mentioned in studies of media effects in Britain, empirical tests of the media’s capacity to prime are lacking. Similarly, despite the recent claim that evaluations of party leaders in Britain are more important to voting behavior than previously thought, little is known about whether or how the media influence those evaluations. In this paper we examine media priming in British elections. Our analysis will demonstrate that there were some strong, dynamic, media effects on perceptions of Tony Blair in 2001 and 2005, both as a direct consequence of the amount of coverage of an issue and via priming. These effects appear stronger than the media’s capacity to set the agenda in either election. We will also examine the impact of the tone of coverage of issues on priming effects and explore short-term and cumulative effects of media coverage, in keeping with recent literature. Our findings thus far are at odds with claims that British elections are too short and British newspapers too partisan for there to be media effects beyond partisan reinforcement. Our analysis of the short-term and cumulative effects of media coverage on priming will also provide a unique examination of their influence outside the US. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses OLS regression analysis of pooled data to account for the significant regional variation in the emergence (or absence) of democracy among former British colonies from 1950 to 2000, as British colonial rule seems to have bequeathed a legacy of democracy in some regions (e.g. North America, Australia, India, the West Indies), while others failed to democratize at Independence (e.g. much of Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East). Developing a six part typology of colonization within the British Empire, I argue that the pattern of colonization (settlement, forced settlement or Occupation) and the legal status of the territory (Colony, Protectorate or Protected State) affected the poltical institutions established in each territory, and that these institutions, in turn, have affected the capacity of these countries to maintain democratic rule after Independence. In addition to this new typology, I also examine a variety of control variables to assess the validity of counter-arguments such as the level of economic development, the impact of oil production, ethnic fractionalization, religious composition and size. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the longterm impact of colonization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and contrasts the discourses and practices of intra-EU migration in France and the UK. In both, emigration and immigration are significant and contemporary facts of national life; in each, traditional patterns are being challenged; and in both cases, scare-mongering in this regard has been a dominant feature of recent discourse. In particular, the free movement of people associated with the 2004 and 2007 (but especially 2004) enlargements of the EU posed specific policy challenges to political leaders and local communities alike. In France, the phenomenon contributed to the rejection of the EU’s Constitutional Treaty; in the UK, the government failed first to predict the numbers of economic migrants from East Europe, and then to count them once they had arrived. Both countries, finally, are experiencing significant cross-Channel mobility: a microcosm of intra-EU migration per se. France is for sale, it would appear (cheap houses), while the French are for hire (cheap labour). These stereotypes should tell us something about the range of political discourses we can expect when exploring the characteristics of intra-EU mobility, and the relations between movement on the one hand, and public policy on the other. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of research, particularly from the United States, that considers the role candidate sex has upon political attitudes and behaviour. There is some, mixed, evidence that women will tend to favour women candidates when making their vote choice (Plutzer and Zipp 1996; Cook 1998; Dolan 1998; Dolan 2001). Moreover, the literature suggests that all voters tend to assess men and women candidates differently (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a; McDermot 1997; McDermot 1998; Cutler 2002; Schwindt-Bayer, Crisp and Malecki 2008). This paper uses the British case, which so far has not been included in the expanding literature, to explore the relationship between candidate sex and vote choice. Using the British election study series and the British parliamentary constituency database we test whether women really do vote for women. We use staged regression techniques to control for the endogeneity that arises from the disproportionate number of Labour women candidates placed in winnable seats. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the global community, from UNESCO to NGOs, is committed to promoting the status of women in science, engineering and technology, despite the long-held prejudice or lack of role models. From the late 1990s, governments in Britain and Japan began collaborating with various bodies, including higher education institutes. The paper underscores the importance of the reputation of women's universities embedded in the institutional foundations, by explaining how female scientific communities take shape in different national contexts. Britain, as a primary example of the neoliberal welfare regime, promoted its policy under the auspices of the Department of Trade and Industry, while Japan, as a conservative welfare regime with strong emphasis on the male-breadwinner model, carefully treated this matter from the perspective of 'equal participation of both men and women', rather than that of 'equality'. In this trend, women's universities, with their tradition of encouraging to become a 'good wife, wise mother' were regarded as legitimate and effective players to reverse the low ratio of women in scientific research (12.6 percent as of 2007, in contrast to 39.2 percent in Britain). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernization signaled the de-alignment of traditional social cleavages in advanced industrial states. Implicit in this is a homogenization of electorates according to post-material, "new politics" values. Although the impact of traditional social cleavages may have weakened, electorates are not de-aligned; the traditional social cleavages remain important divisions which structure the electorate in significant and meaningful ways. This paper focuses on the impact of religious voting relative to the other traditional social bases of politics in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, comparing the modern electorates to the electorates of the early 1960s. Using election survey data and focusing on the social bases of conservative parties' support, the results show that while most of the social bases of electoral support have weakened, religious voting remains significant and has increased in the contexts of the United States and United Kingdom. This suggests that despite the decline in religious attendance, the traditional values shared by religious voters make them a tempting social basis of conservative parties’ voter coalitions, and that this may be occurring beyond these contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why do the policy positions of parties change? We have good theoretical reasons to expect that political parties adopt policy positions in response to the preferences of voters, since voters are likely to prefer parties that have ideological positions that most resemble their own. At the aggregate level, this leads to the prediction that parties shift their positions towards the median voter's bliss point. Extensive research has documented that parties adjust their ideological position in response to public opinion shifts. Yet, such empirical research has tended to lack sufficiently long time-series of party positions to systematically examine the dynamics of party positions over time. This leaves a number of questions still to be further explored, such as: when do parties shift their ideological positions? Are parties more responsive to the median voter or to party supporters? Does the responsiveness of parties to voters depend on the electoral cycle? This paper examines these questions using time-series data on party leader positions from 1973-2008 in Denmark and Britain. We find that party leaders adjust their positions in the direction of the median voter, and that the extent of this adjustment is greater in election years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An expansive literature demonstrates the importance of centralized wage bargaining for economic outcomes in OECD countries. Scholars have devoted far less attention to the origins of centralized bargaining and the question of why variations in the degree of bargaining centralization exist. Standard accounts suggest that centralized wage bargaining is the product of one of three factors: the exposure of small markets to trade, the strategic interest of employers in coordinated wage bargaining, or the Olsonian logic of union encompassment. In this paper, we show the importance of politics in generating centralized wage bargaining. We argue that political parties (not unions) are the relevant encompassing organizations that internalize the externalities of union behavior. Historically, left parties endeavored to use union-party ties to forge robust structures of centralized wage bargaining when they were electorally competitive and were successful in doing so when they had a high degree of control over affiliated unions. We test this hypothesis through historical process tracing in three paradigmatic cases (Sweden, West Germany and the United Kingdom) and a quantitative analysis of centralized bargaining in 15 OECD countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a structural equation modelling approach, this paper combines available campaign data to produce a latent measure of campaign effort to analyze its direct and indirect effect on party performance at the 2005 British General Election. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the impact of distance to polling station upon electoral turnout. Using polling station level data from a London borough, it examines three types of election, parliamentary, European and local elections, over a twenty year period. The UK is notable among western liberal democracies for its relatively large turnout gap - the percentage point difference between turnout at elections for the Westminster parliament compared to that for other institutions, including local councils and the supra-national European parliament. This research considers the hypothesis that in high information, high salience elections for the national parliament the costs of voting associated with travel to vote are perceived as either low or insignificant but that in low information, low salience elections, those costs are perceived as higher and may act as a deterrent upon voting. A series of regression models consider the relationships between the dependent variable, percentage turnout, and a range of independent variables, including socio-economic characteristics, party competition as well as the spatial context. We show that there is indeed a relationship between distance and voter turnout which is stronger for the lower salience European and local elections than it is for the higher salience national elections. Hence we conclude that the local geography of the polling station can have a significant impact on voter turnout and that there should be a more strategic approach to the location of polling stations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how changes in the 'costs' of voting through the liberalisation of voting by mail has affected both the level of electoral turnout and the distribution of voter support for parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the institutional environment within which British prime ministers operate and finds the abundant powers of PMs can significantly shape foreign policy. ..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]

It is well known that the economic consequences of separation, divorce, and widowhood are strikingly different for men and women. While women on average experience a substantial decrease in incomes and living standards after transitions out of marriage, men often experience only small losses or even moderate gains. Recent work in political economy suggests that this difference in the economic consequences of marital dissolution leads to gendered redistributive and political preferences. After leaving marriage women should become more left-wing and men more right-wing. So far, however, credible causal inferences about the political consequences of marital dissolution do not exist. In this paper, we use data from the British Household Panel Survey in combination with a matching estimator to estimate the effects of transitions out of marriage on policy preferences and vote choice in British General Elections. We show that marital dissolution causes a large decline in turnout, but in contrast to previous research we find that it has no systematic effect on policy preferences and vote choice. ..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]

A closer look at the period of government of Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom) and Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway). Confronted with scepticism, both women had to prove that they were capable of equally good political leadership as men.ARE THEY ACTUALLY COMPETENT?………Two women Prime Ministers in the West in the late twentieth centuryBy Anneke RibberinkUntil recently, female national leaders were still very much in the minority all over the world. In the period 1945-1990, there were less than twenty. However, women in the West acquired more political influence than ever in the latter part of the twentieth century. There were more women in parliament, more women ministers and there were even a few women Prime Ministers, although only two of them were influential in the West. It is striking that the two women Prime Ministers who were important in the West came to power at more or less the same time, i.e. Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom, 1979-1990) and Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway 1981,1986-1989,1990-1996). And it would appear interesting to compare these two women in their political experiences as pioneers. Following a brief outline of the way in which the two women came to power, a closer look is taken at their period of government. How is the quality of their performance in government judged? Both women had to prove that they were capable of equally good political leadership as men. They were both confronted with scepticism and opposition when they came to power, as well as during their period of government. As indicated by the title of this paper, there was still a widespread view that women were incompetent in political spheres. The best way of withstanding negative expectations is to present a good policy and to perform effectively. The fact that female political leadership is already less controversial at the beginning of the 21st century than it was thirty or forty years ago is, in my view, due largely to the preliminary work of these pioneers. This paper will investigate this thesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the relationship between the personality and leadership style of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the participation of Great Britain in the war in Iraq. The research reemphasizes the importance of individual level factors in theories of foreign policy, as well as offering a comprehensive explanation of a critical episode.

This study examines how opposing states involved in territorial disputes increasingly cooperate on other bilateral relations in order to gain territorial concessions or prevent provocation in the dispute. It examines the growing cooperation between Argentina and the United Kingdom with regards to its dispute over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that in certain important yet understudied respects, unwritten constitutional rules play a similar role in the U.S. constitutional structure as they do in the constitution of the United Kingdom. It is also argued that there are three distinct sources of unwritten rules that are based on precedent, unwritten agreements, and generally accepted principles. These unwritten rules are made binding by custom, mores, and political difficulties and benefits.

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]

While the significance of issue ownership in voter choice and party strategy has been increasingly recognized, scholars have not paid enough attention to the questions of whether and how strategic party behaviors actually alter issue ownership. Unlike the extant literature that leaves strategic party behaviors out in determination of issue ownership, we formulate a dynamic approach to issue ownership that takes strategically-oriented policy moves by political parties as the core determinant of issue ownership. Based on the insight of the literature on policy feedback, we argue that political parties attempt to alter issue ownership though the mass policy feedback effects of strategically-oriented policy actions. We illustrate our approach in analysis of the Labour Party's efforts under the leadership of Neil Kinnock to change the ownership of foreign and security policy, which the Conservative Party had been conventionally regarded as most competent. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the British public’s response to the policy polarization â€" and subsequent depolarization â€" of the Labour and Conservative parties over the period 1970-2005. Using election panel studies, we analyze the extent to which rank-and file voters adjusted their partisan allegiances in response to the parties’ policy shifts, and also how voters’ partisan adjustments varied across time and across different electoral subconstituencies. Our results suggest that while British voters adjust their partisan loyalties in response to parties’ policy shifts, significant time lags intervene before voters update these loyalties. We also find that the magnitude of voters’ partisan adjustments varies sharply across subconstituencies, and that voters’ current partisanship, along with their perceptions of the parties’ current policy differences, reflect the political environment during voters’ young adulthood. Our findings have important implications for mass-elite policy linkages and for parties’ election strategies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Support for the far right in British local elections has risen markedly in recent years. The British National Party (BNP), which had no seats on British councils as recently as 2001, now holds 55 seats and is in second place in over a hundred more. The causes of this resurgence are still poorly understood. Socio-demographic predictors are likely to be important, but have not been closely examined for nearly thirty years. The progress of the far right is also influenced by the local context, with factors such as campaigning, exposure and imitation encouraging far right support. We construct a geographically weighted regression model of far right voting, using aggregate data from British local elections from 2004-8. This model includes demographic data at the local level, but also dynamic and contagion indicators such as the proximity of far right candidates, and strength of far right vote in previous elections. We use this spatial modelling framework to test a number of hypotheses concerning extreme right support that have not been applied to the British case. We focus on three demand side factors - social structure, protest voting and policy voting and two supply side factors: white ethnic homogeneity and far right party activity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referendums often have little or no overt connections to partisan politics, lacking party campaigns and ballot labels common to most candidate elections. Even for national-level referendums, voters may have scant information about the proposed ballot measure and high uncertainty about the possible outcomes. Although attitudes about the referendum question are decisive for many voters, we contend that cues provided by parties and leaders are important guides for political decision-making when stakes are high and relevant information is in short supply. Our survey experiment -- conducted with a large national sample of the British electorate (N = 17540) in the spring of 2008 -- involves voting in a hypothetical referendum on denying public services to illegal immigrants. We find that party and leader cues are suspect messages with no statistically significant effects. But when these cues are interacted with a voter’s partisan identification and affect for cue givers (party leaders), the cues have highly significant effects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party-based competition is often cast the antithesis of particularistic politics (Rose-Ackerman 1999, Sartori 2005, Schaffer 2007), a perspective that coincides with the historical observation that nineteenth century British politicians turned away from bribery and began to compete on policies as the British electorate grew larger and more party-oriented (Cox 1987). I use data on bribe prices and campaign expenditures at 338 electoral contests in Victorian Britain and Ireland to show that the extension of the franchise had only a limited impact on local campaign spending whilst the increasingly partisan orientation of the Victorian electorate actually boosted electioneering expenditures and electoral corruption. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the British case, health care was employed as a party-building mechanism, and a means of ensuring continued loyalty and association with the State. The modern health care system began to develop shortly after the final round of (male) franchise expansion.. British political elites used health benefits as one way of building party loyalty; and Britons came to associate the provision of health care with the state. This quality of the British citizen-patient identity, in turn, would serve as a bulwark against sustained efforts on the part of successive (post-1989) governments to transform its citizens into health care consumers. Both institutional formation (in the period between 1911 and 1948) and the culture it engendered had established the very different identity of citizen patient. Market penetration of the British health care system has therefore been incomplete at best. In contrast, Americans established universal white male suffrage in the mid nineteenth century. This was long before the bases of modern health care had been established. Female suffrage also failed to provide an opening for health care to enter the political arena as institution-builder. ..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]

When do conservative parties reach out to visible minorities? Why do these parties court some minority groups and not others? I investigate this puzzle spatially and temporally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]