Search

Examines a white paper on government devolution in England, published on March 9, 2002. Proposals to strengthen regional institutions; Improvement of regional economic competitiveness; Accountability of local governments.

England has struggled to create and sustain intermediate tier institutions of leadership and governance between national government (UKG) and local authorities. This 'in perspective' paper reflects on the establishment of 39 Local Enterprise Partnerships between 2010 and 2012, and their assumption of increasing powers and resources during their first seven years of existence (2010--17). This is considered in the light of the lessons of the Greater Cambridgeshire Greater Peterborough Local Enterprise Partnership. Greater Cambridgeshire Greater Peterborough Local Enterprise Partnership was a first round Local Enterprise Partnerships eventually wound up and absorbed into a Mayoral Combined Authority -- itself a new form of intermediate tier institution -- in early 2018. Greater Cambridgeshire Greater Peterborough Local Enterprise Partnership exemplifies the challenges of intermediate tier leadership and governance in England in many ways -- the tensions between administrative and functional economic geographies; between national and local legitimacy and accountabilities; between political, business, and third sector stakeholders; between strategic leadership and delivery effectiveness. In mid-2018 Government's 'Strengthened LEPs' Review -- partly stimulated by the Greater Cambridgeshire Greater Peterborough Local Enterprise Partnership experience -- sought to reconcile some of these tensions. The paper suggests major limitations with the review's approach, which may also have surfaced fundamental contradictions in Government's devolution ambitions and policies. England will almost certainly need a new approach to local and regional growth as BREXIT issues play out over 2019-21, and as it seeks to deliver Local Industrial Strategies. The Local Industrial Strategies seek to tackle fundamental industrial and inclusive growth challenges across England's cities and regions with their wide territorial variations in performance. Whether this can be founded on an evolution of the Local Enterprise Partnership system or requires a radical fresh start remains an open question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, the UK Government announced that seven of the nation’s largest banks had agreed to publish their lending data at the local level across Great Britain. The release of such area based lending data has been welcomed by advocacy groups and policy makers keen to better understand and remedy geographies of financial exclusion. This paper makes three contributions to debates about financial exclusion. First, it provides the first exploratory spatial analysis of the personal lending data made available; it scrutinises the parameters and robustness of the dataset and evaluates the extent to which the data increase transparency in UK personal lending markets. Second, it uses the data to provide a geographical overview of patterns of personal lending across Great Britain. Third, it uses this analysis to revisit the analytical and political limitations of ‘open data’ in addressing the relationship between access to finance and economic marginalisation. Although a binary policy imaginary of ‘inclusion-exclusion’ has historically driven advocacy for data disclosure, recent literatures on financial exclusion generate the need for more complex and variegated understandings of economic marginalisation. The paper questions the relationship between transparency and data disclosure, the policy push for financial inclusion, and patterns of indebtedness and economic marginalisation in a world where ‘fringe finance’ has become mainstream. Drawing on these literatures, this analysis suggests that data disclosure, and the transparency it affords, is a necessary but not sufficient tool in understanding the distributional implications of variegated access to credit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an analysis of the latent need for further Combined Authorities across England and finds that there are many potential functional areas, like the Cambridge and Peterborough Authority, which merit them on grounds of size or growth. They often correspond to Local Enterprise Partnership or past Multi-Area Agreement areas and stand among many abortive devolution proposals of the last four years. Their travel-to-work areas frequently conflict with shire counties' present boundaries, a problem which provides the strongest obstacle to new 'larger-than-local' governance arrangements. The present government's abandonment of the requirement for new non-city Combined Authorities to have a directly elected mayor would remove a main barrier to establishing new devolution agreements across England, which is delayed by the need for a promised policy paper from government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on new governance arrangements in an English context and seeks to answer the question on whether or not Combined Authorities are strategic or fit for purpose. Combined Authorities are a fragmented response to changing boundaries, employment and labour markets and the desire for functional geographies to aid competition in a global world, but also a response to the UK and English devolution conundrum. The paper highlights some of the challenges and issues arising in a BREXIT era and points to some key research priorities for the future. Drawing on the findings from all papers presented in the special issue, the authors conclude that in a post BREXIT world there will be an even greater imperative for the leaders of Britain's cities and towns to simultaneously act locally and globally in developing economic development strategies to transform local economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The form of place-based economic strategy that is the focus of this paper is 'fleet-of-foot' partnership arrangements. Contributing to the theorisation of these institutional configurations, which are propounded by some as more flexible and responsive than democratic-administrative alternatives, the paper investigates the empirical situation in England that has unfolded over recent years. Tracing the recent historical evolution of sub-national structures that could be considered 'fleet-of-foot', the paper analyses the implications for place-based economic strategies at large. Through an analysis of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), the paper examines the extent to which the conceptual principles underpinning the notion of 'fleet-of-foot' arrangements have informed the configuration of LEPs, emphasising the importance of the legacy of past political constructions. Drawing attention to some of the primary weaknesses of 'fleet-of-foot' arrangements, the paper concludes that there are some inherent limitations to the present configuration of LEPs. These impede such partnerships in opening up space for a richer constellation of actors to participate in governance forums across flexible and functional geographies, or achieve efficient outcomes. More broadly, the paper contributes to the literature on place-based economic strategies and contemporary trends in economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the nature of the regional governance problem in England. Successive studies have pointed to the fragmented character of the regional state in England, leading to poor public policy outcomes. This paper demonstrates the extent of the problem in the North East of England, focusing particularly on cultural policy. The paper suggests that regional assemblies may provide a solution to the problem of fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing social mobility is the 'principal goal' of the British Government's social policy (Cabinet Office, 2011: 5). However, while policy perspectives present mobility as an unambiguously progressive force, there is a striking absence of studies looking at the impact of mobility on individuals themselves. Drawing on 39 lifecourse interviews with upwardly mobile respondents drawn from the UK Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Project (CCSE), this paper examines how mobility affects the psychic and emotional life of the individual. More specifically, it examines how mobility influences social, familial and intimate relationships, as well as the ontological coherence of the self. Following Bourdieu's (2004: 127) description of his own upward trajectory, the paper argues that the concept of a divided habitus, or habitus clivé, may be particularly useful for understanding some iterations of the contemporary mobility experience, particularly its most long-range forms. Such a concept, it argues, helps explain how the emotional pull of class loyalties can entangle subjects in the affinities of the past, and why - despite prevailing political rhetoric - upward mobility may remain a state that not everyone unequivocally aspires to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixed electoral systems seek to combine elements from different voting methods so as to maximise the numbers of individually accountable constituency MPs, while achieving more proportional outcomes in terms of parties' representation. This paper looks in detail at two kinds of mixed systems: variants of the Additional Member System; and AV Plus (or SV Plus). We examine how they would have operated in British conditions during the 1990s-how ballot papers would be structured, how voters respond to them and what electoral outcomes would have resulted. Both approaches offer good prospects for achieving a consensus amongst electoral reformers on an alternative to first-past-the-post elections. We also show how the Jenkins Commission's proposals can be located within the broader development of 'British AMS' by the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. In addition, we quantify the main impacts of the policy choices which the Commission made in designing the proposed system to be submitted to a referendum. The British case will be a key one for the wider debate in political science about the endogenisation of voting system changes within party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part 1 of this paper (last issue) outlined four alternative approaches to the analysis of non-class production cleavages, namely: empiricist electoral analysis, Weberian accounts, radical Weberian/conventional Marxist approaches, and sectoral theory. In Part 2, the sectoral approach is applied in two areas of empirical concern. The first is the analysis of the cleavage structures underlying party differentiation in modern Britain, looking in particular at union/non-union and public/private employment divisions within the labour force. The second area of application is the analysis of influences on political alignment, using two data sets for 1974. The conclusion argues for the greater accuracy and utility of sectoral theory compared with the other three approaches in both these areas, although the available empirical evidence linking sectoral location via unionization to political alignment remains essentially preliminary at this stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper concentrates on the realization of an inner city or urban problem in British politics in the mid-1960s. Rejecting the conventional explanation of the resultant ‘urban programme’ as solely the consequence of Labour erections to Enoch Powell's ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968, the paper assesses the utility of a number of explanations for the gestation and ultimate shape of this new policy direction. Interest-group, elite and Marxist interpretations are also rejected, while amorphous academic ideas and bureaucratic domination of an embryonic policy agenda are offered as the two most plausible explanations of the subsequent shape of the ‘urban programme’. The paper concludes with an assessment of the impact of poorly conceived policy responses in generating more viable alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU carbon price lies well below estimates of the social cost of carbon and "target-consistent" carbon prices needed to deliver ambitious targets such as the 40% reduction target for 2030. In light of this, the UK introduced a carbon price floor (CPF) for its electricity sector in 2013 and the new Dutch Government has recently made a similar commitment, while successive French Governments have called for an EU-wide CPF. This paper analyzes the impacts and design of a power- sector CPF, both at the EU and national level, using a political-economy approach. We find a good case for introducing such a price-based instrument into the EU ETS. We suggest that a CPF should be designed to "top up" the EUA price to €25-30/tCO2, rising annually at 3-5% above inflation, at least until 2030. We argue that the new EU Market Stability Reserve enhances the value of a CPF in terms of delivering climate benefits, and discuss the potential for a regional CPF in North-West Europe. We also review international policy experience with price floors (and ceilings). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a growing debate concerning the increasing salience of sport to government in the UK and the role and value of community-level sport policy. Much of this debate has centred on the role of voluntary sport clubs (VSCs) and the extent to which they can contribute to the creation of social capital. This paper contributes to this debate through a case study of sport policy implementation in England. The case study firstly highlights the strategic importance attached to social capital and its associated policy context and secondly presents key stakeholder interpretations of the likelihood that VSCs will act as agents of delivery. The analysis is served by three considerations. Firstly, what is the political and policy context for a strategic orientation to social capital? Secondly, how does this orientation relate to stakeholder perceptions of what VSCs do? Thirdly, how do stakeholder perceptions of what VSCs do affect their perceptions of how they do it? The analysis is informed by a series of 14 semi-structured interviews with a number of key stakeholders and a range of public documents produced by government, local authorities and regional agencies. The conclusions suggest that, firstly, the democratic form of social capital is most dominant in relation to sport policy and, secondly, that when considered alongside VSC stakeholder perceptions, then anticipated democratic social capital outcomes may become distorted and even corrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Britain's Liberal and Labour Parties have long identified themselves with the progressive tradition, but have often disagreed about what progress means. This paper examines British Liberals' efforts to critique state socialism during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and to articulate an alternative vision of progress based on wider property ownership, competitive markets and consumer choice. Although this vision sharpened the Liberal Party's political identity, it did little to improve its electoral fortunes, and gave way after 1959 to a more social liberal approach which overlapped with the thinking of Labour revisionists. The paper concludes by considering how much scope still exists for the contemporary Liberal Democrats to offer a distinctive progressive vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon an empirical comparative study of policy-making in England & Wales and the Netherlands. Recent changes in cannabis policy prima facie indicate some convergence towards a toughening of approaches, thereby suggesting commonalities in control cultures. However, analysis of findings illuminate significant differences in the policy process between these jurisdictions which contribute towards continued divergence towards small-scale supply and consumption of cannabis. It is argued that this can be understood and explained through an understanding of differences in both political institutions and cultures, and in organizational responsibilities and relations of power. Consequentially, this further supports the notion that comparative research and theorizing needs to take account of mechanisms and features which lead to variegated control cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It appears that recent debates within human geography, and the broader social sciences, concerning the more-than-rational constitution of human decision making are now being paralleled by changes in the ways in which public policy makers are conceiving of and addressing human behaviour. This paper focuses on the rise of so-called Behaviour Change policies in public policy in the UK. Behaviour Change policies draw on the behavioural insights being developed within the neurosciences, behavioural economics, and psychology. These new behavioural theories suggest not only that human decision making relies on a previously overlooked irrational component, but that the irrationality of decision making is sufficiently consistent to enable effective public policy intervention into the varied times and spaces that surround human decisions. This paper charts the emergence of Behaviour Change policies within a range of British public policy sectors, and the political and scientific antecedents of such policies. Ultimately, the paper develops a geographically informed, ethical critique of the contemporary Behaviour Change regime that is emerging in the UK. Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with leading policy executives, and case studies that reflect the application of Behaviour Change policies on the design and constitution of British streets, the analysis claims that current strategies are predicated on a partial reading of new behavioural theories. We argue that this partial reading of human cognition is leading to the construction of public policies that seek to arbitrarily decouple the rational and emotional components of human decision making with deleterious social and political consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a commentary on a paper about the depoliticisation of economic policy and the study of governing regimes in Great Britain. The three important conclusions drawn in the paper are discussed. According to the authors of the article, external developments will be mediated by domestic political factors and indeed that national politics will influence the timing and precise content of externally driven changes. The assertion that the transition is best conceived in terms of evolutionary change is also tackled.

Post May 1997 the conventional approaches to regeneration strategies in Britain have focused upon establishing local partnerships between - not only service providers and potential employers - but also local community-based groups. Neighbourhoods or 'localities'are now seen as the arenas within which coalitions of local interest groups meet to identify needs, to allocate resources and to engage with local communities. This paper will examine the assumptions behind such approaches and will explore the sites of conflict and the ways in which local managers attempt to reconcile differing aspirations and expectations. The paper draws upon a series of interviews with participants in regeneration initiatives in Manchester, and will suggest that regeneration managers occupy a significant place in arbitrating between different interest groups. In particular, the role of multi-agency working will be explored and the ways in which professionals (from a variety of occupations) seek to negotiate common terms of reference and understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interprets the British government's failure to achieve better control of the business cycle, not in terms of technical inefficiency, but as a politically rational pursuit of a class of 'floating voters' perceived by it to change their economic priorities according to the variable which is currently 'in crisis'. It then investigates whether this perception is accurate, and finds broadly in the affirmative in spite of a growing salience of inflation over time, on the strength of Gallup poll data from 1953-75. The finding of previous studies that government popularity declines cyclically between elections is interpreted in terms of its greater discretion in matters of economic (and other) policy variables in the mid-term, and the hypothesis is put forward that a more economically informed electorate might ipso facto have less unstable preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the relation between the position of a candidate's name on the ballot list and the number of votes he is likely to receive. The study was based on three types of elections that took place in England. The study showed that positional bias was absent in the British General Elections of 1964 but was significant in the Greater London Council Elections of 1964, 1967 and 1970 and the provincial Local Government elections in May and June 1973.

Using an analytical framework based on European Commission directives and United Nations resolutions calling for a mainstreamed and intersectional approach to age equality, this paper examines the UK’s devolved administrations’ governance practices and territorially specific public policy on older people. The findings reveal mixed progress. Whilst a number of mainstreaming prerequisites have been secured and divergent, ‘regional’ equality rights and welfare entitlements established, shortcomings are also apparent including reliance on an intercategorical, additive approach to intersectionality, one that falls short of fully addressing the diverse needs and identities of older people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper critically examines new modes of behaviour change promoted by the contemporary British state, providing a critique of libertarian paternalism as an emergent form of government in the UK. We analyse the multivalent principles and mechanisms associated with libertarian paternalism. We consider the contribution of Foucauldian theories of governmentality and psychological power within human geography to a critical analysis of libertarian paternalism. Reflecting on the example of Manual for Streets (DfT, 2007) for re-designing residential roads in the UK, we conclude by explaining why libertarian paternalist policies could lead to the formation of more, or less deliberative public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay provides a statistical and qualitative analysis of the hierarchical coverage of politics by UK Television news. It finds that there is a rigidly structured hierarchy of political access and focus, whereby the Prime Minister dominates over the cabinet, the cabinet dominates over ordinary MPs, the governing party dominates over the opposition, the three main parties dominate overwhelmingly over smaller parties, and the political elites dominate over ordinary members of the public. The paper also provides a framing analysis of TV news both during and after an election campaign period, and finds a skew towards 'horse race' and personalization coverage which both outweigh 'policy' issues. Thus television news is characterised by a hybrid of hierarchical and exclusive coverage of politics, combined with a narrowly expressed 'cynicism' or populist antagonism towards politics that is personalized and anti-systemic in its focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Former long-serving political editor of the BBC, Cole suggests that Blair’s attach on the British media – made in a speech as he prepared to vacate 10 Downing Street – was to a certain extent justified. “The recent burst of breast-beating about the loss of trust in the media has mostly been concentrated on broadcasting,” writes Cole. “But when you consider how many newspaper ‘scoops’ are not followed up by other papers, or even by the originator of the story, how many are never heard of again, you wonder whether trust in the printed word is being similarly eroded. Much of the blame for all this is put down to ‘spin’. Certainly the public relations trade, in which I include focus groups and public opinion polls, and not only in politics, but in business, the entertainment industry, and even charities, has gained an unenviable reputation for perverting the truth on behalf of its clients. This is where Tony Blair’s criticism of media obsession with ‘impact’ rings bells. Non-governmental organisation, charities, university researchers have all learned that the first sentence of their press release must contain a story. Sometime it is hyped. When I was news editor and deputy editor of The Guardian, we were very reluctant to print a story that claimed a forthcoming cure for cancer, lest it raised false hopes in patients and their families. Nowadays, researchers seem to claim cures for everything down to in-growing toenails, and gain publicity for them… The media do not operate in a vacuum. If we wonder why life is more strident today, we must look at others, including politicians, but also at ourselves. We have some kind of duty to truth, so far as we can discover what the truth is. But are we taking on the malignant forces that impede the search for truth as often as we ought?” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MG Rover was the final name by which the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) became known. BLMC had been formed in 1968 upon a government initiative to strengthen the UK's automotive industry so that it could compete effectively with the American and other European multinationals in international markets. Within six years BLMC teetered on bankruptcy and was all but nationalised. This paper traces the ongoing secular decline of BLMC through its various stages down to the eventual closure of the Longbridge plant in 2005. In particular it will look at key themes such as investment, output, product development and market failure. In particular, there will be examination of the role of the various owners of Rover such as British Aerospace, BMW and the Phoenix Consortium as well as the part played by the UK government in the company's eventual downfall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK political system has long exemplified ‘majoritarian’ or ‘Westminster’ government, a type subsequently exported to many Commonwealth countries. The primary advantage of this system, proponents since Bagehot have argued, lie in its ability to combine accountability with effective governance. Yet under the Blair administration, this system has undergone a series of major constitutional reforms, perhaps producing the twilight of the pure Westminster model. After conceptualizing the process of constitutional reform, this paper discusses two important claims made by those who favor retaining the current electoral system for Westminster, namely that single-member districts promote strong voter-member linkages and generate greater satisfaction with the political system. Evidence testing these claims is examined from comparative data covering 19 nations, drawing on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. The study finds that member-voter linkages are stronger in single member than in pure multimember districts, but that combined districts such as MMP preserve these virtues. Concerning claims of greater public satisfaction under majoritarian systems, the study establishes some support for this contention, although the evidence remains limited. The conclusion considers the implications of the findings for debates about electoral reform and for the future of the Westminster political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to the paper "The Declining Representativeness of the British Party System, and Why It Matters," by Heinz Brandenburg and Robert Johns, which was named the Editors' Choice for this issue and which discusses representative democracy in Great Britain.

Neither spatial models of party competition nor the 'Westminster' model of British politics explain the phenomenon of Thatcherism. One explanation of its success, examined by Crete and Searing, suggests that Mrs Thatcher sought to convert the Conservative party and the wider electorate to her distinctive brand of liberal Whiggism and traditional Toryism. They found little evidence of the success of this, however, among the British electorate as a whole. In this paper, data from the first national survey of Conservative party members demonstrates that she had little success in converting the Conservative party to these ideas either, although she did have a secure ideological base within the party. The results also suggest that her successor, John Major, has a rather different support base within the party from that of Mrs Thatcher. The implications of these findings for spatial models of party competition and the Westminster model of British politics are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of Amnesty International's relationship with the British Government. It demonstrates Amnesty has a close working relationship with the Foreign Office over human rights violations abroad but is excluded from policy formation with regard to human rights in Britain. The differential treatment accorded to this legitimate group within different policy networks is discussed with regard to pluralist and state autonomy theories. It concludes that present accounts of pluralism cannot be empirically differentiated from reasonable theories of state autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way of manipulating the demands of citizens is by shaping their perceptions of what is possible. An important technique for creating the illusion of impossibility is the familiar political claim that 'the time is not right' for a particular reform. The argument purports to point to objective, immutable constraints. More often, reference is merely to the artificial bargaining routines of politics. Groups are co-opted into issue-specific subgovernments, not out of necessity but for sheer administrative convenience. Political time moves quickly or slowly in that sector depending on the number, character and obstinacy of those co-opted groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capital to the best-known classification of Political Arguments is a distinction between want-regarding and ideal-regarding principles, upon which this paper bases alternative representations of the dynamics of political debate. These are discussed with specific reference tot eh possibility that want-regarding goals are served less well by British planning decisions than if ideal-regarding arguments were permitted. The representations provide a limited explanation of how such a situation might come about and be maintained. Initially the draw on Down's models of voting and party competition, but explore alternatives because of: (1) the possibility that some assumptions needed for a Downsian representation cannot realistically be made about political arguments; and (2) the probability that factors other than verbal arguments enter into planning decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before World War f religion was a major determinant of voting in Britain. Butler and Stokes have used recent interview surveys, divided into cohorts, to trace the declining effect of religion on British partisanship or at least the present day results of that historic decline. This paper compares their findings with census based analyses of religion and voting at each election from 1918 to 1970 and for each major party. The results confirm and extend the Butler/Stokes conclusions. The Conservatives consistently benefited from the Anglican tradition, Labour consistently did badly in areas of high religiosity. But the Liberals connection with both class and religion varied. Religious effects were large between the wars. They dropped to a low level in 1950-1 and then increased again though not to the interwar level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces several papers about gender in contemporary British politics. Women have made substantial inroads into the masculine world of politics. The articles provide a valuable and timely commentary on contemporary political developments and at the same time perfectly demonstrate both the quality and range of current research in this area. For both Sarah Childs and Nirmal Puwar the context is the House of Commons. Childs uses the experience of the 1997 intake of Labour women Members of Parliament (MPs) to ask whether they have a distinctive style of politics. Puwar reflects on the symbolically disruptive impact of the presence in parliament of women, black and other ethnic minority MPs. Judith Squires and Mark Wickham-Jones provide an assessment of what has been achieved in terms of mainstreaming gender concerns in the policy process, by what has been known as the Women and Equality unit. Vivien Lowndes uses data on women's participation in politics and social networks at local level to engage with the currently highly influential social capital thesis. Rosie Campbell explores current gender differences in ideology and issue preferences through a statistical analysis of data from the British Election Study.

How do institutions adapt and reform themselves in response to new challenges? This article considers the role of ideas and posits that the concept of 'dilemma' – clashes of beliefs played out through power relations and practices – offers a complementary tool to understand institutional change. It draws on the 2014 appointment of a new Clerk to the UK House of Commons – in which conflicting beliefs about the House of Commons administration opened a dilemma for key parliamentary actors – as a token case study to highlight the value of the concepts of beliefs, practices and dilemmas. It further broadens out these findings to consider the value of a wider interpretive approach for understanding how institutions may adapt and change. In doing so, it makes (1) a theoretical contribution by exploring the role of ideas in causing institutional change and (2) an empirical contribution through its analysis of parliamentary administration, an understudied area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors explain the success of the UK Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team? To answer this question, this article applies insights from organizational theory, particularly accounts of change agents. Change agents are able--with senior sponsorship--to foster innovation by determination and skill: they win allies and circumvent more traditional bureaucratic procedures. Although Behavioural Insights Team is a change agent--maybe even a skunkworks unit--not all the facilitating factors identified in the literature apply in this central government context. Key factors are its willingness to work in a non-hierarchical way, skills at forming alliances, and the ability to form good relationships with expert audiences. It has been able to promote a more entrepreneurial approach to government by using randomized controlled trials as a robust method of policy evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can political parties, social movements and governments influence market outcomes and shape the functioning of a capitalist economy? Is it possible for social democratic parties, and the labour movement in general, to promote a significant redistribution of income in favour of labour? According to proponents of the structural dependence thesis, the answer to both questions is negative, because the structural dependence of labour upon capital severely constrains feasible income distributions. This article provides a long-run analysis of the UK, which casts doubts on the structural dependence thesis. There is some evidence of a short-run profit-squeeze mechanism, but income shares are much more variable in the long-run than the structural dependence argument suggests, and the power resources available to social classes are among the key determinants of distributive outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are three broad sets of qualities that citizens might expect politicians to display: competence, integrity and authenticity. To be authentic, a politician must be judged to be in touch with the lives and outlooks of ordinary people and previous research has suggested that this expectation has grown more prevalent in recent times. In this article, we use survey evidence from Britain – from citizens, parliamentarians and journalists – to explore which groups are prone to judge politicians by which criteria. While all groups give the highest absolute importance to integrity traits, we establish that distrusting citizens are significantly more likely to prioritise authenticity. For political elites and journalists, we find indications that authenticity is less valued than among citizens: politicians place more relative importance on integrity traits while journalists value competence most. We reflect on these findings and how they help us understand the growing crisis afflicting British politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the importance of community involvement in the siting of hazardous industry in Great Britain. The effect of the European Union Seveso II Directive, which addresses the siting of hazardous industry, on British legislation is described. Problems of inter-agency coordination and the development of effective safety measures is discussed in terms of a 2005 explosion at the Buncefield Oil Depot in Great Britain.

The Commission for Africa has been presented as a moral crusade, and linked by its proponents to the ‘anti-globalisation’ activism of such campaigns as ‘Make Poverty History’. But detailed analysis of the genesis and content of its report reveals direct continuity with EBRD and World Bank programmes from the 1990s onwards. It continues and extends a series of supranational initiatives aimed at endowing transitional and developing states with the capacity to pursue and legitimise capitalist development. Its principal focus is shown to be on the need to enhance the capacity of the state to impose and maintain the social relations of capitalist production. The emphasis on restoring rather than replacing state agency is identified as a constant feature of such projects, related to the promotion of competitiveness in the global capitalist economy. Finally, this is shown to be a feature shared with New Labour's programme for the ‘modernisation’ of Britain, and the broader theoretical implications are briefly explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK government has made the sustainable reuse of land a strong policy aim in its sustainable development and planning strategies. However, in this paper we present research into recent urban brownfield redevelopments in England that shows that many aspects of sustainability are currently not being considered in practice. To explain this, we focus on the role of different stakeholders involved in brownfield development and critically examine their actions and decisions. We establish which stakeholder types (for example, architects, planners, councillors, developers, investors) are more likely to attempt to introduce sustainability into development projects and which are more successful in meeting their agendas. We conclude by identifying five reasons for variation in the achievement of sustainability in brownfield development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After coming to power in 1997, the UK's New Labour Government considered various policy responses to 'convergence'- a perceived communications revolution blurring the boundaries between previously distinct media sectors. The approach decided upon is embodied in the Communications Act 2003 which has ushered in a sweeping programme of regulatory change in the communications industries and is the most comprehensive legislation of its kind in British history. This article assesses the major provisions of the Act, touching on how it has been implemented so far by Ofcom (Office of Communications), and it analyses the implications of this landmark legislation for the future of UK communications and, especially, broadcasting policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the creation of a Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, and the devolution of power to various regional bodies in England, there has been a substantial territorial refocusing of governance within the United Kingdom. Much has been written in the social and political sciences concerning this change, especially with regard to the formation of new institutions of governance. Less is known concerning the connections between state personnel and this institutional and territorial transformation. In this paper we seek to remedy this deficiency. Drawing on empirical evidence from the English regions, we suggest that devolution is shaped by, and also shapes, the actions and strategies of a variety of state personnel in the different territories. Developing the idea of the state as a 'peopled organisation', we thus emphasise the significance of state personnel in actively producing the United Kingdom's new territories and scales of governance. This allows for an examination of the ways in which state personnel, working within different territorial branches and scales of the state, are able to accommodate, revise, or resist broader political projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of results forecasts and exit polls in BBC general election night broadcasts from 1955 to 2017. Despite the substantial role played by academics in results programmes, in devising forecasts and analysing results as they emerge, academic literature on election night broadcasts is scant. This article charts the development of election night forecasting over time and its implications for the structure and content of election night broadcasts. It draws on a unique new data set of verbatim transcripts of the first hour of every BBC election night broadcast from 1955–2017 to quantify the attention paid to forecasts and exit polls and assess how they frame discussion of the likely outcome and its potential political consequences. The article concludes that the function of election night broadcasts as 'the first draft of psephology' merits closer attention for both the political narratives and the academic research agendas they generate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes business power in the context of noisy politics by comparing business involvement in two British referendum campaigns: one about membership in the European Communities in 1975, and the Brexit referendum about European Union membership in 2016. By exploring these two contexts, the article seeks to identify the conditions under which business elites can and cannot be effective in a context of noisy politics. Three key factors are identified as determinants of business influence during periods of noisy politics: the incentives to get directly involved in noisy politics; the legitimacy of business involvement; and, finally, the capacity to act in a cohesive way. The article shows that these factors have changed substantially over the last four decades because of wider changes in the nature of capitalism, and their impact on business power in the United Kingdom and more generally is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conti's Parliament the Mirror of the Nation is an excellent, thorough exploration and explication of nineteenth-century debates over electoral reform as members of Britain's intellectual elite wrestled with the issue of how to create a system that would ensure that all opinions were advanced in the country's Parliament without an expansion of the franchise, meaning that the House of Commons was overwhelmed by the working class. A superb contribution to intellectual history, however, it makes little contact with the 'real world' of politics, where the short-term interests of the dominant political parties led to pragmatic rather than idealistic resolution to that issue. That resolution, negotiated by leading politicians from the two main parties, led to an electoral reform in 1885 based on single-member, territorially based constituencies that, with modifications only, remains in place today, generating general election results that are both disproportional and biased as a consequence of the system's geographical construction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the definition and regulation of proper standards of conduct in the British Parliament. Exploration of the limits and advantages of political self-regulation as a means of combating corruption; Background information on the standards of conduct in public life in the United Kingdom; Information on the legal regulation of standards of conduct in British public life.

Investigates the performances and pre-occupations of women in the Great Britain House of Commons. Perceptions on political women and their roles; Hypothesis of women's pre-occupation with women's issues; Extent of women's participation only in the feminine areas of health and welfare, education and consumerism.

Although retirements are a major source of legislative turnover, research on the topic has been limited, especially outside of the US House of Representatives. In this article, we address this shortcoming by examining retirements in two countries with similar electoral systems yet different legislative environments and party systems: Canada and the United Kingdom. In particular, we extend analysis on the Congress that has consistently shown Republican members retire at higher rates than their Democratic counterparts to examine whether this finding is generalizable to legislators from other parties of the right and/or favouring devolution in other parliamentary settings. In presenting data that support many of these hypotheses, we explore an important normative implication: because their partisan predispositions make them less willing to serve, politicians from parties favouring limited government and/or devolution may be less able to translate their vision of politics into policy because they face systemic problems maintaining legislative seats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From select committees to constituency requests, MPs' demands for research have increased dramatically in recent years. As Robert Long and Mark Sandford explain, the Commons Library and select committee staff play a much greater role in generating research for MPs than ever before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of cash benefits to low-paid workers has been one of the most significant developments in recent UK public policy. Since 1979, transfer payments to working-age households have trebled in real terms, helping to offset increases in wage inequality. Adopting a discursive institutionalist approach, this article argues that the growth of transfer payments partly reflects the influence of what John Kay has called 'Redistributive Market Liberalism' – the belief that poverty and inequality are best alleviated through income transfers outside the market. Although its roots can be traced back to the 1940s, Redistributive Market Liberalism came to the fore after 1979 in the context of a reaction against trade union power and renewed confidence in neoclassical microeconomics, and reached its apogee in New Labour's child poverty strategy. The 2008 financial crisis, however, appears to have disrupted the ascendancy of this free-market philosophy and prompted a return to more interventionist forms of distributional politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]