Intra-party dissent is generally considered a bad thing – for parties seeking power and for voters wishing to make sense of political conflicts. However, using a survey experiment to test people’s responses to different forms of intra-party policy disputes, Eric Merkley finds that there are circumstances in which voters find moderate divisions useful as cues for evaluating policy choices in light of their own preferences.
MPs face demands on their time in both Westminster and their constituency. The greater the distance between the area they represent and Parliament, the more this requires trade-offs. David M. Willumsen finds that the type of parliamentary activities an MP takes part in is affected by the distance of their constituency from Westminster, which has implications for the principle of equal representation
Election campaigning has changed radically with the growth of data-driven social media campaigns – most notably during the EU referendum campaign. The UK’s election law has not kept up. As part of a new report by the Electoral Reform Society, Bethany Shiner considers proposals for changes to the law to cover both the content of these campaigns and the methods of communication, and concludes that the enforcement of regulations for online political campaigns cannot be left to technology companies like Facebook.
In National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy, Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin offer a concise examination of the rise of national populism, seeking to challenge some of the established views regarding this political shift. While elements of the book’s analysis do engage in simplification, Simon Kaye nonetheless finds this a succinct, striking and thought-provoking work.
The underrepresentation of women in politics is often portrayed as a pyramid, with the main problem identified as too few at the top. However, research by Ulrik Kjær and Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, shows that, in the case of Denmark, it follows an hourglass pattern, with underrepresentation worst at the intermediary stages of party membership and candidate identification. This suggests that party strategies for encouraging women to stand are important for improving representation.
Online tools that improve citizens’ access to information about their political system and enable greater democratic participation have become central to the political landscape in many democratic countries. A new report examines how such tools have worked in Sub-Saharan Africa, and finds that they can be effective, as long as initiatives are designed for each country’s circumstances, writes Rebecca Rumbul.
In their nearly eponymous 1995 hit, Reverend Black Grape, I’m a Celebrity runners-up and Bargain Hunt cheats, Black Grape, asked ‘Can I get a witness?’ In 2019, why is it that some select committees seemingly find it difficult to get female witnesses to give evidence at their sessions? Marc Geddes, Mark Goodwin, Stephen Holden Bates and Steve McKay find that some of the answer may well be found in the gendered make-up of the committees themselves.
The UK’s Coalition government of 2010–15 was established with an array of formal agreements and rules for cooperation. However, finds Felicity Matthews, the informal norms and micro-level practices of individual relationships were critical to its operation. This opens up a new area in research, which focuses on the detailed practices of multi-party governance.
In Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain, Mohan Ambikaipaker offers a new ethnographic study using an ‘activist anthropology’ approach that draws on his longstanding association with the grassroots anti-racism organisation Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) to explore the role that political blackness has played in its fight for racial justice and social change. This is an important book, writes Priyanka deSouza, that foregrounds the experiences of those fighting against institutional racism and is generative of new possibilities for forging solidarity.
The Sewel Convention, by which the UK’s government normally seeks the consent of the devolved legislatures on matters that come within their competence, is enshrined in legislation. However, writes Matthew Hexter, it remains too weak and a constitutional convention is needed to fundamentally alter the balance of powers between London and the devolved nations.
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