Achieving accountable government
The best of Democratic Audit’s 2014 coverage of Scotland’s democratic future
2014 was a momentous year for democracy north of the border, with long serving Alex Salmond stepping down to be replaced by the first female First Minister Nichola Sturgeon. More dramatically still, the country decided its future, opting to stay within the UK, despite a spirited ‘Yes’ campaign which can legimitamtely claim to have changed […]
The EU’s lack of shared interests will continue to inhibit the creation of genuine democratic culture
How can the EU survive in a post crisis world, given the asymmetry of its decision-making apparatus? Andreas Follesdal argues that this, along with other issues that beset the aimed democratisation of European institutions, hinders the creation of a real culture of democratic accountability and legitimacy. Many reflective scholars voice concern about persistent features of […]
Recent events concerning U.S. elections show the importance of keeping transparency rules up to date
Recent years have seen increasing scrutiny on election outcomes after accusations of ineligible voters and ballots wrongly rejected. Rebecca Green writes that the current rules on election transparency designed to reassure the public that elections are fair are no longer fit for purpose. She writes that these election transparency rules are based on dated assumptions and […]
Economic and financial crises can change the dynamics of federal relationships
Economic recession and soaring deficits in the wake of the recent fiscal and economic crisis do not only ask for intelligent fiscal policies but need also coordinated efforts in federal states in order to forego contradictory and inefficient fiscal reactions to the crisis. Dietmar Braun and Philipp Trein have investigated eleven federations to discover what extent […]
How to address the pathologies of the British political tradition in an age of disengagement and distrust
There is undoubtedly a major issue of political disengagement between voters and Westminster’s system of government. However, the Westminster political class appears to regard the solution to the current maladies as finding ways to reinforce the existing system, rather than embracing the need to re-think the current nature of politics. It is clear that many of […]
Political parties have a key role in addressing climate change, but their responses to date have been constrained
Talks in Lima this weekend produced a global plan to tackle climate change in advance of next year’s Paris summit. Despite these periodic returns to the political agenda, parties in the UK continue to show varying degrees of interest and afford the issue differing levels of priority. Here, Conor Little discusses a project which looks at European […]
Having a legal right to settled accommodation empowers homeless people in Scotland
Scotland is exceptionally unusual in granting virtually all homeless people a legal entitlement to settled accommodation. Drawing on comparative research with single homeless men in Scotland and Ireland, Beth Watts asks what difference such legal rights really make to experiences of homelessness. Similar Posts‘Your tenants are gay, get over it!’: how housing services discriminate against […]
If implemented in full, the Smith Commission report will provide Scotland with a welcome range of new powers
The Smith Commission which looked at future options for the governance of Scotland in the post referendum landscape. Norman Bonney assesses the document, looking at its proposals on local governance, Air Passenger Duty, the continuing UK framework, and the new respective roles of the Scottish Parliament and Government, concluding that the range of powers offered are […]
The design of healthcare institutions benefits greatly from citizen participation
Whether healthcare policy should be clinician or politician-led has been the source of much controversy in recent years in the UK, with this debate reaching a peak with the debates which accompanied the passage of the Health and Social Care Act. Claudia Landwehr from the University of Mainz considers how to make decisions over health care more […]
Abolishing the monarchy would remove an obstacle to genuine democracy in Britain
The United Kingdom is a democracy, but nonetheless has an unelected and hereditary Head of State in Queen Elizabeth II. Eventually, she will give way to her son, Prince Charles. Richard Ridyard argues that this state of affairs cannot be justified, and that the continuing presence of a monarch – particularly an influential one – […]
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