Extending human and civic rights
If we really want to address elitism in this country we must be willing to take very seriously the ‘class ceiling’
The hidden barriers, or ‘glass ceiling’, preventing women from getting to the top are well documented. But as Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison explain, the upwardly mobile also face a powerful and previously unrecognised ‘class ceiling’ within Britain’s elite occupations. Similar Posts‘Stuck in their ways’: how we blame the poor for their failure to embrace globalisationThe […]
Reforming laws on free movement will be a headache for any future government
Immigration will be one of the defining issues of the General Election, with Labour and the Conservatives responding to UKIP’s hardline, anti-EU stance with tough and supposedly crowd-pleasing measures of their own. Here, Marley Morris argues that freedom of movement rules are something that any party is going to struggle to reform after the general election. […]
20 things we learned about democracy in March 2015
The General Election is (nearly) here! And here at Democratic Audit UK, we’ve been ferreting away trying to find the most interesting clumps of information, conjecture, opinion and miscellaneous. Collating it all for your pleasure, as ever, is Sean Kippin, who has been helped enormously by the launch of the Democratic Dashboard – a new voter resource bringing […]
Protecting the rights of Muslim women must not be used as a basis for denying their agency
Nourhan Elsayed argues that campaigners in that when it comes to the rights of Muslim women, the West should seek to develop a more accommodative approach, where their non-Western counterparts are understood on their own terms as equal partners, rather than simply helpless victims. Similar PostsThe Prevent duty is two years old. What’s really going […]
Defending the rule of law against the UK government’s ‘slash and burn’
Chris Grayling is the Lord Chancellor. Unusually for an individual holding this position, he possesses no legal training, nor has he any experience with Britain’s court system prior to his appointment. Gemma Blythe laments his decision-making in the job, which she argues is driven by an adherence to austerity and free-market doctrine. Similar PostsHow many judicial review cases are […]
Care is required when making assertions about the relationship between diversity and social cohesion
Democratic Audit UK recently published a piece by Gal Ariely on the relationship between social cohesion and ethnic and religious diversity. Ariely argued that the the answer to whether the latter is eroded by the former depends on how diversity is conceptualized and measured. Here, Tom van der Meer responds to Ariely, arguing that great […]
Fierce but short-lived: How does economic crisis affect political participation?
The Great Recession that hit Europe in 2008 led to the loss of millions of jobs and soaring levels of unemployment. In a recent study, Anna Kern, Sofie Marien and Marc Hooghe investigate whether the recent crisis depresses or boosts levels of political participation in Europe. They find that economic growth is positively associated with elite […]
20 things we learned about democracy in February 2015
February is the shortest month of the year, but with May’s General Election waddling ever closer, democracy factoids are never far away. Here, Democratic Audit UK’s Sean Kippin rounds up 20 more inane, amusing, and occasionally interesting bits of trivia and research for your amusement. Similar Posts20 things we learned about democracy in March 201520 […]
Electoral cycle timing and popular support for a treaty are crucial in determining whether parties advocate referendums on European integration
David Cameron is committed to holding a referendum on the UK’s EU membership should he win a majority at the next general election. In an effort to understand why parties call for referendums on European integration, Andreas Dür and Nikitas Konstantinidis look at data from the ratification of the EU’s Constitutional Treaty in 2004. They […]
Scotland Yard’s ‘protest tax’ is bonkers
The recent evidence that Scotland Yard is effectively charging organisers of protests for the ‘nuisance’ they are creating is bonkers, to put it mildly, says Bart Cammaerts. Their rationale is that the government is squeezing their budget and what better way to recuperate some of those substantial losses than to institute a protest tax. Similar PostsWhy […]
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