Extending human and civic rights
Book review | Asylum after Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking, by Lucy Mayblin
In Asylum After Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking, Lucy Mayblin considers the contemporary hostility of the British state towards asylum seekers in the context of colonial histories. While raising some questions about the limitations imposed by the book’s analytic framework, this is nonetheless a compelling study that will be an invaluable addition to activist-scholarship […]
‘Your tenants are gay, get over it!’: how housing services discriminate against LGBT+ people
Are public services delivering equality for LGBT+ people? In a socially progressive society like the UK, the presumption is that they probably are. But Peter Matthews and Chris Poyner‘s research suggests some very basic steps are still required to deliver equality, notably in Scottish housing and homelessness services. Pride march in Glasgow, 2010. Photo: Pride Glasgow via a […]
Inheritance, patriarchy, the social contract: the perils of invoking ‘generation’ in politics
Generation is a pivotal concept in contemporary politics, but not enough attention is paid to the way in which it operates ideologically. Ben Little and Alison Winch explain the different meanings of generation in political culture – which originated when Edmund Burke invoked the concept to bind people to the state – and highlight the tension between them. […]
Audit 2017: How effectively are class inequalities controlled in the UK?
Class is back – class inequalities now feature centrally in multiple media, are core to campaigns and protest movements, and are a part of everyday conversation. Mitigating their effects again plays a key role in policy formation and formal politics. As part of our 2017 Audit of UK Democracy, James Pattison and Tracey Warren consider how far […]
Making it easier to vote hasn’t cut health-related inequality in turnout. Quite the opposite
Conscious that people with disabilities and health problems may find it difficult to vote, some countries have tried to make it easier for them by introducing mobile polling stations and proxy or advance ballots. But as Hanna Wass, Mikko Matila (both University of Helsinki), Lauri Rapeli and Peter Söderlund (both Åbo Akademi University) write, these measures […]
Book Review | After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality
In After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality, editors Heather Boushey, J Bradford DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum bring together contributors to reflect on the influence of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and to draw attention to topics less explored in Piketty’s analysis. While this is a work of serious scholarship that is suited primarily to an academic audience, these reflections on […]
Join us at the LSE for the launch of our 2017 Audit of UK Democracy
On Thursday 12 October at 6.30pm Democratic Audit is launching our 2017 Audit of UK Democracy at the LSE with a discussion of the Grenfell disaster’s lessons for local government, public housing and social justice. Speakers include Lynsey Hanley, the author of Estates: An Intimate History, Prof Colin Copus and Prof Patrick Dunleavy, the co-director of Democratic […]
Book review | Voices from the ‘Jungle’: Stories from the Calais refugee camp
Voices from the ‘Jungle’: Stories from the Calais Refugee Camp offers a collection of individual testimonies written by a number of people residing in the so-termed Calais ‘Jungle’, the refugee camp in Northern France. While more accounts from women would have been welcome, this is a moving and timely anthology that seeks to give a voice […]
Eleanor Mills: women are still portrayed through the lens of a male, pale and stale establishment
A new report by Women in Journalism, “The Tycoon and the Escort: The business of portraying women in newspapers”, shines a light on the extent to which British media offer a male-dominated interpretation of society. The title refers to the description used in the coverage of the murder by a businessman of his lover, which as the […]
Germany no longer bans extremist parties. But which European democracies do, and why?
As a last resort, democracies occasionally ban political parties. Angela Bourne and Fernando Casal Bértoa look at what kinds of parties have been outlawed in post-war Europe, and how the rationale for banning them has evolved. They explain how, early in 2017, Germany effectively put its party ban beyond use, forbearing even to close down […]
Democratic Audit's core funding is provided by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Additional funding is provided by the London School of Economics.