The independence referendum fundamentally changed Scottish politics, with an extraordinarily high turnout of 84.6% leading some to speculate that a new era of political engagement had begun. But as Heinz Brandenburg, Zach Greene, Neil McGarvey and Stephen Campbell show, that may not be the case – with those who were brought to the polls for the first time likely […]
Educating 16 and 17-year-olds about voting and citizenship takes time, says Andrew Mycock, and the Scottish referendum was a divisive introduction to politics for some of them. Nor is it mere coincidence that 18 is the voting age in 27 of the 28 EU member states. Similar PostsOur student generation has been disenfranchisedVotes at 16: […]
Despite their surface similarity, deliberative democracy and direct democracy often pull in different directions. In this context, Lawrence LeDuc asks how the conduct of referendums can be made more deliberative. He finds that the process is currently inhibited by the intrusion of politics, the absence of clarity, the amount and quality of information, and the degree […]
Last Wednesday’s Autumn Statement and Spending Review set out spending limits for the rest of the parliament, not only for UK government departments but also for the separate Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments. Akash Paun explains how this works, and how it’s growing more complicated. Similar PostsScottish devolution will now have a bigger fiscal […]
MPs yesterday voted to deploy bomb attacks against ISIS/Daesh strongholds in Syria, in response to their attack on Paris earlier this month. Here, Sean Swan argues that this is midguided, and despite the understandable yearning to be seen to ‘do something’, the Middle East has been bombed by the West before without achieving the desired results, and […]
How will the direction of EU policies change if the UK leaves? Doru Frantescu, director and co-founder of VoteWatch Europe, predicts five likely changes if the European Parliament loses its British members. Similar PostsThe UK’s renegotiation: What a fair deal between London and its European partners might look likeIt would be a democratic travesty for Brexit not to be […]
The UK’s first coalition government during peacetime since 1945 ended with the electoral decimation of the Liberal Democrats at the 2015 election, with the party seemingly punished for its inability to create a compelling justification for its 2010 voters to back them again in the post-Coalition UK political landscape. Here, Inaki Sagarzazu and Heike Kluever […]
The issue of devolution is squarely on the agenda. Yet despite appearing to have obtained the coveted policy position of a principle without political enemies, the devolution mission itself is not guided by any clear principles, writes Bob Hudson. Instead, actions have been tactical rather than strategic, while current proposals are characterised by democratic, constitutional, […]
Constitutional debates around independence claims present various gendered dimensions and implications for women and gender equality policy issues more broadly. In this article, Tània Verge and Alba Alonso challenge the idea that differences between women and men’s voting patterns can be simply reduced to risk aversion, and write that the public debates largely suffered in […]
Drawing of evidence from the Conservative Party archive David Swift sheds light on the active and changing role that women have played in the the Party since the 1920s. His research reveals a story which is far more complex than standard narratives which centre heavily on Margaret Thatcher as the ‘female Conservative’ par excellence. Similar PostsThis May be Tory feminism: […]
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