The 2017 election saw a stronger than foreseen performance by the Labour Party. Matt Walsh explains how Labour’s Facebook success played out, heralding the party’s overall campaign performance. GE2017 was a numbers game: by achieving very high levels of organic reach, Labour managed to target undecided voters in marginal constituencies, energise voters who had drifted away from the […]
In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, James C Scott contributes to his longstanding intellectual project of re-evaluating the role of the state in political thought by looking at the development of the early agrarian states to challenge narratives of progress founded on state formation. While acknowledging that a number of objections can be […]
Who gives more to charity – Republicans or Democrats? Michael Sances (University of Memphis) and Michele Margolis (University of Pennsylvania) found that conservative Americans donate more, even when socio-economic differences are taken into account. Could this be because they support a smaller role for the state, or as an effort to signal their philanthropic credentials? […]
The Conservative manifesto planned to create a series of legally enforceable standards that prisons, and those who work with inmates, will have to meet. Nasrul Ismail and Nick de Viggiani (University of the West of England) have interviewed 30 prison policymakers about the proposed new framework. They warn its inflexibility will lead to a ‘compliance […]
Are centre-left parties across Europe facing terminal decline? Drawing on a new book, Rob Manwaring (Flinders University) and Paul Kennedy (University of Bath) argue that an essential element in any robust democracy is an effective centre-left. However, centre-left parties now face a number of major challenges, from the rise of new parties, to the erosion of their traditional support […]
Most elections are now monitored by international election observers, whose presence is intended to deter vote-rigging and who report on whether the vote was ‘free and fair’. But after the Kenyan Constitutional Court nullified the recent elections there despite observers having approved them, the value of these missions has been questioned. Sophie Donszelmann (LSE), Cristoforo […]
In The Violence of Austerity, editors Vickie Cooper and David Whyte bring together contributors to explore the negative impact of austerity upon citizens in the UK, covering such topics as health, education, homelessness, disability and the environment. This is a powerful description of the consequences of austerity policies for the UK’s most vulnerable people, writes Paul Caruana-Galizia, and should be read widely. Similar […]
The Wright reforms have been widely credited with reinvigorating select committees. Stephen Bates, Mark Goodwin (University of Birmingham) and Steve McKay (University of Lincoln) take issue with this assumption. They found the reforms have made little or no difference to MP turnover and attendance, which are driven by the parliamentary cycle. When MPs are jostling […]
Petition canvassers play an important role as political recruiters by introducing citizens to political issues and seeking their support. But not much is known about how these canvassers decide whom to recruit or about their methods. Research by Clayton Nall (Stanford), Benjamin Schneer (Florida State University) and Daniel Carpenter (Harvard) proposes a model of political recruiting […]
Does protest work? And is it more effective when it takes places in countries ruled by repressive regimes, or those with democratically elected governments? Steve Crawshaw (Amnesty International) argues that if we think nothing will change, as people often do in democracies, that lack of belief becomes self-fulfilling. Similar PostsBook Review | A Duty to Resist: […]
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