Elections In Britain Research Articles

Review: European Energy Industry Business Strategies, Local Economies in Turmoil: The Effects of Deregulation and Globalization, Creating an Economic Development Action Plan: A Guide for Development Professionals, Elections in Britain: A Voter's Guide, Assets for the Poor: The Benefits of Spreading Asset Ownership, the Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, Pariah: Misfortunes of the British Kingdom

Review: European Energy Industry Business Strategies, Local Economies in Turmoil: The Effects of Deregulation and Globalization, Creating an Economic Development Action Plan: A Guide for Development Professionals, Elections in Britain: A Voter's Guide, Assets for the Poor: The Benefits of Spreading Asset Ownership, the Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, Pariah: Misfortunes of the British Kingdom

County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919-1938: A Comparative Analysis

County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919-1938: A Comparative Analysis

Constituency Campaigning in Scotland at the 2001 General Election

Constituency campaigning is a traditional and familiar aspect of general elections in Britain. In the weeks leading up to the election, posters are displayed, candidates 'press the flesh', leaflets are handed out in the street or delivered to voters' homes, party workers canvass the electorate and so on. On polling day itself the parties mount 'get out the vote' operations. Until the 1990s, however, academics and commentators paid little attention to local campaigning (see, for example, Kavanagh, 1995) and even the parties themselves appeared more concerned to ensure that their election broadcasts were well-produced, that leading figures performed well on television and that they had an effective media strategy than they were with the quality of campaigning on the ground.

Do canvassing and campaigning work? Evidence from the 2001 general election in England

(2003). Do canvassing and campaigning work? Evidence from the 2001 general election in England. British Elections & Parties Review: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 248-273.

The renewal of social democracy and the „third way” of the British Labour Party

The author tries to enlighten and analyse the current processes in the European Social Democracy intending to renew its strategy and doctrine and adapt it to the new economic, political and social challenges. He devotes special attention to the attempts of the British Labour Party to modernise itself and create a new doctrinal approach, the so-called third way. The author analyses the history of the New Labour and characteristics of the Tony Blair-led party, elaborating in detail the contents of the third way. The main conclusion he makes is that, in spite of the New Labour?s success at the two last general elections in Britain and the positive lessons to be drawn from the third way, it does not mean that all Social Democratic Parties should follow that example, for different social conditions demand different strategies and policies and relevant responses by every party.

Television Reporting of Second-Order Elections

This study is a cross-national investigation of television reporting of the 1999 European elections in Britain, Denmark, and The Netherlands. Three aspects of the role of news organizations in shaping election news coverage are considered: the degree of organizational effort invested in the coverage, the editorial policies of the news organization and the application of news selection criteria. The study draws on interviews with (senior) political correspondents and editors-in-chief as well as content analytic indicators from the news in the three countries. A number of cross-national differences were identified. While the visibility of the campaign was low to modest in all countries the news organizations differed substantially in their contribution to the agenda formation process. British news reflected the politicians' agenda to a greater extent than Dutch news, in which the elections were largely neglected, while Danish news organizations played a proactive role in setting their own news agenda. The increased editorial autonomy and selectivity are discussed in the light of previous research on political communication in European elections.

Sam Davies and Bob Morley, County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919–1938: A Comparative Analysis. Volume 2: Bradford-Carlisle. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. xiv + 707pp. 96 tables. 16 figures. 16 appendices. £85.00.

Sam Davies and Bob Morley, County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919–1938: A Comparative Analysis. Volume 2: Bradford-Carlisle. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. xiv + 707pp. 96 tables. 16 figures. 16 appendices. £85.00. - Volume 29 Issue 3

Concepts of Equality in British Election Financing Reform Proposals

This article discusses the ways in which the ambiguous concept of equality has been used in the British debate regarding the financing of political election campaigns. It identifies three concepts of equality commonly used in that debate: 'equality of arms' between political parties, 'equality of influence' between citizens, and 'equality of access' to the so-called 'marketplace of ideas'. The article than discusses each of these concepts of equality in greater detail, and, in doing so, identifies four broader principles underlying the use of these concepts in the election financing debate. The article concludes that, although the language of equality is used often and with great effect in the election financing debate, the concepts of equality being invoked are rarely independently valuable concepts. Instead, the concepts of equality used are valued in the election financing debate because they promote one of the four underlying principles. These principles themselves, however, involve complex questions of democracy and distributional fairness, and are not uncontroversial. I thus suggest that future debates regarding election financing could be enhanced by a more direct discussion of the merits of these underlying principles. The appropriate financing of election campaigns has been a matter of debate in the United Kingdom for at least 100 years. Scandals involving large private donations to political parties intensified modem calls for reform. Responding to these concerns, Parliament enacted the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (hereafter Political Parties Act). During the debate surrounding passage of the Political Parties Act, advocates of reform frequently grounded their arguments in a perceived need for greater 'equality' in the election financing system. Equality, however, is a complex concept.' People seldom agree on what constitutes equality, or on how to best achieve it. Not surprisingly, the ambiguity of the concept of equality is as prevalent in the election financing debate as it is in other areas in which the concept is invoked. In this paper, I attempt to identify and clarify the concept of equality, or more accurately a set of concepts of equality, commonly invoked by advocates of election financing reform. I identify three such equality concepts: 'equality of * Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky College of Law. My thanks to Professor Paul Craig and Dan Lorentz for their helpful comments and suggestions, and to Professor Gordon Baldwin, for the years he has dedicated to making all of his students better lawyers and better people. Errors are of course my own. 1 See, for example, I. Berlin, 'Equality' in H. Hardy (ed.) Concepts and Categories: philosophical essays (The Hogarth Press, London, 1978); R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1977); J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999). @ 2002 Oxford University Press This content downloaded from 207.46.13.57 on Mon, 08 Aug 2016 04:27:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 254 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 22 arms'; 'equality of influence'; and 'equality of access'. After discussing each of these concepts, I conclude that the value of each of them to the election financing debate actually depends on the acceptance of at least one of four broader principles: that political equality requires the state to show equal respect and concern for each of its citizens; that wealth in society should be equitably distributed; that representative democracy should constitute a deliberative search for a greater public good rather than a struggle between self-interested entities; or that democratic self-governance requires public access to the widest possible variety of information. The concepts of equality used in the election financing debate support these principles, but are rarely invoked independently of them. Equality, then, is used in the election financing debate not for its own sake but because it advances one or more of these underlying principles. These principles, several of which are quite controversial, involve important and complex issues about our expectations of society, citizenship and democracy. I do not attempt to evaluate each of these principles here. I do, however, suggest that the election financing debate would be enhanced if advocates of reform avoided arguing for change in the vague language of equality' and instead concentrated on articulating and defending these underlying principles. This paper has three parts. Part 1 provides a context for discussing the most recent reform proposals by briefly outlining the history of Britain's election financing laws. Part 2 analyses the way different concepts of equality have been used by advocates of reform. Part 3 introduces the notion of independent and dependent principles, and examines, in light of this notion, the relationship of the three concepts of equality used in the election financing debate to the four principles identified above. 1. British Election Financing Law

County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919–1938: A Comparative Analysis. Volume 2: Bradford–Carlisle

County Borough Elections in England and Wales, 1919–1938: A Comparative Analysis. Volume 2: Bradford–Carlisle

The general election in Britain, June 2001

The general election in Britain, June 2001

Khaki and the Confessional. A Study of a Religious Issue at the 1900 General Election in England

1University of Wales, Bangor Khaki and the Confessional. A Study of a Religious Issue at the 1900 General Election in England PaulNicholls VictoriaU. of Melbourne P. 2000389$A35

A Fast, Easy, and Efficient Estimator for Multiparty Electoral Data

Katz and King have previously developed a model for predicting or explaining aggregate electoral results in multiparty democracies. Their model is, in principle, analogous to what least-squares regression provides American political researchers in that two-party system. Katz and King applied their model to three-party elections in England and revealed a variety of new features of incumbency advantage and sources of party support. Although the mathematics of their statistical model covers any number of political parties, it is computationally demanding, and hence slow and numerically imprecise, with more than three parties. In this paper we produce an approximate method that works in practice with many parties without making too many theoretical compromises. Our approach is to treat the problem as one of missing data. This allows us to use a modification of the fast EMis algorithm of King, Honaker, Joseph, and Scheve and to provide easy-to-use software, while retaining the attractive features of the Katz and King model, such as thetdistribution and explicit models for uncontested seats.

The 2001 general election in britain

the 2001 general election in britain

Elections and Public Opinion: The End of the Honeymoon?

LABOUR’s electoral honeymoon, already longer than that of any other government in modern times, came to an abrupt end during the year 2000. Earlier signs that the electorate was, if not disenchanted, certainly less enthusiastic about the New Labour project first surfaced in 1999. Elections to the new devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales saw Labour’s vote fall sharply from its 1997 general election level. Local elections in England held at the same time told a similar story and the European Parliament elections fought in June saw Labour win just 28% of the national vote—16 percentage points adrift of its 1997 support. These early warning signs were largely ignored because bad news from the ballot box was not reflected in the party’s opinion poll ratings. According to the polls, Labour was safely on course to achieve a second electoral term. During 2000, however, the government’s confidence began to falter as the polls swung against it, at first gently and then precipitately. Labour began the year believing that there were few obstacles in the way of its re-election; by its end such complacency had disappeared. Conservative confidence was buoyed by the government’s fall from grace, but the electorate still seemed wary of turning back to them and too often bad news followed good for the Opposition. A range of measures will be examined in order to assess how the state of public opinion and party popularity fluctuated throughout the year. Beginning with the opinion polls, we show how public opinion remained relatively stable for much of the time but then reacted in a highly volatile manner to political events during the early autumn. Following analysis of the polls, we then consider the elections to the newly created Greater London Authority. These provide evidence of a level of voter disenchantment with the mainstream political parties and a willingness to support a mayoral candidate without official party backing. Voter indifference or apathy was also in evidence at local elections in England, but it could not prevent the Conservatives from making sweeping gains. Finally, the focus moves to by-election contests, first parliamentary and then local, and how such contests might inform our understanding of both the political present and the electoral future.

The British Labour Government's Reform of the National Health Service

The recent general election in Britain saw healthcare as the dominant issue amongst voters. The victorious Labour Party responded to this concern with a set of reforms designed to introduce greater private-sector involvement in the delivery of healthcare. These reforms are ill-thought-out. The standard of care in British private hospitals is below that found in public hospitals, whilst new contracting arrangements are likely to increase the administration costs within the system. Faith in private-sector management techniques is misplaced at a time when the real problem facing the NHS is that of capacity. The Labour Party is also committed to redefining some aspects of healthcare as a personal responsibility and not a right, moving Britain towards a more market-based healthcare system.

Geographical Scale, the ‘Feel‐Good Factor’ and Voting at the 1997 General Election in England and Wales

Many analysts associate voting patterns in Great Britain with electors' evaluations of the state of the economy, whereby those who think it has improved recently are likely to vote for the government's return to power, whereas those who think it has worsened are more likely to vote for an opposition party. Most of these studies consider the national economy only, but data derived from the 1997 British Election Study cross–sectional survey show strong relationships between votes and evaluations of recent changes in the electors' (self‐defined) home areas. This paper relates those evaluations, and the resultant voting patterns, to the ‘objective circumstances’ in the respondents' home areas, using unemployment rates as an indicator of local economic well‐being. Using specially devised data for ‘bespoke neighbourhoods’ around each respondent's home, we show that the probability of a vote against the government was a function of both ‘objective conditions’ and ‘subjective evaluations’, and that there were significant scale effects in this: people apparently reacted to very local variations when making their voting decisions.

Housing Benefit and Welfare Retrenchment in Britain

Following the 1997 general election in Britain, the New Labour government made clear its intention to cut back and radically reform the social security system, including Housing Benefit, an income-related housing allowance for low-income tenants. The cost of Housing Benefit had doubled in real terms over the previous decade and was taking up a growing share of social security expenditure. The scheme also suffered from major deficiencies. Drawing on recent literature on welfare state retrenchment, this article examines why the government eventually retreated from cuts and a wholesale reform of Housing Benefit and opted instead for a more modest and long-term approach.

Locating the Altruistic Voter: Context, Egocentric Voting, and Support for the Conservative Party at the 1997 General Election in England and Wales

Egocentric economic voting models are widely used in studies of voting behaviour in Great Britain: they suggest that people whose standard of living has risen recently as a perceived consequence of government policies are more likely to vote for the government's return to office than are those who blame government policies for a decline in their living standards. But many people whose living standards have increased vote against the government. Analyses reported here, using specially constructed bespoke neighbourhoods around the homes of respondents to the 1997 British Election Study, show that the latter group mainly live in areas of high local unemployment. This suggests a pattern of altruistic voting, of people who are prospering personally, but whose neighbours are not, voting against the incumbent government—a pattern confirmed by statistical analyses of both egocentric and sociotropic voting.

Local Context, Retrospective Economic Evaluations, and Voting: The 1997 General Election in England and Wales

Local context is widely believed to influence voting behavior with, for example, the voters' evaluation of the state of their local economy affecting whether they choose to reward or punish the incumbent government. Such reward-punish models apply in the United Kingdom at the national scale: those who believe that the government has delivered prosperity vote for its return, whereas those who believe that its policies have produced a worsening economic situation vote against it. This article shows that the operation of this calculus varies spatially, according to the level of unemployment in the voter's home area: the higher the local level of unemployment the lower the probability of someone who thought that government polices had delivered national prosperity voting for the incumbent government. It also shows that this is a consequence of cross-pressured situations. Those who thought that the government's policies had delivered both national and local prosperity were very likely to vote for it; those who thought that the policies had delivered national but not local prosperity were less likely to vote for it—especially in areas of high unemployment.

A Yawn for Europe: The 1999 European elections

David Cowling analyses the recent European elections in Britain, the first national elections ever held under a proportional representation system. The choice of electoral system ‐ one of ‘closed’ party list system ‐ was controversial.