Wider Franchise Research Articles

“I Can’t Be What You Expect of Me”: Power, Palatability, and Shame in Frozen: The Broadway Musical

This article combines critical, cultural, and musical analysis to situate Frozen: The Broadway Musical as a distinct work within Disney’s wider franchise. In this article, I consider the evolution of Elsa’s character on stage and the role of additional songs in the Frozen score. In so doing, I demonstrate how the stage adaptation distances itself from the feminist potential in the original animation. Using the lenses of palatability and gendered shame, I argue that Frozen: The Broadway Musical forces patriarchal modes of behaviour onto its heroines.

Technological Foundations of Political Instability

There has been a wide-spread belief that elections with a wide franchise following removal of an oppressive dictator lead to establishment of a government that is not vulnerable to mass protest. At the same time, most of the post-World War II non-constitutional exits of recently-installed autocratic leaders were caused by elite coups, rather than popular protests. The recent experience of Egypt, where the democratic post-Mubarak government, a result of the Arab Spring, collapsed after having had almost uninterrupted protests since its first day in office, offers a striking counterexample to both of these patterns. We demonstrate that this is a general phenomenon: the same technological shock, arrival of social media, that makes the incumbent vulnerable, lays foundation for continuous instability of the subsequent democratic government. Our theoretical model, which incorporates protest into a Downsian framework, takes into account specific features of modern protests: the significant role of social media and the absence of the partisan or personalized leadership during popular unrest. Case studies of the Arab countries with and without large-scale protests corroborate our theoretical findings.

Tackling the obesity crisis: how do we ‘measure up’?

In early 2013, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) published the latest of several reports from various bodies over decades addressing aspects of the rising prevalence of obesity in...

Unitarians and the Construction of History and Biography, 1740-1820

In his biographies of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Pope Leo X, the Liverpool Unitarian William Roscoe (1753-183) explored a mutually-dependent relationship between individuals and the political structure within which they lived. Roscoe recorded that history and biography were regarded as distinct genres, but he saw the roots of change in history as grounded both in the political structure and in the human mind and thus integrated the two, investigating change in history through a physiological understanding of the human mind and the nature of personal identity. The Unitarian concept of the soul as a part of the divine spirit, as having no sex, affected their attitude to gender relations: all individuals had both male and female attributes in varying degrees, on a single continuum. Thomas Reid saw a possibility of philosophical integration between matter and spirit, and mind and body were being brought together in physiological terms as Descartes dualism was discarded. In this context we can set the Liverpool concept of the need for balance in the individual and in society. Unitarianism also contributed to a sense of alienation, privileging balance and integration. There is a synergy between Rousseau's description of the inevitability of democratic forms declining into slavery and Roscoe's description of the subversion of Lorenzo's democratic Florence into Leo's oligarchic city. So too with Liverpool: despite a wide franchise in the 17th century, by the mid 18th century control was in the hands of a small group of High Anglican Tories, albeit constantly disputed. This political and religious position, exposed through the biographies, mapped out a route for change led by the presence of liberty and the reasoned control of the passions.

The Domination of Lowtherism and Toryism in Westmorland Parliamentary Elections, 1818–1895

A comparison of Westmorland elections at either end of the nineteenth century illustrates how a wider franchise could mean less popular involvement in the political process and a tightening of the grip of Conservatism on the county elite. But the dominance of the Lowther family was less monolithic than it seemed: the persistence of Nonconformity and owner-occupier farming, particularly in the north of the county, meant that there was always the potential for a realistic Liberal challenge if a suitably prestigious candidate would come forward, and Lowther agents had to work diligently to sustain the status quo. Parliamentary reform and coincidental Lowther upheavals in the early 1880s opened the door to a confident Liberal challenge, and only a handful of dubious votes prevented the capture of the seat in 1885. That the prospect of success then receded was partly attributable to Gladstone's fixation with Irish Home Rule, which played badly in Westmorland; but, more critically, to a damagingly public, class-related personal feud within the local party. These were not necessarily terminal weaknesses, however: the Conservatives could still be beaten.

GPs' leader to meet review body on out of hours GPs' committee will be elected by wider franchise Health secretary agrees to revise deputising circular New group will look at public health manpower Consultation document launched on data protection

# GPs' leader to meet review body on out of hours {#article-title-2} There was anger at last week's meeting of the General Medical Services Committee at what it saw as slow progress in solving the outstanding issues on out of hours services in general practice. At the February meeting the committee called for a supplementary report from the Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration on a separate pricing for out of hours by 16 May. If this was not forthcoming the committee resolved to ballot the profession on the out of hours settlement and to recommend to the BMA council that the review body should resign (24 February, p 465). But when the chairman, Dr Ian Bogle, announced that he had not yet met the review body chairman—a meeting will take place shortly—some speakers called for immediate action. They said that they had sold the September 1995 deal to their constituents on the basis that the out of hours component of their contract would be separately priced. A general practitioner in north London, Dr Laurence Buckman, did not think that the review body was independent. The GMSC had fallen into a trap and was a target for criticism by his constituents. Dr John Canning, who practises in Middlesbrough, urged Dr Bogle to emphasise to the review body how unhappy general practitioners were. “They are in despair, doctors are not going into vocational training schemes, and those who do do not want to be general practitioners.” But other speakers pointed to the progress on the deputising circular and health promotion (see below). Dr Peter Skolar, a …

Argentine approaches to the Falklands/Malvinas: was the resort to violence foreseeable?

During and after the 1982 Anglo-Argentine conflict over the Falklands/Malvinas, several British pronouncements seem to have resulted from the perverse persuasiveness of the assumption that Argentina had always had a warlike approach to the conflict. Mrs Thatcher publicly argued, during an interview on BBC's Panorama as well as in the House of Commons, that signals from Argentina had always been warlike, even while negotiations had been cordial and successful. In a private communication with the author Mr Healey said he regarded Argentine behaviour in 1976 and after as warlike. In recent articles in The Guardian' Martin Walker stated that President Peron had ordered a march on the islands on 12 August 1948 and that events in 1966 would be regarded as warlike and serious. The disclosure of documents under the thirty-year rule also led to a reconstruction of events and words of 1951-2 which presents Peron as belligerent then. Lord Shackleton regarded the 1976 incidents as warlike. Finally, the Franks report has failed to analyse Argentine politics adequately, in spite of the unprecedented range of information at the disposal of the committee. Contrary, however, to this apparently prevalent British assumption, contemplation of the use of force has not been a permanent feature of the approach of the various very different Argentine political regimes to the dispute in the South Atlantic. The consequence of this mistaken assumption was an inability to notice the crucial differences between the signals coming from Buenos Aires early in 1982 and those of earlier years. Formal notes protesting at Britain's occupation of the islands were a constant feature of Argentine foreign policy even in the nineteenth century. The landowners who ruled Argentina between 1860 and 1916 were most concerned with nineteenth century notions of progress in their scarcely populated state (1 million according to the 1860 census); their highest priorities were immigration, railway building by the state, port building and dredging, setting up an army in undisputed control, pushing back and exterminating the Indians and financing mandatory primary education. Britain's position as Argentina's most important trading partner and provider of credit meant that the latter's claim to the islands was asserted only by means of protest notes, which were loftily ignored by the British Foreign Office. After 1916, however, the advent of wider franchise and improved-but not perfect-democratic practices, led to a variety of publications from many sources, some of them as well researched as Julius Goebel's The struggle for the Falkland Islands, in particular that by Groussac, covering most aspects of the Argentine claim and the dispute.2

The Development of a National System of Education in New South Wales

THE DEVELOPMENT of supported systems of education in Australia was the outcome of conflicting constitutional, economic, and social policies in the nineteenth century. It is becoming obvious that Australian education needs to be reexamined in relation to the changing society in which it developed rather than as a separate institution. The period from 1830 to 1880 saw the influence of utilitarianismin an increasingly democratic form-condition the gestation of contemporary systems of public-supported and centrally administered primary and secondary education. The conflict of policies is measured in part by the intellectual history of Australian society and is reflected in the granting of responsible parliamentary government, elected on a wide franchise, to the colonies, which in turn instituted systems of primary education. The whole process of emerging state control is evident in the current confusion over the role of the state in providing education for a modemn complex and pluralist society. It is impossible to do justice to colonial affairs during the nineteenth century without recognizing the dominant influence of the English experience in political, economic, and social life. English liberal sentiment, without much concern for doctrine, gave direction to political debates in all the Australian colonies. (i) One finds in the generally derivative nature of Australian society the widespread influence of English ideas and institutional forms. The ideas and in-

English Franchise Reform in the Seventeenth Century

The roots of franchise reform in the seventeenth century are of interest to historians both of Britain and of America. In the new world and in England important steps toward democratic suffrage were taken in the first half of the century. The Virginia charter of 1619 granted voting privileges to all adult male inhabitants regardless of property. Later governments qualified this liberality, but an important precedent was established. In England Leveller tracts and the classic Putney Debates aired arguments that bore no immediate practical fruits but that foreshadowed later reforms. Both developments are startling enough to raise urgent questions about origins. Where did such striking innovations come from? Were they altogether unprecedented, or were they, as seems more probable, modifications of already existing ideas about suffrage?In both cases tentative explanations have been proposed. The generous provisions of the Virginia charter have been accounted for by the desire of the colony's sponsors to attract settlers. Unusual political privileges were a lure to draw Englishmen to the new world. The soldiers' insistence on a wider franchise has been attributed to three factors: the confidence they derived from their large role in Cromwell's victories, the logical development of the natural right and contract theory of government, and the democratic impulse implicit in Puritan Independency. Heady with military successes and religious zeal, the soldiers boldly carried the conception of contract to its conclusion and demanded that Parliament be elected by the people to whom it was theoretically responsible.