Did they ‘Read Before Burning’? The Coalition and Quangos

Attitudes to quangos are paradoxical. On the one hand they are perceived to be undemocratic, unaccountable organisations, while on the other they are seen to improve effectiveness, limit political interference and increase public confidence in government. This paradox is reflected in the behaviour of political parties, which generally adopt a harsh line towards quangos in opposition, but come to rely on these bodies in office. Ahead of the 2010 general election it was, however, noticeable that the Conservative party rejected this dynamic by promising to pursue ‘a more sophisticated approach’. This article explores the Coalition government's subsequent ‘public bodies reform programme’, assessing its progress against recommendations contained within the Institute for Government's Read before Burning report of July 2010. It concludes that while the Coalition has addressed long‐standing concerns about the day‐to‐day governance of public bodies, it has failed to resolve a set of broader and strategic (metagovernance) issues.     

Forecasting the 2015 British general election: The Seats-Votes model

This paper applies the Seats-Votes Model to the task of forecasting the outcome of the 2015 election in Britain in terms of the seats won by the three major parties. The model derives originally from the ‘Law of Cubic Proportions’ the first formal statistical election forecasting model to be developed in Britain. It is an aggregate model which utilises the seats won by the major parties in the previous general election together with vote intentions six months prior to the general election to forecast seats. The model was reasonably successful in forecasting the 2005 and 2010 general elections, but has to be modified to take into account the ‘regime shift’ which occurred when the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010.     

Hung Parliaments and the Challenges for Westminster and Whitehall: How to Make Minority and Multiparty Governance Work (with Commentaries by Turnbull,Beith, Evans and Crick)

The return of a hung parliament at the 2010 general election is a serious possibility. But due to Westminster's limited recent experience of parliaments under ‘no overall control’ there is little institutional memory in Whitehall or Westminster, and even less public understanding, of what the implications would be. This article sets out to analyse the principal challenges that would be faced by government, opposition, parliament and the media in the event of a hung parliament. Drawing on experience from Canada, New Zealand and Scotland, we discuss the difficulties that may arise during the immediate government formation process and in the course of making minority or multiparty governance work on an ongoing basis. We conclude that a hung parliament need not undermine political stability or effective governance, but that all actors would need to adapt their behaviour and should therefore prepare carefully for this eventuality.     

Interpreting UKIP's ‘Earthquake’ in British Politics: UK Television News Coverage of the 2009 and 2014 EU Election Campaigns

UK broadcasters came under fire for the amount of airtime UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage received after the party won the most votes in the 2014 EU election. Our content analysis of television news during the 2009 and 2014 campaigns found little bias in terms of soundbites, but in the more recent election Farage visually appeared in coverage to a greater degree than other party leaders. Moreover, two core UKIP policies—being in or out of Europe and immigration—dominated coverage in 2014. We suggest the ‘UKIP factor’ and the media's fascination with Nigel Farage help explain why the 2014 campaign was more visible on television news than was the case in 2009 and was largely reported through a Westminster prism. Although television news bulletins attempt to impartially report elections, the 2014 campaign agenda was largely contested on UKIP's ideological terrain and the party's electoral fortunes.     

Blame,Responsibility, and the Tea Party in the 2010 Midterm Elections

There is a general consensus both in the news media and scholarly research that 2010 was a highly nationalized election year. Reports have indicated that anti-Obama sentiment, the Democrats’ legislative agenda, the economy, and the Tea Party were all factors contributing to Democratic losses in the congressional elections. In this paper, we use data from 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to examine the individual-level dynamics that contributed to the heightened nationalization of the 2010 congressional elections. Our analysis shows that Tea Party support and the attribution of blame and responsibility by voters are essential to understanding the 2010 election outcome, beyond what we would expect from a simple referendum model of midterm elections. Not surprisingly, Tea Party supporters blamed Democrats for the state of national affairs, disapproved of the Democrats’ policy agenda, and overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates in the congressional elections. However, our analysis shows that not all voters who supported Republican candidates were driven by high levels of opposition to President Obama and the Democrats. Another key group of voters blamed both Democrats and Republicans for the nation’s problems but ultimately held Democrats responsible in the voting booth by supporting Republican congressional candidates.     

Approaches to Understanding the Inaugural CIA Covert Operation in Italy: Exploding Useful Myths

The Italian election of April 1948 represented the first occasion on which the CIA intervened to influence events abroad. Understanding of the operation has been shaped by three dissimilar approaches that have been critical, celebratory, and stressed continuity. These approaches have, in turn, fuelled a series of useful myths around the episode. Agency declarations of greater ‘openness’ after the Cold War promised to advance historiographical debates on this – and other – interventions through the declassification of records, although proved a false dawn. This article offers an alternative method to analyse the case through a broader international frame of inquiry that considers CIA action in the context of both American and Italian efforts during the election. In so doing, it challenges the useful myths around 1948.     

Electoral Selection with Parties and Primaries

We develop a model of intraparty candidate selection under partisan electoral competition and voter uncertainty. Candidates for office belong to parties, which are factions of ideologically similar candidates. Each party’s candidate for a general election can be selected either by a “centralized” mechanism that effectively randomizes over possible candidates or by voters in a primary election. The electorate cares about ideology and valence, and both primary and general elections may reveal candidate valences. Our main theoretical result is that while primaries raise the expected quality of a party’s candidates, they may hurt the ex ante preferred party in a competitive electorate by increasing the chances of revealing the opposing party’s candidates as superior. Thus, primaries are adopted in relatively extreme districts where a clear favorite party exists. An empirical analysis of the adoption of direct primaries and the competitiveness of primary elections across U.S. states supports these predictions.     

Party Strategies and the Descriptive Representation of Ethnic Minorities: The 2010 British General Election

The 2010 election proved critical for ethnic minority representation in Britain. The number of minority Members of Parliament reached an unprecedented high. Furthermore, the virtual monopoly of the Labour party on minority parliamentary representation ended. In explaining this development, this article moves away from the traditional discussion of disadvantages facing minority candidates and turns to the role of the political parties. It argues that a new commitment to increased minority representation exists and shows, on the basis of new data, that in the 2010 election both Labour and Conservatives employed a variety of strategies for increasing ethnic minority representation. The strategy to select more minority candidates in ‘white’ seats was not only a key to increasing the numbers of minority parliamentarians but also signals a departure from the traditional pattern of ethnic minority politicians being elected by ethnic minorities.     

Measuring ‘closeness’ in 3-candidate elections: Methodology and an application to strategic voting

Past research suggests that voter behavior is influenced by perceptions of electoral competitiveness. For example, when an election is perceived to be close, voters will be more likely to turnout and/or cast strategic votes for their second-most preferred candidate. Operationalizing electoral competitiveness in three-candidate elections presents previously unrecognized methodological challenges. This paper first shows that many past strategies for measuring ‘closeness’ in three-candidate contests have violated at least one of three basic properties that any such measure should satisfy. We then propose a new measurement grounded in probability ratios, and prove formally that ratio-indices satisfy these axiomatic criteria. Empirical analyses using this new index provide novel and nuanced findings on the extent and causes of strategic voting in the 2010 British general election. The paper's operational strategy should be generally applicable to research on voting in elections, legislatures, and organizations.     

How Linguistically Divided Media Represent Linguistically Divisive Issues. Belgian TV-Debates on Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde.

In line with public sphere theory, media in federal political systems can be expected to provide a forum for federal debate on federal issues. However, as media in Belgium are organized at the level of the language communities this is not necessarily the case. This contribution analyses how political TV debates of the two public broadcasters in Belgium represented the issue of the split of the electoral district ‘Brussels–Halle-Vilvoorde’ (BHV), on which politicians of both language communities were divided. Results show that Dutch-speaking and French-speaking media in Belgium do not serve as a platform for federal debate where the contrasting viewpoints can be expressed, but rather echo and amplify the political consensus of their own language community.     

Digital Election Observation: Regulatory Challenges around Legal Online Content

Between public debates about ‘hacking’ elections, so-called ‘fake news’ and online disinformation campaigns, it has become hard to imagine what free and fair elections in a digital environment could look like. This challenge is particularly pronounced for election observers who monitor free and fair elections. How should election observers fulfil this task when reliable data in online media campaigns are often not even available to media regulators? The following article provides a brief overview of existing challenges around online content regulation and how these apply to elections and election observation. It then considers where resources for digital electoral observation exist and how most effectively to build on these before, in conclusion, discussing next steps and potential opportunities to develop digital election observation further.     

David Cameron's ‘Problem’ with Women: Representing Women in the Coalition Government

Prior to the election in 2010 David Cameron pledged that his first cabinet would comprise one‐third women and would be the most family friendly ever. Since forming the Coalition Government, he appears to have a ‘problem’ with women. We argue that this problem stems from: the weak representation of women in cabinet and across government; the diminishing resources available to government actors to support gender equality policy; and women's exclusion from the key Coalition networks, both formal and informal, that determine government policy.     

Is Anybody Listening? Evidence That Voters Do Not Respond to European Parties’ Policy Statements During Elections

Although extensive research analyzes the factors that motivate European parties to shift their policy positions, there is little cross‐national research that analyzes how voters respond to parties’ policy shifts. We report pooled, time‐series analyses of election survey data from several European polities, which suggest that voters do not systematically adjust their perceptions of parties’ positions in response to shifts in parties’ policy statements during election campaigns. We also find no evidence that voters adjust their Left‐Right positions or their partisan loyalties in response to shifts in parties’ campaign‐based policy statements. By contrast, we find that voters do respond to their subjective perceptions of the parties’ positions. Our findings have important implications for party policy strategies and for political representation.     

Quality challenger emergence under the top-two primary: Comparing one-party and two-party general election contests

Prior research finds that the emergence of a quality challenger is one of the most important factors predicting whether incumbents will be vulnerable. Reformers in California and Washington envisioned that the top-two primary reform would increase electoral competition by allowing for general election contests that feature two same-party candidates in safe districts. In this research note, I investigate the degree to which these expectations have been fulfilled by looking at the prevalence of quality challengers in U.S. House contests. I compare one-party and two-party general election contests, finding that incumbents are significantly more likely to face a quality challenger from the same party than from the opposite party, all else equal. In contrast, when both states used traditional primaries prior to reform, incumbents were no more likely to face a quality challenger in the primary election than in the general election. Findings reveal a key way in which the top-two primary may fulfill reformers’ expectations and complement our understanding of how electoral institutions condition challenger entry decisions.     

Momentum in the polls raises electoral expectations

Voters rely on opinion polls to help them predict who is going to win elections. But they are regularly exposed to different polling results over time. How do changes in the polls affect their expectations? I show that when the polls indicate that a party’s support has increased, voters’ expectations for that party’s performance will be higher than they would be at the same vote share but without such evidence of growth, because the party appears to have momentum. Across six survey experiments in Britain (total N > 14,000), I find that this effect persists even when changes in vote share are well within the margin of error, when comparing a small change in vote share to consistently polling at the larger vote share, when the change makes little difference to a party’s objective probability of victory, and when voters have strong preferences that might colour their interpretation of the polls. In short, the appearance of momentum in the polls robustly raises voters’ expectations that a party will win an election. This finding has major implications for any area of research in political science where expectations feature, for theoretical understandings of how people perceive the future, and for salient policy debates about the regulation of opinion polls.     

Issue Emphases,Saliency Theory and Issue Ownership: A Historical and Conceptual Analysis

Saliency approaches derive from the basic idea that political parties define their policies by emphasising certain topics more than others, particularly in public documents and debates. However, the approaches diverge on whether parties always emphasise the same ‘owned’ issues or can emphasise different ones in different elections with a view to winning votes. The article explores the way these differences developed and summarises them in a typology of ‘issue ownerships’, within which models linking ‘ownership’ to election outcomes can be located.     

How Unusual is the United Kingdom Coalition (and What are the Chances of It Happening Again)?

This article draws upon insights from theoretical and empirical studies of coalition behaviour in multiparty politics to examine the formation of the United Kingdom coalition following the general election of 6 May 2010. It argues that the formation of the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition is not unusual in historical terms or in the context of contemporary European politics; and that although it is a break from the more recent pattern of postwar British politics it nevertheless does conform to expectations in the light of the coalition literature. The article also provides a comparative analysis of the impact of Britain's ‘First‐Past‐The‐Post’ (FPTP) electoral system on party competition and an examination of the performance of the Alternative Vote (AV) system and argues that if the United Kingdom retains FPTP then a return to single‐party government in 2015 is highly likely; and it is not inevitable that the introduction of AV would significantly advantage the Liberal Democrats.     

Nationalisation of multilevel party systems: A conceptual and empirical analysis

The concept of ‘nationalisation’ is vigorously discussed in the literature and three dimensions have been proposed. A first dimension considers the extent to which a party's vote in territorial units varies across time and this is labeled ‘dynamic nationalisation’. ‘Distributional nationalisation’ focuses on the degree to which there is an equal distribution of party votes across territorial units. Finally, ‘party‐linkage nationalisation’ concerns the extent to which candidates link together under common party labels. In addition to a conceptual debate there has been a simultaneous debate on the measurement of the various forms of nationalisation. This article contributes to both debates and argues that most of the literature on nationalisation suffers from a methodological nationalism bias – that is, the tendency of many scholars to choose the statewide level and national election as the natural unit of analysis. This claim is supported by a conceptual and empirical analysis regarding the effects of decentralisation on nationalisation. The conceptual analysis shows that the non‐robust findings of many studies concerning the effects of decentralisation on nationalisation can be related to the methodological nationalism bias. An effect of decentralisation is found once nationalisation is conceptualised with regard to its multilevel dimension and the measurements of nationalisation are differentiated according to parties, regions and type of elections (national or regional). An empirical analysis on the nationalisation of party systems, parties and regions in 18 countries for national and regional elections held between 1945 and 2009 shows that regional authority has a significant and robust effect on regions and regional elections but not on parties, party systems and national vote shares.     

Cognitive Biases in Governing: Technology Preferences in Election Administration

Cognitive biases are heuristics that shape individual preferences and decisions in a way that is at odds with means‐end rationality. The effects of cognitive biases on governing are underexplored. The authors study how election administrators’ cognitive biases shape their preferences for e‐voting technology using data from a national survey of local election officials. The technology acceptance model, which employs a rational, means‐end perspective, suggests that the perceived benefits of e‐voting machines explain their popularity. But findings indicate that cognitive biases also play a role, even after controlling for the perceived benefits and costs of the technology. The findings point to a novel cognitive bias that is of particular interest to research on e‐government: officials who have a general faith in technology are attracted to more innovative alternatives. The authors also find that local election officials who prefer e‐voting machines do so in part because they overvalue the technology they already possess and because they are overly confident in their own judgment.     

The Changing Nature … and Costs … of Election Administration

Changes during the last decade have significantly altered the nature of election administration and driven up its costs. Interviews with practitioner representatives from the elections community reveal a number of issues that continue to influence this field. Expense data from two counties illustrate how policy changes affect election costs. Scheduled ending of federal funding threatens a “perfect storm” in election finance that may undermine hard‐won advances from 2000 to 2010. Possible cost reduction measures as well as critical challenges facing election administration are forecast for 2010 and the years ahead.