Ideological Typologies of Contemporary British Conservatism

Prior to the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, traditional academic assumptions about the British Conservative party focused on its emphasis on party unity, the centrality of loyalty to the party, and its ideological pragmatism in the pursuit of power. The leadership of her successor, John Major, was undermined by disunity, disloyalty and ideological conflict, which contributed to the Tory party's removal from power. The ideological implosion of one the most disciplined and electorally successful parties in Western Europe, has stimulated considerable academic appraisal. This article considers the design and utilisation of the ideological typologies of contemporary British conservatism that have been used by academics to help explain the nature of this ideological conflict. By analysing these developments in typological design, we can enhance our understanding of the ideological realignment of contemporary British conservatism in the immediate post-Thatcherite era.     

Commissions of inquiry and policy change: Comparative analysis and future research frontiers

Canadian governments have spawned hundreds of federal and provincial commissions of inquiry (COIs). Many scholars have completed in‐depth analysis of particular COIs but less attention has been paid to policy impact and comparisons across COIs. This study addresses the following questions. What role do COIs play in policy change? Would policy change likely have occurred without the COI? Why do some COIs result in policy change and others do not? This analysis reports on findings from in‐depth case studies of ten COIs. It uses a theoretical framework focusing on ideas, institutions, actors and relations to examine whether and how COIs lead to policy and administrative change.     

Advocacy Coalitions in Ontario Land Use Policy Development

In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter‐actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter‐actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy‐relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross‐coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.     

How Do Indifferent Voters Decide? The Political Importance of Implicit Attitudes

A hallmark finding in the study of public opinion is that many citizens approach the political realm with one‐sided attitudes that color their judgments, making attitude change difficult. This finding highlights the importance of citizens with weak prior attitudes, since they might represent a segment of the electorate that is more susceptible to influence. The judgment processes of citizens with weak attitudes, however, are poorly understood. Drawing from dual‐process models in psychology, I test the idea that citizens with weak explicit attitudes rely on implicit attitudes as they render political judgments. I find support for this conjecture in experimental and observational data. There are two main contributions. First, I show that an important and understudied segment of the electorate arrives at political decisions via automatic (but nonetheless predictable) mental processes. Second, I characterize the conditions under which implicit political attitudes matter more and less.     

Belgian and French Foreign Fighters in Iraq 2003–2005: A Comparative Case Study

Efforts to understand the distinction between foreign fighting and domestic terrorist acts have focused for the most part at the macro level. This study investigates if this difference is observed at the network level. The Iraq foreign fighter mobilization, which was significant, both numerically and, in terms of its visibility, is used for this analysis. The participation of Belgian and French foreign fighters is examined due to the perceived level of threat they posed in the period 2003–2005 and while absolute numbers are relatively low, these two countries may have provided just under a quarter of the all European foreign fighters in this period. Observations are generated and then compared to research on domestic attack networks in Europe and the United Kingdom. The article finds that the two networks were involved in foreign fighter activity and did not engage in domestic attack activity. Involvement in domestic attacks occurred at a later time via individuals who had left the network, individuals on the periphery of the original foreign fighter network or individuals who unsuccessfully attempted to engage in foreign fighter activity.