Elite Social Relations and Corporate Political Donations in Britain

Elite theory critiques of corporate political action rest on the claim that it advances the political interests of elite status groups. This article examines that claim by investigating the relationship between a British corporation's propensity to make donations to the Conservative party and its directors' educational backgrounds and social club affiliations. Using a structural equivalence blockmodel, it is shown that among the largest 250 British corporations in 1995 there was a set with directors who came from elite educational backgrounds and were members of elite social clubs. These corporations made a disproportionate number of donations. I argue that these results support the elite theory critique.     

The political economy of regulatory change: The case of British merger control

This article aims to explain the broader evolution of British merger control. To this end it outlines a novel critical political economy perspective on regulation and regulatory change which differs from established political economy approaches, such as the regulatory capitalism/state perspectives, in three main ways: it places regulatory ideas at the heart of the analysis, it differentiates between different degrees of regulatory change, and it links regulatory change in delineated issue areas with changing power balances between fractions of capital and labor. The application of this perspective to the analysis of the evolution of British merger control provides some important new insights, most notably that the content, form, and scope of merger control in Britain have been deeply transformed in accordance with neoliberal ideas since the 1980s and that this process, which was part of a broader regulatory and ideational shift, was premised on the ascendancy of transnational capital.     

Cycles of value change

Abstract. The main focus of this paper is a comparison of results from studies on cycles in value change of the British and West German political systems. While the British data span more than two hundred years and the German data not more than 35 to 65 years, the British data are taken as a reference or constant. The comparison results in the observation that there is no indication of a general cyclical process of value change. This result contrasts with former results of British and American studies, which indicated a common cyclical process for these two nations.     

Uninterested Youth? Young People's Attitudes towards Party Politics in Britain

Following the outcome of the 2001 and 2005 general elections, when the numbers of abstainers outweighed the numbers of Labour voters on both occasions, much attention has focused upon the state of British democracy and how to enthuse the electorate, especially young people. Whilst the government is exploring ways to make the whole process of voting easier, it may be failing to tackle the real problem – that youth appear to find the business of politics uninviting and irrelevant. This paper examines data derived from a nationwide survey of more than 700 young people in order to shed light on what lies at the heart of young people's apparent disengagement from formal politics in Britain – political apathy or a sense of political alienation. The findings reveal that they support the democratic process, but are sceptical of the way the British political system is organised and led and are turned off by politicians and the political parties. However, there is no uniform youth orientation to politics, and the data indicate that views differ according to social class, educational history and also gender. However both ethnicity and region of the country in which young people live seem to have little influence in structuring political attitudes and behaviour.     

What really matters is which camp goes dirty: Differential effects of negative campaigning on turnout during Swiss federal ballots

Using individual data on Swiss federal ballots (VOX data) and an original dataset on the evolution and content of political campaigns, this article elucidates how negative campaigning influences individual turnout during Swiss federal ballots. It hypothesises that the effect of negativism on turnout depends on ‘which camp goes dirty’ and, specifically, on the direction of the political campaign (‘status quo’ versus ‘policy change’ campaigns). A series of multilevel models provide strong support for the hypotheses, by showing that high negativism in ‘status quo campaigns’ decreases individual turnout, whereas high negativism for ‘policy change campaigns’ increases it. It is argued here that this could depend on the emotional responses triggered by negativism in political campaigns.     

Bildungsexpansion und Wandel des politischen Interesses in Westdeutschland zwischen 1980 und 2002

Interest in politics is a prerequisite for political participation and political engagement. The promotion of political engagement and education to politically mature citizens were basic concerns of educational reforms in the 1960s. This article focuses on the question if educational expansion has lead to a rise in political interest. To reproduce the change in political interest adequately, effects of education, age, period and cohort will be analyzed simultaneously. The data base of the empirical analyses is a cumulated data set consisting of the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) from 1980 to 2002. Results show that there is a robust effect of education: More highly educated people are more politically interested. Regarding educational expansion evidence suggests that it actually leads to a rise in political interest.     

The British Election Study and Electoral Research

The British Election Study is the major data resource for investigating electoral behaviour among the British electorate. It has seldom been subject to open critical review from within the political science community, yet, together with extensions such as the British Election Panel Study, it absorbs a considerable proportion of the resources available for British political research. This article sets out a critical appraisal of the study, examining its institutional organization, theoretical scope, and methodological conventions. The thrust of the critique is the need for serious rethinking about all three aspects. For the British Election Study to advance our understanding of electoral behaviour requires a more inclusive approach to its organization; moving beyond a preoccupation with sociological and socio-psychological models of electoral behaviour; and systematic attention to measurement issues.     

Testing the Relationship Between Education and Political Participation Using the 1970 British Cohort Study

According to conventional wisdom in political behavior research, education has a direct causal effect on political participation. However, a number of recent studies have questioned this established view by arguing that education is not a direct cause of political participation but only a proxy for other factors that are not directly related to the educational experience. This paper engages in a current debate regarding the application of matching techniques to assess whether there is a direct causal effect of education on political participation. It uses data from a British cohort study that follows everyone born during 1 week in the UK in 1970. The data includes a rich set of variables measuring factors through childhood and adolescence such as cognitive ability and family socioeconomic status. This data provides the opportunity to match on a number of important variables that are not included in the US datasets used by previous studies in the field. Results show that after matching there are no significant effects of education on political participation.     

On Her Majesty's Ideological State Apparatus: Indirect Rule and Empire

The British colonial policy of indirect rule was a crucial tool for the maintenance of empire. While indirect rule has typically been regarded as little more than an expedient solution to resource constraints, it can more accurately be understood as a type of ideological state apparatus, first described by Louis Althusser in his 1969 essay. Through an analysis of indirect rule in South Africa, support is provided for Althusser's theses on ideology, as well as for the general theory of historical materialism.     

'The Possible as the Art of Politics': Understanding Consensus Politics

Drawing on the Kuhnian model of scientific paradigms, this article suggests consensus politics should be conceptualised not as an agreement or a settlement but as a political framework that derives from an ideationally informed policy paradigm. Such a consensus constrains the auto-nomy of governing elites, encouraging them to conform to an established policy agenda that defines the 'mainstream' wherein 'the possible is the art of politics'. In Britain, as demonstrated by the replacement of a post-war social democratic paradigm by a contemporary neo-liberal successor, periods of policy continuity and incremental reform have been matched by occasions of dramatic political change. Any appreciation of consensus politics has therefore to explain change as well as account for stability, something considerably under emphasised in the existing literature. Consensus politics are therefore best defined as a constrained space within which politics is conducted and political actors differ, a paradigmatic framework from which political outcomes emerge, and never as an agreement freely entered into. Looking at consensus politics beyond the much commented upon post-war example, this article uses British politics since 1945 as an exemplar of consensus politics and an illustration of how a consensus can be forged, how it can endure and how it may change.     

British Muslim Political Participation: After Bradford

In this article I argue that there is a significant generational shift within British Pakistani communities in relation to political participation and civic engagement. Using George Galloway's March 2012 by‐election victory in Bradford West and an analysis of primary empirical research conducted amongst British Pakistani communities between 2005–2007, and, 2011, I argue that kinship‐based bloc voting—a feature of British Pakistani political engagement in UK politics—is being challenged. A younger generation of British Pakistanis want politicians to engage with them as individuals rather than politicians assuming their votes through co‐opting Pakistani community elders in a system of patronage politics, an arrangement which has been in place since mass immigration from the subcontinent in the 1950s and 60s.     

Understanding the effects of religious attendance on political participation among ethnic minorities of different religions

In the United States, active church membership among ethnic and racial minorities has been linked to higher political participation. In Europe, the influence of religious attendance on political mobilisation of ethnic minorities has so far been little explored, despite the heated public debate about the public role of religion and particularly Islam. This study uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to theorise the relationship between religious attendance and political participation of ethnic minorities in a European context and extend existing theories to non‐Christian minority religions. The article shows that despite a significantly different context in which religion's place in political life is more contentious, regular religious attendance increases political participation rates of ethnic minorities. Some possible explanatory mechanisms are tested and an important distinction is introduced between those mechanisms that mediate, and those that moderate the impact of religion. The study finds that British minority churches and places of worships vary in how willing and effective they are in politically motivating their worshippers, and concludes that this relates to the political salience of certain religions within the United Kingdom context.     

The Concept of the State in British and French Political Thought

The importance of the concept of state in British political thought has recently been re-assessed, and Dyson's contrast between a continental 'state tradition' and an Anglo-American 'stateless tradition' has been put into question. Yet this paper argues that there remain crucial differences in the way in which French and British political thinkers have understood the concept of state. Focusing on a critical moment in the crystallization of the meaning of 'state', the turn of the twentieth century, and in particular on the anti-statist pluralist school, it analyses how state critics were influenced by national intellectual traditions. French thought has been permeated by the idea of the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis society at large, while British thought has remained committed to an ideal of fluidity between state and society.     

Understanding UKIP: Identity,Social Change and the Left Behind

In this article we explore the structural shifts which help explain the emergence of UKIP as a major radical‐right political force in Britain. There are two distinct, but related, aspects to this story. The first is the changes to Britain's economic and social structure that have pushed to the margins a class of voters who we describe as the ‘left behind’: older, working‐class, white voters with few educational qualifications. The second is long‐term generational changes in the values that guide British society and shape the outlook of voters. These value shifts have also left older white working‐class voters behind, as a worldview which was once seen as mainstream has become regarded as parochial and intolerant by the younger, university‐educated, more socially liberal elites who define the political consensus of twenty‐first‐century Britain. We then move to consider the political changes that have further marginalised these voters, as first Labour and then the Conservatives focused their energies on recruiting and retaining support from middle‐class, moderate swing voters. Finally, we show how UKIP has developed into an effective electoral machine which looks to win and retain the loyalties of these voters. Finally, we discuss the longer‐term implications of the radical‐right revolt, which has the potential to change the nature of party competition in Britain in the 2015 election and beyond.     

Being British: A Crisis of Identity?

An assumed decline in Britishness has rekindled concern over the 'break up of Britain'. The creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 is taken as the cause and the effect of Scots having come to feel more Scottish and less British. Using data on public attitudes from British, and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys, this paper shows that, despite a strengthening sense of Scottishness over the last thirty years, the sense of being British is still widespread and similar in Scotland and in England. Even those who describe themselves as Scottish and not British are not hostile to the idea of Britain. The relatively weak association between national identity, party support and views on constitutional change suggests that being Scottish is more cultural than political. Recent attempts by politicians and others to mobilise Britishness ignore the complexity and diversity of meanings it has both north and south of the border.     

Adaptation to Externally Driven Change: The Impact of Political Change on Job Satisfaction in the Public Sector

This article uses a quasi‐natural experiment to investigate the adaptation of job satisfaction to externally driven political change in the public sector. This is important because democratic government bureaucracies often experience changes in leadership after elections. The analyses are based on data drawn from a large longitudinal data set, the British Household Panel Survey. Findings indicate that the impact of political elections is largely weak and temporary and is only present for men. For women, the internal processes of the organization tend to be more important. These findings suggest that changes in political leadership may not be associated with fundamental changes in policy.     

A Wider Range of Friends: Multi‐speed Organising during the 2015 Labour Leadership Contest

The British Labour party's recent adoption of a partially open primary for the selection of its leader conforms to a trend seen across many European political parties of increasing rights and privileges in internal party decision‐making and expanding opportunities for more loosely affiliated supporters to participate in party activity. This dual trend can be seen as a response to changes in the membership environment, greater individualisation of political participation and growth in social movement politics and online activism. Yet as much as parties are responding to a changed membership environment, they are also driving that change, increasingly blurring the distinction between members and supporters. This article examines the recent impact of this change within the British Labour party and argues that, in line with Susan Scarrow's theory of ‘multi‐speed’ membership, the Labour party's experiment in expanding affiliation options has led directly to a tension in locating the source of authority within the party, creating a challenge for its new leader in accommodating his new supporters within his party's representative traditions.     

Mis-marketing the Conservatives: The Limitations of Style over Substance

Every Tory leader since 1997 has made significant attempts to use marketing; the most recent, Michael Howard, appointed the first ever UK party Marketing Director to head a specialised Marketing Department. However, whilst the Conservatives have made use of the tools of marketing (polling, focus groups, public listening exercises, communication) they have misunderstood the concept of political marketing, which is concerned with creating a unified political product that is responsive to voter demands. Political marketing has hitherto not worked for the Conservative party. This is because there is a lack of a supportive internal culture that accepts the party change necessary to produce a market-orientated political product including policy, leadership and candidates. If political marketing is only used to sell a product that the party elite rather than the British public wants, it will never help the Conservatives regain control of government.     

A Very Peculiar Revolution: Britain's Politics and Constitution, 1970–2011

Britain's constitution has changed dramatically over the past forty years in which the author has been involved in national politics: devolution, the supremacy of EU law, the greater willingness of the judiciary to intervene in political issues and new human rights legislation. However these changes have been essentially random, argues David Lipsey, lacking any binding theme. These changes continue under the new coalition government. However the even greater changes to British politics have essentially a single source: the dramatic change in social class in Britain and its impact on electoral politics—for example the rise of the media and the decline of ideology