Citizenship and the Constitution

The status of “British subjects”, the relationship between the individual and the State, and the concept of “rights” and “liberties” are relevant to the current political debate about “British identity”, citizenship, “multiculturalism”, a “British Bill of Rights”, and whether there is now a need for a written constitution. This article describes the confused contemporary understanding of what is meant by “British” citizenship and analyses the parallel developments of citizenship and our constitutional arrangements. The Human Rights Act, devolution and Gordon Brown's proposed constitutional renewal are important steps in setting out the ideas and principles that bind us together as a nation. Together with a coherent definition of the rights and obligations of British citizenship, constitutional reform would achieve a stronger sense of what it means to be British today.     

The Expenses Scandal and the Politics of Electoral Reform

The scandal over MPs' expenses that erupted in 2009 was followed by a surge in discussion of electoral reform. A range of reforms to Westminster's existing electoral system are now high on the political agenda. This article examines the extent and the nature of the scandal's impact on the electoral reform debate and draws out comparative implications for the sorts of conditions that can force politicians to accept electoral reforms that they do not want. It finds that the expenses scandal significantly changed debate about some electoral reform topics, but not about others. It proposes three factors likely to increase the impact of scandal in sparking reform: that the scandal is seen as harming ordinary people in their daily lives; that reforms can readily be understood as likely to mitigate the sources of scandal; and that those reforms do not seriously harm politicians' own perceived interests.     

Exploring the Paradox of Liberal Democracy: More Political Communications Equals Less Public Trust

Francis Fukuyama asks: ‘Is liberal democracy prey to serious internal contradictions, contradictions so serious that they will eventually undermine it as a political system?’ This paper argues that one of these ‘internal contradictions’ is the political communications process and it can be sufficiently serious to undermine the democratic system—but such an undermining is not inevitable.     

Bagehot Smiling: Gordon Brown's ‘New Constitution’ and the Revolution that Did Not Happen

The MPs expenses scandal that erupted in May 2009 has certainly rekindled interest in the next stage of constitutional reform and democratic renewal in Britain. This article examines how Gordon Brown's tenure as Prime Minister has differed from Tony Blair's in relation to the ‘new politics’ narrative. It argues that despite his long‐term personal commitment to major constitutional reforms, the role of crises in recalibrating the political opportunity structure and the manner in which electoral incentives can alter elite attitudes to institutional change that Brown's tenure can be characterised by optimism followed by timidity. Gordon Brown may have flown a few kites in relation to a written constitution, electoral reform, English devolution and the future of the House of Lords but he has left things far too late for a ‘constitutional moment’. Brown may have the political inclination but he lacks the capacity to deliver far‐reaching reform; Cameron is likely to have the capacity but not the inclination.     

Sleaze, Old Corruption and Parliamentary Reform: An Historical Perspective on the Current Crisis

There is nothing new about the existence of a political class, nor about the electorate's distaste for paid politicians. In the middle ages, voters made clear their preference for representatives who were prepared to serve without payment; in the eighteenth century, the increase in the number of MPs paid by the state, whether in salaried posts or as sinecurists, was seen as a corrupt and pernicious extension to the influence of the crown; in the nineteenth and early twentieth century the payment of MPs by the taxpayer was widely regarded as an improper and offensive idea. The current furore over MPs' pay and expenses is another example of the intense suspicion with which MPs who have received money from the state have been regarded from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.     

The Banking Crisis: Grid,Group and the State of the Debate

The banking crisis and the recession it induced provide a salient backdrop to domestic and international politics. ² The International Monetary Fund (IMF 2010) estimates that total banking losses between 2008 and 2010 exceeded US$2.3 trillion. This article uses grid‐group theory to review the existing literature on the causes of the banking crisis and, in doing so, distinguishes between hierarchical, individualist, egalitarian and fatalist accounts of what went wrong and of what needs to be done to prevent another crisis from occurring. It is argued that the existing reform agenda is underpinned by a hierarchical analysis of the causes of the crisis and that this risks narrowing the support base for the reform process.     

培养创新人才，迎接知识经济时代的挑战

20世纪50年代以来,知识产品和脑力劳动在物质产品中的作用日益突出,21世纪人类必将进入主要依靠知识创新的知识经济时代。知识的创新性应用将广泛存在于社会,商品的价值将更多的是劳动智力的对象化,处理信息和创新知识将成为人类的主要工作任务。国力的竞争将越来越表现为人才素质和科技实力的竞争、创新的竞赛。教育作为面向未来的事业,必须抓住知识经济的实质,把握时代特征,为21世纪培养合格人才。为此,必须提倡求异思维,重视培养理论思维能力,全面推进素质教育,构建创造性教育模式。     

Berlusconi,Boehner and the Brink: Lessons for Political Reform in Britain

In the early autumn of 2013 large minorities in Italy and the United States fermented crises that badly disrupted the government of the two countries. These cases were widely understood as instances of dysfunction in established democracies that would rarely be replicated elsewhere. However, while all the conditions that generated the crises are unlikely to be evident in other established democracies three important factors that caused the disruptions in the American and Italian political processes are also sources of political conflict in Britain. They are the powers of the second legislative chamber, the weakening links between parties and social groups, and the redrawing of electoral boundaries. All of them present problems for political reform in Britain, and understanding the role they played in the two political crises of 2013 is important for future reform in Britain.     

Research on the Relationship Among Income,Education, and Rising Medical Expenditure in Shanghai

Based on the statistics coming from the China Statistical Yearbook and the Shanghai Statistical Yearbook from 1978 to 2011, the authors exploit the internal relationships of the three variables of income, education, and medical expenses by constructing the model of vector autoregressive model （VAR）. The results show that the income elasticity of medical expenses is negative. There are inverse relationship between rising medical expenses and income, in the long term, more medical expenses mean bad health and get less income, meanwhile the education elasticity of medical expenses is 0.15, indicating that education has positively but slowly correlated with growth of medical expenses. Rising medical expenses on income changes, there is a long-term impact of income on medical expenses, the increase in revenue to stimulate healthy demand, driven by rising health care costs, indicates that after the market-oriented health care reform, health care commodities are flexible.     

Brexit and the British Constitution: a Long View

The Brexit referendum of 2016 brought a new concept to British politics, namely the ‘people’s will’, one that is seemingly at odds with conventional notions of parliamentary sovereignty, even a threat to its very existence. This article argues that although the device of the referendum is relatively new, the kind of popular control over Parliament and the executive that it invokes has long been a part of British politics. Ranging over 200 years, examples are drawn from the recall and deselection of MPs, mass petitioning campaigns, the role of the Speaker, and the flourishing of independent parties.     

Wake Up to Reality: Taiwan, the Chinese Mainland and Peace Across the Taiwan Strait

Relations between the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC or Chinese mainland) have improved significantly since 2008. However, this study suggests that it will be difficult for the two sides to sustain the momentum in cross-strait relations unless Beijing—and to some extent Taipei—begin to recalibrate their relationship in a more pragmatic way and adopt some new thinking on the concepts of sovereignty and the political status of the ROC. In short, they need to figure out a way to acknowledge the fact that both the ROC and PRC exist.     

Leaps of Faith in the Obesity Debate: a Cautionary Note for Policy Note for Policy-makers

The obesity epidemic has become an issue of major public concern in recent years, with dire predictions of its impact on public health budgets and the long-term health of populations in the developed world. Governments are being urged to act to improve our eating habits and make us more active. Policy proposals range from education campaigns to banning junk food advertising to more extreme measures such as 'fat taxes'. Although the debate has included discussion of public policy solutions to the problem, there has been little input from public policy specialists. This article explores some of the leaps of faith that are currently being made in the obesity debate and suggests that policy-makers need to be cautious about how they respond to calls for action. It is suggested that public policy research may provide some useful frameworks for considering the nature of the problem and assessing possible solutions.     

The Federal Government's Response to the Banks Report: An Assessment of its Recommendations and the Government Response

The aim of this article is to assess the Report of the Commonwealth Government's Taskforce on Reducing the Regulatory Burden on Business (the Banks Report), released in April 2006, and the government's response to the Report ( AG 2006a,b ). It focuses on the report's recommendations in regard to the system for making regulation in regard to business, particularly the regulation impact statement process (RIS), contained in chapter seven. This focus is chosen since it is the chapter in the report that addresses the underlying causes of over‐regulation.