‘The Settled Will of the Scottish People’: What is Next for Scotland's Parliaments?

Following a likely relative shift from Labour to SNP in the Scottish Parliament elections of 3 May 2007 the eight year Labour/Liberal Democratic Party coalition will come under great pressure and may be replaced by a minority administration or a Liberal Democrat/SNP coalition. While the independence issue may be sidelined, key constitutional issues will arise as a result of the Liberal Democrats' proposals featuring in Moving Towards Federalism which envisage greater legislative and taxation powers for the Scottish Parliament and a reconsideration of the devolution settlement. A number of weaknesses in the documents' proposals are identified. If it is acted upon there is the possibility of considerable resulting constitutional conflict arising which could pose considerable challenges for the future of the UK. The UK government which has actual competence on these issues has largely stayed silent on them during the campaign but may have to respond sensitively in its aftermath.     

Britain’s Choice: Polarisation or Cohesion

Britain’s Choice, a report published by More in Common, develops a new segmentation of the British public based on their core beliefs, values and identities. Identifying seven segments, the report aims to better understand the British public, the goal being to work out how to build a more cohesive Britain—the choice facing Britain being a path to further division and polarisation or one to greater solidarity and shared values. The report strikes a broadly optimistic turn and highlights the shared values across the seven groups, but there are warning signs in the data that there are still many issues on which these groups could be divided, the overlap between them, for now, limiting the success of attempts to do so and throwing up a ‘kaleidoscopic’ pattern that changes from issue to issue.     

Concurrent Elections and Voter Turnout: The Effect of the De-linking of State Elections on Electoral Participation in India's Parliamentary Polls, 1971–2004

This article examines the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971. According to conventional wisdom in the comparative literature on electoral turnout, separate elections to multiple levels and/or branches of government should depress turnout relative to co-temporal polls, ceteris paribus . The evidence from Indian elections provides strong confirmation for this hypothesis. This suggests that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.     

‘Irish Republic’, ‘Eire’ or ‘Ireland’? The Contested Name of John Bull's Other Island

One of the less visible consequences of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement of 1998 was that it finally put to rest a fifty year dispute between Ireland and the United Kingdom about the names of the respective states. This article begins by outlining the constitutional background to this complex terminological dispute, and then examines it from three perspectives. The first is that of the Irish state itself, which in recent decades has opted unambiguously for 'Ireland'. The second is the British government, which until the end of the twentieth century preferred the labels 'Eire' or 'Irish Republic'. The third is the militant nationalist republican movement, whose terminology was designed to deny the legitimacy of the existing state. The article concludes by examining the political significance of this issue, arguing that while its most obvious importance is symbolic, it has also had real meaning for the identity and for the geographical definition of the state, as well as for the British-Irish relationship.     

Taking ‘Big Government Conservatism’ Seriously? The Bush Presidency Reconsidered

This article reflects on the ongoing debate about the ideological direction of the Bush presidency and what it means for the future of US conservatism in domestic policy. The paper considers the dual nature of US conservatism and then goes on to explore the 'conservative promise' of the 2000 presidential election and the debate over what critiques of the Bush administration have come to call 'big government conservatism'. Finally, the article studies two examples of how this alleged 'big government conservatism' has been manifested. First, the article contemplates the administration's fiscal policy. Second it looks at the 2003 reform of the Medicare system. We argue that, although these two cases provide some ground to the idea of 'big government conservatism', in the end this phenomenon does not add up to a coherent policy vision. Overall, beyond tax cuts, the Bush administration has failed to implement a bold conservative agenda.     

The Generational Effect in Turnout in the Swedish General Elections, 1960–2010

Recent analyses have reported a generational pattern in electoral participation both in national and the European Parliament elections which suggests that a lower voting propensity among the younger cohorts remains relatively stable over time. Based on the Swedish national election studies 1960–2010, this article examines the magnitude of generational differences in a high‐turnout context. It contributes to earlier studies by using multilevel modeling to estimate the impacts of life cycle, generation and period on turnout and by aiming to account for the generational effect with institutional‐ and individual‐level factors. The results show a fairly modest generational effect. When controlling for the proportion of party members in the electorate and the effective number of parties, the differences between generations in their propensities to vote are substantially reduced.     

Assessing NASA’s Safety Culture: The Limits and Possibilities of High‐Reliability Theory

After the demise of the space shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board sharply criticized NASA’s safety culture. Adopting the high‐reliability organization as a benchmark, the board concluded that NASA did not possess the organizational characteristics that could have prevented this disaster. Furthermore, the board determined that high‐reliability theory is “extremely useful in describing the culture that should exist in the human spaceflight organization.” In this article, we argue that this conclusion is based on a misreading and misapplication of high‐reliability research. We conclude that in its human spaceflight programs, NASA has never been, nor could it be, a high‐reliability organization. We propose an alternative framework to assess reliability and safety in what we refer to as reliability‐seeking organizations.     

The Effect of Information Signals on Strategic Voting in Mock Mayoral Elections

While theoretical work on strategic voting emphasizes the importance of elite messages in persuading minor party supporters to abandon their first preference, few empirical studies have examined this relationship. I argue that while poll results certainly increase the likelihood of changing one’s vote, explicit information signals can increase this probability even more. Furthermore, these effects will be moderated by the presence of a counter message and the sponsor of the explicit information signal. These hypotheses are tested with data generated from two experiments. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Effect of Limiting Participation in Special District Elections to Property Owners: A Research Note

Scholars have found significant policy differences between special districts governed by elected officials and those overseen by appointees. However, their research ignores U.S. Supreme Court rulings that allow many special districts to restrict electoral participation to property owners. This study finds that the presence of officials elected by property owners upon a district's governing board is related to a reduced reliance upon property taxes for revenues and a greater reliance upon service charges. Using Census data sets and a review of state statutes, the study demonstrates that board elections can be an effective means for property owners to influence policy.