Modernising the Monarchy: The Oaths of Office

According to laws deriving from the constitutional developments of the seventeenth century and earlier, a new monarch of the UK has to swear oaths that renounce Roman Catholicism and uphold protestantism in the UK, presbyterianism in Scotland and the privileged established status of the Church of England. If the next monarchical succession is to be as smooth as the governmental succession of 2010 these anachronistic oaths should be considered for abolition and the whole procedure should be reviewed. There remains then only one oath requiring to be administered at the coronation to which all can agree—to govern according to the law.     

The Monarchy,the State and Religion: Modernising the Relationships

Aspects of contemporary monarchy and government in relation to religion are out of step with contemporary society and require systematic reform. The removal of religious and gender discrimination in the arrangements for succession to the monarchy would be in conformity with modern anti‐discrimination attitudes. The monarchy should also consider stepping back from its religious role. The monarch has an official role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England but less than a quarter of the population identify as Anglican and in its current attempts to be inclusive the monarchy seeks to respect and support other religions whose beliefs and practices are at variance with those of the C of E and the general population. In Scotland a new settlement could be promoted by the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland (comparable to the situation in Wales and Northern Ireland) and the ending of separate Roman Catholic state education.     

The Modernising Antecedents and Historical Origins of One Nation Labour

Launched at the 2012 conference, Ed Miliband's One Nation Labour initiative draws heavily on the party's experience under Neil Kinnock during the late 1980s as well as from Tony Blair's tenure as leader of the opposition between 1994 and 1997. In policy terms, Miliband promised a Labour government would prevent firms from ‘poaching’ trained workers from other businesses and would stop short term predatory behaviour in the economy by offering companies greater protection from takeovers. Both proposals echo those at the heart of Labour's 1989 policy review document, Meet the Challenge, Make the Change. The link between One Nation and Tony Blair's New Labour concerns the discourse with which the party's outlook is articulated. As such, One Nation Labour has not been shaped by current political debates. Rather it reflects the party's ability to learn from previous initiatives, building on their strengths in a reflective fashion.     

Modernising policy for public value: Learning lessons from the management of bushfires

This article highlights the need for an inclusive and integrated policy‐making model by drawing on the experiences of the bushfire fighting efforts of community, business and government bodies during the bushfires that ravaged North‐East Victoria during January and February of 2003 and the delivery of recovery assistance since the fires. These experiences revealed some shortfalls which militated against delivering public value for the communities affected during and after the fires. A policy framework has been developed in light of these shortfalls and is used here to reveal the ways in which bushfire management policy and practice needs to be ‘modernised’ if arrangements in the future are to deliver public value.¹     

Property Rights and Forest Commons

Although property rights have been linked to a variety of positive social outcomes at the macro‐level, less research focuses on how property rights affect the benefits that actors receive at the micro‐level. This article examines property rights to a common‐pool resource (CPR) that are asymmetrically allocated among users, and presents a theoretical argument that property rights affect the allocation of resource benefits in two important ways. First, users with extensive property rights receive more benefits than users with limited property rights. Second, users with the power to influence how community rules are enforced—for example, landholders and ethnic majorities—more effectively define and defend their property and thus receive disproportionate CPR benefits compared to users with similar levels of property rights, but with less power. Using household‐level survey data in Bolivia, Kenya, Mexico, and Uganda, collected after a period of property rights decentralization, the empirical analysis finds support for these propositions. We conclude that power critically moderates the effects of property rights on the commons.     

Conflict,Cooperation, and Institutional Change on the Commons

Rational choice scholarship posits two principal theories to explain why political institutions emerge and change: cooperation theory and conflict theory. We evaluate cooperation theory and conflict theory to explain the emergence of common property institutions among a group of Maasai pastoralists in southwestern Kenya. Our empirical results show that the change to common property is best explained by conflict theory.     

Selecting women candidates: obstacles to the feminisation of the House of Commons

Abstract. Despite concern by the major British political parties to increase the number of women at Westminster, progress has been slow, yielding only just over 5 per cent of women MPs. This article presents the results of an investigation of party selection procedures designed to determine whether selection practices were themselves the explanation for the poor showing of women. The study consisted of interviews with party officials and a survey of the candidates in the 1987 General Election. It was found that selection procedures were in a process of change which included efforts by central leaderships to promote women's candidacies. But local selectorates were not always cooperative. Although women did not appear to be selected in the proportions in which they were coming forward, no evidence of direct discrimination against aspirant women candidates was found. But indirect discrimination may have taken place. Both the way in which the role of a candidate is defined and the qualities selectorates seek produce ideal candidate profiles which may penalise many women. The article concludes that if women are to be better represented at Westminster, parties must go beyond procedural change and the introduction of positive action to a reconsideration of the criteria for choosing candidates.     

Estimating Ideal Points in the British House of Commons Using Early Day Motions

This article develops a new method for estimating the ideological preferences of members of the British House of Commons. Existing methods produce implausible results due to high levels of party cohesion and strategic voting on the part of opposition parties. To circumvent these problems, this article estimates MP preferences using Early Day Motions (EDMs) as an alternative to roll‐call votes. The Bayesian ideal point model for the decision to sign an EDM takes into account both policy preferences and signing costs. The estimates obtained have greater face validity than previous attempts to measure preferences in the House of Commons, recovering the expected order of parties and of members within parties. The estimates successfully predict voting behavior in the House of Commons. As with other Bayesian ideal point methods, this approach produces natural uncertainty estimates and allows for easy calculation of quantities of interest such as member ranks.