Labour’s targeted constituency campaigning: nationally directed or locally produced?

Along with a number of other researchers, Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley have consistently argued that constituency campaigning in Britain influences constituency election outcomes. In recent work, however, they have denied that the major efforts made by the Labour Party’s national headquarters to target resources and expertise into key seats in the 1997 general election was effective and that, as a consequence, the party had better results in these seats than elsewhere. Using various measures of campaign intensity, however, it is clear that target constituencies did have significantly stronger Labour campaigns than comparable constituencies that were not nationally targeted. Multivariate analysis also suggests that Labour’s performance in targeted seats was better than in comparable seats.     

Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind when It Runs for Office?

Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the outcome of a single publicized case can be decisive in their evaluations. Further, voters are more likely to perceive instances of underpunishment than overpunishment. Our theory predicts that elected judges will consequently become more punitive as standing for reelection approaches. Using sentencing data from 22,095 Pennsylvania criminal cases in the 1990s, we find strong evidence for this effect. Additional tests confirm the validity of our theory over alternatives. For the cases we examine, we attribute at least 1,818 to 2,705 years of incarceration to the electoral dynamic.     

How I came to write The Hut Six Story

Gordon Welchman was a Cambridge mathematician and one of the key figures working at Bletchley Park (BP) during World War Two. In 1974, he decided to write his own memoir following the publication of other books on the subject. His book ‘The Hut Six Story’ was published in both the US and UK in early 1982 and was the first to include technical details about the BP operation. Pressure on his publishers from the NSA and GCHQ ultimately resulted in the book being withdrawn from their lists. On 14 May 1982, he wrote this previously unpublished paper, explaining his motives.