Party over Policy? Scottish Nationalism and the Politics of Independence

The Scottish National Party (SNP) won control of Scotland's devolved government in the 2007 election yet opinion polls show no majority for its objective of independence in Europe. While the party is adept at exploiting short‐term political opportunity structures in the wider British context, as well as appealing to the ‘opinion electorate’, it appears less successful at persuading a majority of Scottish voters to agree with its core ideology. Helpful parallels can be drawn between 2007 and the last time the party polled over 30 per cent of the popular vote in Scotland at the 1974 (October) British General Election—then, as now, the Scottish voter appears to be willing to distinguish between party and policy.     

Britain's Wages Crisis—Is ‘Predistribution’ or ‘Redistribution’ the Way Forward?

Is ‘predistribution’ as championed by Ed Miliband, or old fashioned ‘redistribution’ as adopted, if stealthily, by Labour from 1997, the best way to create greater equality? Some critics have argued that a strategy of predistribution—aimed at closing the income gap before the application of taxes and benefits—would not work and that it will be necessary to rely mainly on redistribution. This article examines the potential impact of weak and more radical predistribution‐style measures on one of the key drivers of inequality—‘wage compression’. It examines the potential of a mix of policies for raising the wage floor. It argues that reliance on traditional redistribution would face its own set of constraints and that creating a more equal distribution of the cake, before taxes and benefits, is a necessary condition for lowering the risk of continuing economic crisis.     

NEIGHBORHOOD RACIAL CONTEXT AND PERCEPTIONS OF POLICE‐BASED RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AMONG BLACK YOUTH*

Renewed interest has occurred in the United States around racially biased policing. Unfortunately, little is known about the effects of neighborhood social context on black adolescents' experiences with racially biased policing. In the current study, we examined whether perceptions of racially biased policing against black adolescents are a function of neighborhood racial composition, net of other neighborhood‐ and individual‐level factors. Using two waves of data from 763 black adolescents, we found that black adolescents most frequently are discriminated against by the police in predominantly white neighborhoods. This effect especially is pronounced in white neighborhoods that experienced recent growth in the size of the black population. Our results lend support to the “defended” white neighborhood thesis.