MPs' Responses to a Proposed New Constituency Map: Electoral Prospects,Community Ties and Party Organisation

Until new legislation was passed in 2011, community ties and continuity of representation were the major criteria deployed by the United Kingdom's Boundary Commissions when defining parliamentary constituency boundaries. Equality of electorates is now the paramount criterion, and the Commissions' first proposals using that new format substantially fractured many of the existing constituencies. MPs were able to respond to the Commissions' proposals under the altered public consultation procedures. Only a small majority did so, however: there were significant differences across the political parties in both response rates and the nature of the responses, the majority of which used community ties as the main grounds for either supporting or opposing the Commissions' proposals.     

IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL? POST‐CONFLICT STATEBUILDING,PEACEBUILDING, AND THE GOOD GOVERNANCE AGENDA IN TIMOR‐LESTE

Statebuilding after conflict often entails liberal peacebuilding measures. The end of the UN mission in post‐conflict Timor‐Leste in December 2012 provides a unique opportunity to investigate statebuilding in practice. The liberal peacebuilding agenda has met with stiff academic resistance—mainly from the critical theorist camp—and is questioned as an appropriate measure of …statebuilding success. We deploy instead the good governance (GG) agenda as a hybrid local‐liberal guide. Drawing on field work, interviews, and secondary documents, we investigate what we see as four key, intertwined and overlapping aspects of GG: state capacity including the establishment of a state bureaucracy, participation and the engagement of civil society, institution building and rule of law, and corruption control and transparency. We note GG provides a useful policy heuristic, while abstract “one‐size‐fits‐all” liberal peacebuilding models, which avoid the complexities of machinery of government issues, the time taken to develop institutions, and historical and contextual environments of countries, are likely to face severe problems. New states may be dependent on external forces to maintain monopoly of violence. The reversibility and uncertainty of statebuilding and the decades‐long commitment needed by international agencies are noted. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Terrorism and Human Rights: A Defence Lawyer's Perspective

ABSTRACT

The author of this article is one of the attorneys appointed to represent Zacarias Moussaoui in the United States. Mr. Moussaoui is the only person facing criminal charges for alleged involvement in the September 11 plot. The author describes the system of government in the United States with a specific emphasis on several terrorism cases pending in the United States. He seeks to assure the readers that the rule of law is paramount in the United States. Recent decisions of the Supreme Court—in the Hamdi and Guantanamo cases—that confirm the constitutional rights of even the most dedicated enemies of the United States, which decisions post-date this submission, only affirm the writer's theme.     

VERTICAL STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

We report the results of a study examining the effects of vertical strategic alignment (that is, the degree to which strategic stances are consistent across different organizational levels) on public service performance. Longitudinal multivariate analysis is undertaken on a panel of public organizations over four years. We find that alignment on a prospecting strategy leads to better performance, but that no such effect is observed for a defending strategy. We also find that high levels of prospecting alignment produce stronger positive performance effects in centralized organizations and when environmental uncertainty is high. The implications of these findings for research and practice are considered in the conclusion.     

Changing biases in the operation of the UK's electoral system, 1950–97

The biased outcomes of recent British general elections, whereby the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) would have achieved different percentages of the seats in the House of Commons for the same percentages of the votes cast, are explored, using a method of bias decomposition developed by a New Zealand political scientist. Overall, the situation changed markedly between 1950 and 1997: the biases in the system strongly favoured the Conservatives in the 1950s and early 1960s, but Labour in 1992 and 1997. Examination of the seven components of the bias measure shows that most of these moved in Labour's favour over the 50-year period, with a major shift between 1992 and 1997 because of the greater geographical efficiency of the Labour party's vote at the latter date: reasons for this are suggested.