A War on ‘Risk’? British Government and the National Security Strategy

This article explores the United Kingdom's National Security Strategy (NSS) since 2008, considering what the NSS discloses about how contemporary Whitehall conceptualises ‘risks’ to Britain. It contends that rather than being a strategy in the Clausewitzian sense, the NSS represents a political exercise in risk management. In addressing a range of quite different problems, the NSS suggests that those in Whitehall now conceive their role as being to shield the citizen from any conceivable threat to their safety, wellbeing, and even emotional security. Yet this constitutes a highly expansive vision, and elevates the state's provision of public goods to a potentially unmanageable level.     

Political discourse networks and the conflict over software patents in Europe

In 2005, the European Parliament rejected the directive ‘on the patentability of computer‐implemented inventions’, which had been drafted and supported by the European Commission, the Council and well‐organised industrial interests, with an overwhelming majority. In this unusual case, a coalition of opponents of software patents prevailed over a strong industry‐led coalition. In this article, an explanation is developed based on political discourse showing that two stable and distinct discourse coalitions can be identified and measured over time. The apparently weak coalition of software patent opponents shows typical properties of a hegemonic discourse coalition. It presents itself as being more coherent, employs a better‐integrated set of frames and dominates key economic arguments, while the proponents of software patents are not as well‐organised. This configuration of the discourse gave leeway for an alternative course of political action by the European Parliament. The notion of discourse coalitions and related structural features of the discourse are operationalised by drawing on social network analysis. More specifically, discourse network analysis is introduced as a new methodology for the study of policy debates. The approach is capable of measuring empirical discourses both statically and in a longitudinal way, and is compatible with the policy network approach.     

Making Europe Work

Because they have failed to address the fundamental economic imbalances within Europe obscured by the single currency, each effort by European leaders so far to resolve the euro crisis has only deepened it. Without a decisive move toward fiscal and political union, accompanied by policies that push productivity and competitiveness toward convergence while closing the democratic deficit, the Eurozone will disintegrate. To discuss the way forward, the Nicolas Berggruen Institute's Council on the Future of Europe met in Rome on May 28 with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. In this section we publish the contributions from that meeting by the former European leaders, scholars and Nobel laureates who are members of the Council.     

Britain and Europe: An Unforgettable Past and an Unavoidable Future

The title of this article is taken from the opening lines of Hugo Young's brilliant history of Britain's relationship with Europe, This Blessed Plot . That book begins with a sentence that says it all: 'This is the story of 50 years in which Britain struggled to reconcile the past she could not forget with the future she could not avoid.' Those words were written in the spring of 1998. Despite the early promise of Tony Blair's European policy, little has changed since. For France and Germany, the institutions of Europe represent a uniquely successful attempt to exorcise the past. For its part, Britain lives in the shadow of its history.
The struggle to reconcile national identity with strategic interests is as acute as it has ever been. For all that Mr Blair's government has done something in recent years to make Britain's case in Europe, it has failed to make Europe's case in Britain.     

Why Do Governments Delegate Authority to Quasi‐Autonomous Agencies? The Case of Independent Administrative Authorities in France

In recent years, there has been a considerable degree of delegation from governments to quasi‐autonomous agencies. Various reasons have been put forward to explain why governments decide to delegate authority in this way. Some reasons are based on a transaction‐cost approach, such as credible commitments. Other reasons are more contextual. For instance, governments may be responding to a process of cross‐national policy transfer. In the literature on delegation some hypotheses have already been tested. Specifically, evidence has been found suggesting that governments create agencies to commit credibly to particular policy choices. However, other hypotheses, particularly ones based on contextual explanations, have proved much more difficult to operationalize. This article aims to help fill this gap. It does so by focusing on the creation of Independent Administrative Authorities in France. Does the qualitative evidence in this particular case corroborate the quantitative studies that have been undertaken elsewhere?     

Saving the Union: Conservatives and the 'Celtic Fringe'

The creation of devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales has forced the Conservative party to rethink its Unionism. At Westminster, the Conservatives have highlighted the anomalies of the devolution settlement and pressed for a rebalancing of the constitution. With the re-emergence of the West Lothian question in 2003, the Conservatives revived William Hague's proposal for 'English votes for English laws'. Fresh thinking on devolution is evident in the Scottish and Welsh Conservatives but they remain in the electoral doldrums. The Conservatives have taken tentative steps towards a 'new Unionism', but there are tensions between the focus on the 'English question' at Westminster and the efforts of Conservatives in Scotland and Wales to convince voters that they represent the interests of both the Union and their respective nations.     

In-group solidarity or out-group hostility in response to terrorism in France? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Conventional wisdom holds that terrorism has a wide-ranging impact on a polity. At the same time, a complementary, yet less extensive body of research discusses the impact of terrorism on the crux of representative democracy, namely its citizens. In contribution to that literature, and to further explore how external shocks affect public opinions, we propose a two-dimensional analytical framework to examine the effects of the November 2015 terrorist events in Paris and Saint Denis. Drawing from extant scholarship, we argue that we can expect both in-group solidarity and out-group hostility to increase in direct response to these events. This study relies on a regression discontinuity design to analyse a representative survey (DREES) that was in the field at the time of the events. Findings are two-fold. First, and perhaps surprisingly, we find no conclusive evidence of increasing out-group hostilities as a direct consequence of the terrorist events. Second, we find a definite strengthening of in-group solidarity indicators following the events. This not only confirms that citizens adjust their opinions in response to environmental stimuli, but also highlights the democratic resilience of citizens, particularly when faced with a collective threat. Altogether, these findings add to our understanding of why and how individual behaviour changes in light of exogenous shocks.