Local Government and Local Governance: 1944–2011

Abstract

Since the establishment of the tri-partite system of state education after the Second World War, the once simple relationships between central government and local government and the individual school have become increasingly complex. This article considers the key governance issues for schools and colleges in England and how they have been affected by the redistribution of power between central government and local government. The principal foci are the main legislative changes and the impact they have had on the respective powers and responsibilities of central government, local government and schools and colleges. The radical developments since the formation of the coalition government in May 2010 have accelerated the shift of power to central government from local government and by the end of the first term of the coalition the local authority will have little more than a vestigial role in the provision of secondary education and a diminishing role in primary and special education. As academy status becomes the norm (as it already is for secondary schools in some authorities) central government will be dealing directly with autonomous schools and academy chains. With more schools directly employing staff and with funding levels set nationally, the pattern and nature of public education will have been irrevocably changed.     

Turkey – from tutelary to delegative democracy

Guillermo O’Donnell’s influential work ‘Delegative Democracy’ set the discourse on a peculiar type of democracy. Lying between representative democracy and authoritarianism, the uniqueness of delegative democracy lies in its features, including an absence of horizontal accountability, strong centralised rule, individual leadership with unchecked powers, a cult figure embodying the nation and clientelist practices. While delegative democracies seem to arise out of presidential systems, Turkey, though a parliamentary system, has also displayed the distinctive features of delegative democracies. This paper identifies three characteristics of delegative democracy, which are responsible for the lack of democratic consolidation, if not the erosion of democracy itself: anti-institutionalism, an anti-political agenda and clientelism. Arguing that delegative democracy is the best concept with which to examine contemporary Turkey, the paper lays out how, post-2011, Turkey has demonstrated the three elements of delegative democracy. The final section discusses the implications of the Turkish case for scrutinising the very possibility of delegative democracy in parliamentary regimes.     

Goals and tactics of President Gerald Ford's ethnic politics

This article analyzes initiatives of Gerald Ford's presidential administration toward nationalities or the so-called white ethnics against the backdrop of the legacy of Richard Nixon and the Republican Party's ethnic politics of the 1960s. Using archival and interview materials, it demonstrates that Gerald Ford intended to improve the relationship between the President's office and the ethnics who were involved in the Republican Party's structures. He consciously tried to respond to ethnics’ political concerns and even created a special position on his staff for working with the nationalities. While in office and during the election campaign of 1976, Ford succeeded in engaging the ethnics and in demonstrating his will to address their needs on the domestic “front.” He failed, however, to fully appreciate the importance of foreign policy to the nationalities. The article proposes that today, as in the 1970s, the American political establishment would benefit from recognizing international issues as crucial elements of white ethnics’ or nationalities’ political behavior.     

台湾地区2020年“二合一”选举结果及其对政党政治的影响

论文分析2020年台湾地区“二合一”选举结果及其对政党政治的影响。根据2016年以来三次选举中不同政党得票情况的起伏变化,观察“蓝、绿”和南北政治光谱的周期性变化规律,评估政党内部因素和外部环境对岛内选举结果的短期效应和长期影响,进而展望台湾政党政治的未来发展趋势。     

Voter perceptions of parties’ left–right positions: The role of party strategies

Left–right semantics help voters simplify the complex political reality as they reduce party views on a variety of issues to a single dimension. Less studied, however, is the question of how voters arrive at parties’ left–right positions and how parties can influence voter perceptions. In this article, I demonstrate that the party can shape the voter’s understanding of the content of its left–right ideology by using three strategies: avoidance, ambivalence, or ambiguity. Specifically, the party may avoid or de-emphasize, embrace a conflicting position, or becloud its position on the controversial issue; by so doing, it induces voters to place less weight on this issue when perceiving the party’s left–right position. The empirical analysis connects voter and party data from 21 European democracies in the period 1996–2014 and finds empirical support for the effectiveness of these strategies. In particular, the study finds robust empirical evidence that strategic avoidance, ambivalence, and ambiguity strongly moderate the association between the party’s perceived ideological brand and its underlying issue content.     

Rejecting representation? Party systems and popular support for referendums in Europe

Under what conditions do citizens favor deciding political issues by popular vote? Models of support for popular vote processes usually consider the influence of individual attitudes such as political trust and interest in politics. But much less is known about the effect of institutional variables on support for popular vote processes. This article builds on research showing that disaffection with elected officials shapes support for referendums by considering the influence of the party system. First, an analysis of multilevel data from twenty-four European democracies indicates that individuals are more supportive of referendums in countries with fewer effective political parties. Second, a mediation analysis provides evidence that the number of parties influences referendum support through individual-level political trust and external efficacy. Where there are fewer viable parties, feelings that elected officials are unresponsive tend to increase popular support for referendums. These findings suggest a trade-off between available representation by political parties and support for direct influence over public policy.     

Do parties perceive their voter potentials correctly? Reconsidering the spatial logic of electoral competition

Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this gap, we develop analogue measures of a party's perceived and its actual voter potential for each competitor in a party system. Combining elite and mass surveys conducted in Germany, we show that perceived and actual voter potentials depend on spatial considerations but also that not all parties are able to correctly evaluate their potentials. These deviations can be traced back to differences in the perceived placement of political actors between elites and citizens. This supports the spatial logic of party competition but it also points to potential pitfalls for strategic behavior of political parties.     

The 2019 General Election in Northern Ireland: the Rise of the Centre Ground?

The experience of the 2019 general election in Northern Ireland took a very different course to that of the rest of the UK and, indeed, to the pattern of electoral politics typical of the region. Coming after almost three years with no functioning devolved government, combined with intense disagreement and uncertainty about Brexit, voters were ready to give a message to the two largest parties. Both Sinn Féin and the DUP suffered losses in the election, with the headline outcome being that unionism no longer holds the majority of seats for Northern Ireland in Westminster. More generally, there was a swing from both sides towards centre ground voting, which brought significant gains for the Alliance Party and the SDLP. This article summarises the reasons for this broad trend, focussing on the conditions and electoral pacts which brought it about. It also considers what it might mean for the prospects for Irish unification, noting that a referendum on unification will only be passed by attracting votes from those who tend to see themselves as neither unionist or nationalist.     

Back to the Future: The Pulling Apart of our Towns and Cities

Growing divisions between Britain’s towns and cities have created a dilemma for the Labour Party in seeking to represent very different parts of the country. There are some who argue that Labour must choose the global networked youth—who largely reside in cities—in order to maximise its electoral chances. This is an argument that defies electoral gravity and fails to address the root causes of the gulf between towns and cities. As jobs and investment have gone into cities, many towns have seen the local population age and local economies become unsustainable. In both towns and cities there is a clamour for power to move closer to home and for the renewal of democratic institutions, offering Labour the chance to win power and end the divisions that have come to characterise British politics.