This book presents a comparative perspective on the new dynamics of electoral competition following devolution to Scotland and Wales. It offers the first discussion of multi-level electoral dynamics in other western democracies thud proposing how electoral competition might develop in the devolved institutions of Scotland and Wales.
This book examines the increasing territorialisation of party competition and the relaxation of unitarian rule through devolution, presenting a long-term analysis of electoral developments in the United Kingdom since the end of the Second World War. Subsequently, the book looks into the undermining of the traditional majoritarian mode of British government as a result. It analyzes the significant role of these long-term developments and their detrimental effect on the parliament’s ability to resolve issues like the Scottish Independence Referendum or the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, and it addresses their underlying causes. The author additionally reconnects these electoral developments to the changing nature of devolution and shows how the deepening of devolution accelerates the negative electoral consequences for the British system of government. Finally, the book shows why the British Labour Party is turning more and more into a long-term minority party as a result of these developments. The book is a must-read for scholars, students and policy-makers, interested in a better understanding of comparative politics and devolution in general, as well as in the more specific case of the United Kingdom’s electoral system.
Does it really matter if a voter decides to vote-or, as a significant number of Americans do each election, not vote? Ron Hirschbein explores this issue and shows why enfranchisement cannot be understood unless it is placed in context and history. Clearly, the meaning of a vote depends upon the situation: a vote cast among the 400 of Athens or in the College of Cardinals has one significance; this is considerably different from pulling a lever every four years in a mass society of spectacles and commodities. Hirschbein also examines how voting was transformed from an expression of the political will of the Athenian polity into a sacred natural right-only to be turned to a ritual of mass society. First, Hirschbein looks at the right to vote as the centerpiece of American civic religion. He contrasts civic myths about enfranchisement with anthropological realities. Specifically he argues that, given the intractable mathematics of mass society, the chances that a single vote will determine the outcome of an election approach the infinitesimal. However, he suggests that voting plays a neglected ritual function by constructing, legitimizing, and celebrating political reality for players and spectators alike. Hirschbein then explicates the origins and evanescent meanings of enfranchisement by examining the theory and practice of voting among the citizenry of ancient Athens, medieval ecclesiastical bureaucrats, Enlightenment natural law thinkers, and the founders of the Virtuous Republic. He concludes with speculation about possible futures. A controversial and important analysis, this will be of interest to the general public as well as scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with election issues and theories of democracy.
Devolution has transformed the British Polity in the last decade. Taking this profound change as its theme, Devolution and British Politics is an up-to date, comprehensive and effective review of the origins and development of the devolution process.Devolution in British Politics offers a de-centralised assessment of British politics and encourages critical thinking regarding contemporary political theory.
Devolution and Black State Legislators examines whether black state legislators can produce qualitative gains in the substantive representation of black interests. Once a battle cry by southern conservatives, "new federalism" has shifted power from Washington to the respective state governments and, ironically, has done so as black state legislators grow in number. Tyson King-Meadows and Thomas F. Schaller look at the debates surrounding black political incorporation, the tradeoffs between substantive and descriptive representation, racial redistricting, and the impact of black legislators on state budgetary politics. They situate contemporary constraints on black state elites as the union of macro- and micro-level forces, which allows for a reconsideration of how the idiosyncrasies of political, economic, and geographic culture converge with the internal dynamics of state legislative processes to produce particular environments. Interviews with black legislators provide valuable insights into how such idiosyncrasies may deprive institutional advancement—committee assignments, chairmanships, and party leadership positions—of the influence it once afforded.
Why do national governments implement devolution given the high risk that it will encourage peripheral parties to demand ever more devolved powers? The aim of Challenging the State is to answer this question through a comparative analysis of devolution in four European countries: Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Taking a multidisciplinary approach to the dynamics of political and economic decentralization in contemporary regimes, this comprehensive Handbook offers a critical examination of how the decentralization of governance affects citizen well-being.
This book focuses on the design and operation of power-sharing in deeply divided societies. Beyond this starting point, it seeks to examine the different ways in which consociational institutions emerge from negotiations and peace settlements across three counter-intuitive cases – post-Brexit referendum Northern Ireland, the Brussels Capital Region and Cyprus. Across each of the chapters, the analysis assesses how the design or mediation of these various forms of power-sharing demonstrate similarity, difference and complexity in how consociationalism has been conceived of and operated within each of these contexts. Finally, a key objective of the book is to explore and evaluate how ideas surrounding power-sharing have evolved and changed incrementally within each of the empirical contexts. The unifying argument within the book is that power-sharing has to have the capacity to adapt to changing political circumstances, and that this can be achieved through the interplay of formal and informal micro-level refinements to these institutions and the procedures that govern them, that allow such institutions to evolve over time in ways that increase their utility as conflict transformation governance structures for deeply divided societies. This book fills the gap in the published literature between theoretical and empirical studies of power-sharing, and will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, consociationalism, European politics and IR in general.
