Psephology

This article provides a new reading of the crossover between youth subculture and drug consumption, and seeks to demonstrate that drug prohibition has entered a legitimation crisis in social and political policy (Habermas, 1975). This article argues that contemporary drug normalisation is at the centre of the apparent failure of drug prohibition to understand and respond to the growth in oppositional messages derived from digital communication and the use of drug representations by mainstream capitalism to sell everyday commodities for profit. At the same time, UK and US newspapers have questioned the validity of the 'war on drugs' owing to political corruption and human rights abuses in Mexico, Afghanistan and Colombia. The article considers that drug normalisation has disrupted drug policy because intoxicants have become incorporated into everyday culture, and in particular youth subculture. Within the recent literature, young people's drug use has been theorised within a generalised framework of postmodernity. This article argues that drug normalisation theory is not a postmodern concept. It is a theory derived from the work of the Chicago School articulated by Alfred Lindesmith, Howard Becker and David Matza, who in turn influenced the UK National Deviance Conference and the subsequent CCCS theory of subculture. This created the theoretical opportunity to interpret substance consumption as a condition of normalisation separate from crime.

Steps towards improved participation? An analysis of classroom talk and the "ladder of interaction" in the Japanese context AdissertationbyTimMarchand March2010 submittedinpartialcompletionoftheMScdegreeinTeachingEnglishtoSpeakersofOtherLanguages Abstract

The article divides the history of Thatcherism into seven main stages from its pre-history before 1979 through to the revival of the neoliberal project by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of 2010–2015. This periodization is based on the changing strategic line of Thatcherism and is related not only to Mrs Thatcher’s practice of conviction politics as a political leader but also to the defining features of neoliberalism considered as an economic and political project. The analysis then reviews the features of the neoliberal regime shift instituted under Mrs Thatcher once it had been consolidated, including the strengthening of the City of London and a finance-dominated accumulation trajectory at the expense of uneven development elsewhere in the United Kingdom and, eventually, the financial crisis that undermined the New Labour Government in 2007–10. This crisis was the pretext for the previously noted revival of the Thatcherite project. The article then considers the dialectic of authoritarian populism and statism and ends with brief remarks on how the recent and continuing fisco-financial crisis has provided an opportunity for the revival of a ‘two nations’ neoliberal austerity politics.

A political economy of football has become more essential as the game has been colonised by elements of the business class. There is a tension between its profit maximising understanding of football and a more community oriented, democratic vision that seeks to pursue government policy goals. The insights of economics and politics are both necessary to understand the political economy of football, but they should not be hybridised. Economics allows us to understand the distinctive characteristics of the football market while politics permits an analysis both of the politics of cooption and engagement and the politics of resistance. Four variables are identified that represent a political science contribution to the analysis of football and its relationship with government.

This essay explains and defines the emergence of Proto-Democracy in Eighteenth-Century London, as prepared by P.J. Corfield for publication in E.M. Green, P.J. Corfield and C. Harvey, Elections in Metropolitan London, 1700-1850: Volume 1 Arguments and Evidence (Bristol, 2013), pp. 55-67; and on-line in http://leh.ncl.ac.uk/1.10.

The Antipodes have been amongst the safest places on the planet during the Covid-19 pandemic. The governments of Australia and New Zealand (national, state, and territory governments) have acted promptly, decisively, and cohesively in closing borders, quarantining incoming returnees, instigating rigorous contact tracing and extensive testing, social distancing, hand washing, masks, and occasional lockdowns. Antipodean governments and populations have long experience of awareness and compliance with biosecurity issues. Isolation and distance have long served to keep Australia and New Zealand free of many pests and diseases. Each Antipodean election held during the Covid-19 pandemic has returned the incumbent. During the first 14 months of the pandemic, six out of six incumbent governments facing elections during the Covid pandemic have been returned. Five returned incumbents were center-left while the sixth was centerright. Four of the elections have rewarded the incumbent government with an increased majority, the Northern Territory election returned a reduced majority, and the Tasmanian election returned the status quo with the narrowest of majorities maintained. The New Zealand election returned the Labor government to power in their own right and released them from the coalition. The Western Australian election saw Labor returned with a landslide result with an unprecedented, win of 53 out of 59 seats (90% of seats). The object of the present paper is to report the outcomes of the six antipodean elections conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic (to date) and to reflect on the Covid-safe effect on them if any.

The article divides the history of Thatcherism into seven main stages from its prehistory before 1979 through to the revival of the neoliberal project by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of 2010-2015. This periodization is based on the changing strategic line of Thatcherism and is related not only to Mrs Thatcher's practice of conviction politics as a political leader but also to the defining features of neoliberalism considered as an economic and political project. The analysis then reviews the features of the neoliberal regime shift instituted under Mrs Thatcher once it had been consolidated, including the strengthening of the City of London and a finance-dominated accumulation trajectory at the expense of uneven development elsewhere in the United Kingdom and, eventually, the financial crisis that undermined the New Labour Government in 2007-10. This crisis was the pretext for the previously noted revival of the Thatcherite project. The article then considers the dialectic of authoritarian populism and statism and ends with brief remarks on how the recent and continuing fisco-financial crisis has provided an opportunity for the revival of a 'two nations' neoliberal austerity politics.

This article examines a period of rapid policy change following decades of stability in UK tobacco. It seeks to account for such a long period of policy stability, to analyse and qualify the extent of change, and to explain change using a 'multiple lenses' approach. It compares the explanatory value of policy network models such as punctuated equilibrium and the advocacy coalition framework, with models stressing change from 'above and below' such as multi-level governance and policy transfer. A key finding is that the value of these models varies according to the narrative of policy change that we select. The article challenges researchers to be careful about assuming the nature of policy change before embarking on explanation. While the findings of the case study may vary with other policy areas in British politics, the call for clarity and lessons from multiple approaches are widely applicable.

Home Office Strategic Plan, Tony Blair describing his government's policy agenda as a cultural 'crusade'. Scholarly attention has often focused upon the implementation of the ASB management agenda but rather less attention has been given to the fast-moving politics behind the developing ASB debate. Following an introductory discussion connecting the 'narrow politics' of ASB strategy to a wider analysis of social divisions and the state of cultural politics in contemporary Britain, the article proceeds to consider 'four phases' embracing key changes, developments and turning points in the politics of ASB.

... Book Review. British Politics (2012) 7, 83–84. doi:10.1057/bp.2011.29. The new extremism in twenty-first century Britain. Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin (eds.) Routledge, Abingdon, 2010, 262pp., £24.99, ISBN: 978-0415494359. Gavin Bailey a. ...

Reforms to the citizenship process under New Labour were part of a policy of reinvigorating citizenship as a tool for fostering community cohesion. By requiring newcomers to learn English, take a test and attend a ceremony, the Government aimed to help them to integrate better into British life, thereby reducing problems allegedly caused by growing diversity in large multicultural cities. Several years since the introduction of these reforms, and in the wake of yet more changes by the Coalition government, it is important to reflect critically on their impacts. To do so, this paper presents the results of a study which sought the opinions of non-EU immigrants and others with direct experience of the new citizenship process. The research found that, contrary to the New Labour’s promotion of British citizenship as a common bond, the process serves to reinforce ‘otherness’ and to encourage an instrumental approach to ‘getting nationality’. It is argued that, in modelling the process on...

The UK Climate Camp protests of 2007 are an important moment in an ongoing analysis of the success of ‘green protests’ in the UK. A legacy of knowledge transfer between activist groups, NGOs and UK publics is visible; in the initiation and development of recent climate-related protests, their key frames (the stakes raised), targets and forms of mobilisation, and the allies the protestors were able to attract. Defining terms (success in particular) is difficult, due to multiple differences in aims and objectives among a variety of social actors. The paper identifies a complex spectrum of green perspectives among activists and broader green networks. UK green protest success is defined and identified in terms of capacity building; protest waves spanning several activist generations have framed important sustainability citizenship stakes with broad public resonance and uptake. The use of protest tactics among broader publics is also a significant legacy. However, the mainstreaming of green stakes and their co-option — ‘green washing’ — is causing clashes between ‘strong green’ and ‘weak green’ perspectives, particularly around issues of green consumption, power relations and political economy. These struggles over green stakes and strategies re-emphasise long-standing difficulties with defining protest success. This is an ongoing narrative.

... one to have assumed the role when the Conservatives were in office was John Major in ... for a 'unity' or 'compromise' candidate to win, instead of one who (like Chamberlain and Long ... com reflected, Howard engineered an election process that fatally damaged David Davis' hopes ...

The re-emergence of European integration as a difficult issue for the Conservative Party exposed the limits of David Cameron's modernisation project. In opposition, Cameron had defused the EU issue by lowering its salience but this suppressed rather than effectively addressed the issue, allowing Eurosceptics who favour withdrawal or fundamental renegotiation to shape the agenda. In office, new and familiar challenges emerged. The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis changed the dynamics of the UK's relationship with the EU. Domestically, coalition with the Liberal Democrats and dissent from Eurosceptic Conservative MPs restricted Cameron's room for manoeuvre, while the rise of the UK Independence Party added a new dimension to the problems the EU issue poses for the Conservatives. Cameron responded by promising that if the Conservatives win the 2015 general election, he will negotiate a 'new settlement' in the EU and hold an 'in-out' referendum. This article assesses whether this position amounts to a belated modernisation of Conservative policy that might both resolve intra-party divisions and settle the question of the UK's place in the EU.

... and in the case of intersectionality, translating theoretical innovations around interlocking systems of oppression into ... in creating and maintaining processes of subject formation and systems of domination ... places as one of the most important axes of domination' (Woodward, 2008 ...

Political communication is an exceptionally rich, complex, fluid and important sub-field among those that populate the overall field of communications studies. Scholarship has not always done suitable justice to those characteristics-either focusing discretely on isolated particulars or striving to comprehend it all in one grand-theoretical go. Take how it has changed over time. Since the end of World War II, the prime medium of political communication has been first the press, next network television, next multi-channel television and soon, perhaps, an Internet-television hybrid. Other major changes-for communicators, media content, audience/citizens and for political institutions themselveshave followed in train. We need frameworks that can capture such developments, identifying and pursuing the research questions they highlight. Take complexity. As Jack McLeod and his colleagues (McLeod, Kosicki & McLeod, 2010) have often stressed, political communication is eminently a multi-level field. At its simplest, it links political culture, political actors, media organizations, including the roles played by political journalists within them, and bodies of increasingly heterogeneous and varyingly involved citizens. We need frameworks that can help us to understand how these relationships work, how they evolve, how they feed on each other and in what ways they matter. For matter they do, since political communication is inescapably a normative domain, intimately involved in the realization (or failure to realize) of collectively self-determining processes of citizenship and democracy. Of course people's political and communication values will differ, and nobody of empirical evidence can definitively determine which among them are superior. Nevertheless we do need frameworks and research that can shed light on the ideas and information that are made available to citizens by existing and prospective communication arrangements and on the models of democracy that they do or do not make possible. Readers interested in grasping political communication in all the above respects will get a great deal out of this book. It conceptualizes the role of political communication in what the editors call a 'postmodern democracy', shaped by formative, ongoing, incomplete and tension-ridden processes along two over-arching dimensions. Along a horizontal dimension, political institutions and media institutions-politicians and journalists-face each other and interact, collaborate and struggle, read each other and adapt-in what is ultimately a joint production of political messages. Following Mazzoleni and Schulz (1999), the authors identify the process of 'mediatization' as central here, whereby political actors increasingly adapt to media demands, media logics and media perspectives on politics itself. As the authors interpret it, however, this is a variable and uneven process (it may be more advanced and take different forms in different polities), and attempts to reverse the tide cannot be ruled out, whether by news management or 'disintermediation' (circumventing mainstream news media via channels of more direct access to voters, such as the Internet). Along a vertical dimension-that which links political and media elites with audience members and citizens-a lot, confusingly, seems to be going on: new relationships, new roles, new voices, as well as new challenges, problems and frustrations. The authors sum this up in terms of a process of 'decentralization'. Previously positioned chiefly as communication receivers, more audience members are now or may become more active communicators themselves. There are now plenty of citizen journalists, bloggers, tweeters and e-mailers. Consequently some politicians and journalists have felt compelled to insert themselves into this mêlée. As the authors interpret it, however, this is an incomplete process with diverse facets, eddies and possible ramifications (including the polarization of political stances and a strengthening of populist movements). Of course, much of this is itself horizontally directed. How far it has, or will have-and in what ways-a vertical momentum, reaching elites from the bottom up, as it were, remains to be seen. The book stems from a fruitful mode of collaboration, being the joint product of leading political communication scholars based in Leeds in the United Kingdom and in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. This adds value to their work and illustrates three advantages of crossnational research. One is the pooling and adjustment of ideas from different but compatible academic settings. Another is the possibility of establishing that a phenomenon found in one national system is also manifest in another-thereby taking a step toward broader generalization. But yet another is the possibility of identifying how cross-nationally different macro-level characteristics of political communication systems (as a case in point, comparing Holland's traditionally consensual political culture with Britain's more adversarial one) may impinge on the organization, conduct or content of political communication at other levels. x Foreword The authors have adopted all three approaches with profit, although I happen to consider that the third represents comparative political communication analysis at its most revealing best. Finally, what might this tell us about norms of citizenship and democracy? Different readers will no doubt interpret the book's findings in diverse ways. From my own point of view, two concerns emerge. One is reflected in the book's subtitle. The Primacy of Politics is certainly being challenged by developments on both dimensions of political communication-by mediatization horizontally and audience turbulence vertically. But is all that entirely healthy? When leaders have continually to look ahead to news media predilections while looking over their shoulders at disagreements, complaints and disaffection on the ground, how much space is left for them to tackle the issues of the day on their own complex terms? My other concern is about the kind of democracy that we may be inhabiting. The emerging political communication system that Brants, Voltmer and their colleagues portray seems more fragmented than in the past, more centrifugal than centripetal, shot through with multiple communication outlets, multiple voices and multiple issue agendas, all cycled (thanks especially to the ever-changing role of news values) and scene-shifted swiftly from one short time period to the next. For me, this conjures up an image more of a 'hit-and-run' democracy than, say, a deliberative one. The excellence of this book reminds me, nostalgically, of how 33 years ago the late Michael Gurevitch (my dear long-standing collaborator and friend) and I argued that 'the study of political communication could be enriched by adoption of a systems outlook'. We itemized its advantages as follows: First, it links diverse bodies of evidence in broader analytical perspectives. Second, there would be antidotes against the tendency to under-or overemphasize any single element of the political communication system. Third, by drawing attention to system factors which might have macro-level consequences that could be measured and compared, cross-national investigations would be facilitated.

Over the last decade, the British state has been profoundly restructured. The reforms challenge scholars to develop accounts that can provide a unified analysis of the numerous changes and enable their effects to be identified. While the constitutional changes in Britain are the subject of an extensive literature, most of the studies focus on individual institutions and neglect the reforms' collective nature and effects. To develop a more unified analysis of the reforms and their consequences, we need an account of what institutions are and of how they work. Economic analyses of institutions provide such an account, helping us to identify the common operating logics that underpin different institutions along with their effects. Insights from economic analyses are used to examine the recent institutional reforms in Britain, in particular how these reforms affect the distribution of decision making authority and the nature of political accountability.

This analysis of the 2005 general election focuses on the way the formal campaign was reported, in their different ways, by national and local broadcasters and newspapers. Having assessed how much attention the various news media devoted to the election, Norris et ...