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French Electoral Reform and the Abstention Rate
In France, more than other mature democracies, the election rules undergo reform. Our concern is how these reforms influence mass electoral behaviour, namely voter turnout. We gather an extended national data set on the abstention rate, across the republics of France, and subject it to an interrupted time-series analysis. Two sets of hypotheses are explored: structural and tactical. The structu…
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- Volume 64, Issue1, January 2011. Pp. 45-60
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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Political Conduct and Misconduct : Probing Public Opinion
The media and public responses to the expenses scandal of 2009 demonstrated the enduring importance of standards of conduct in British public life. This article addresses some basic questions concerning citizens' attitudes towards political wrongdoing, including how much notice people actually take of politicians' misbehaviour, how much importance citizens attach to politicians' integrity and h…
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- Volume 64, Issue 1, January 2011. Pp. 61-81
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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The Australian Parliament : A Gendered Organisation
This study, drawing on interviews with 13 male and 15 female members of the Australian parliament, has two aims. The first is to contribute to knowledge about the nature of the Australian parliament, an institution which has seldom been subjected to gender analysis. This is particularly pertinent given the significant increase in women's representative status over the past decade. The second of…
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- Volume 64, Issue 1. January 2011. Pp. 82-105
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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The Quality of Discussion on the Economy in UK Political Blogs in 2008
In the early years of the twenty-first century, things look bleak for the political journalists of large newspapers—squeezed by the demands of celebrity culture, bullied by politicians and their aides, untrusted by the public and, now, displaced by a horde of amateur bloggers—or do they? This study is based upon an in-depth, comparative analysis of the quality of debate, on economic issues, in …
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- Volume 64, Issue 1, January 2011. Pp. 106-128
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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The Michael Marsh Question : How do Finns do Constituency Service?
Work on the representational focus of Finnish parliamentarians has been largely conspicuous by its absence and the notion of ‘constituency service’ is neither familiar to Finns, nor does it translate into Finnish. Based on interviews with MPs and their personal assistants, data from the Finnish leg of the Comparative Candidate Survey and official statistical material, this article makes a first…
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- Volume 64, Issue 1, January 2011. Pp. 129-152
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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Answering Questions in Parliament During Budget Debates : Deliberative Recipr…
Much time is spent asking questions during parliamentary debates. To what extent are they answered? This paper investigates this question by examining budget debates in post-1945 France, Sweden, and the UK as well as in the European Parliament from 1996 to 2001. The purpose is to introduce an empirical approach to a theoretical discussion of whether globalisation weakens deliberative democracy …
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- Volume 64, Issue 1, January 2001. Pp. 153-174
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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Between Military Efficiency and Democratic Legitimacy : Mapping Parliamentary…
Parliamentary approval can be of crucial importance to ensure the democratic legitimacy of military operations as it can establish public consent to the executive's use of force. But involving parliament in decisions to deploy military forces may have negative repercussions on the efficiency of operations, e.g. by slowing down decision-making. As the military activity of democracies has been on…
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- Volume 64, Issue 1, January 2011. Pp. 175-192
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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‘Boom and Bust’ in Women's Representation : Lessons to be Learnt from a D…
A commitment to equality was firmly established as a key principle when the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales were founded a decade ago. In the intervening years both have become international beacons of progress in establishing higher levels of representation for women in politics. But at the 2007 elections there was a decline in the number of women elected to both legisl…
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- Volume 64, Issue 1, January 2011. Pp. 193-203
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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Fictions of Sovereignty : Shakespeare, Theatre and the Representation of Rule
Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II includes a number of scenes representing the Kent rebellion of 1450, led by Jack Cade. In these, we argue, Shakespeare explores the ways in which claims to legitimate rule are often secured through performances of word, deed and gesture. We examine some of the concerns about drama expressed by political theorists alongside some of the techniques of political dram…
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- Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2011. Pp. 233-247
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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Feminism and Sexuality in Ellen Wilkinson's Fiction
The Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson is remembered for numerous achievements, chief of which is her leadership of the Jarrow Crusade in October 1936. Wilkinson was the only woman to march in the 280-mile protest against unemployment, and her compatriots were said to have looked upon her as one of them. But Wilkinson remained in many ways an outsider, both in politics and in industrial relations. Wilki…
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- Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2011. Pp. 248-262
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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Imagining the Polity : Cinema and Television Fictions as Vernacular Theories …
This article suggests that political fictions can play a significant role for citizens in permitting them to imagine how key processes work within polities. Using the concept of ‘vernacular theory', it explores how politicians’ behaviour, the operation of British political institutions and the country's external relations are theorised across a range of films and television programmes in the th…
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- Volume64, Issue 2, April 2011. Pp. 263-280
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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The Uses and Abuses of British Political Fiction or How I Learned to Stop Wor…
Since Plato the arts have worried those concerned with the maintenance and stability of the polis. More recently politicians and commentators have expressed fears that the manner in which formal politics is depicted in fiction has been a contributory factor in the breakdown of trust in British political culture. By comparison the USA is pointed to as offering a far more positive tradition of cu…
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- Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2011. Pp. 281-295
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- 00312290
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- Parliamentary Affairs
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The Unexpected Prime Minister : Politics, Class and Gender in Television Fiction
This article addresses the significance of television fiction in the public communication process on the basis of a comparative analysis of the television dramas A Very British Coup and The Amazing Mrs Pritchard. The narratives converge in their depiction of unconventional characters becoming Prime Ministers after achieving major electoral victories. Furthermore, both texts locate their charact…
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- Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2011. Pp. 296-310
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- 00312290
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The Amazing Mrs Politician : Television Entertainment and Women in Politics
The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard was the first British television series production that featured a woman Prime Minister, backed by an all-women party and elected by the large majority of voters. This article investigates whether the series was an attempt to provide a feminist portrayal of women politicians. It addresses three main issues: whether and how the series inscribes gender frames to place e…
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- Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2011.Pp. 311-325
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- 00312290
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A Golden Interlude : Journalists in Early Twentieth Century British Literature
This article examines fictional representations of journalists and journalism from Guy Thorne's Edwardian bestseller When it Was Dark (1903) through to novels of the interwar years. It examines how literature about journalism and journalists addresses contemporary issues such as the march of technology; the relationship between politics and the press at a time when the franchise was extending; …
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- Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2011. Pp. 326-340
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- 00312290
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Reviewing Select Committee Tasks and Modes of Operation
Departmental select committees are now the principal mechanism through which the House of Commons holds the executive to account. Ten years ago the Hansard Society's Commission on Parliamentary Scrutiny (the Newton Commission) recommended a series of reforms to select committees including the introduction of core tasks. A decade on, however, many new demands have since been placed on committees…
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- Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2011. Pp. 354-369
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- 00312290
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Does It Take Democrats to Democratize? Lessons From Islamic and Secular Elite…
Do political-Islamic elites need to be democrats for participation in democracy, how do their values compare to secular elites’, and how do their values change through participation and affect democratization itself? A comparative-systematic content analysis of three Islamic-conservative and two pro-secular Turkish newspapers over nine years shows that, overall, political-Islamic elites adopt d…
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- Vol. 44 no. 5, May 2011.pp. 511-545
- ISBN/ISSN
- 00104140
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- Comparative Political Studies
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Understanding the Multinational Game : Toward a Theory of Asymmetrical Federa…
This article presents a baseline theory of asymmetrical federalism in multinational states. Two arguments building on a game-theoretic foundation link central and regional elites’ strategic choices to questions of federal stability. The first argument concerns the creation of asymmetrical institutions. In a confrontation game between the center and national minorities credibly threatening to ex…
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- Vol. 44 no. 5, May 2011.pp. 546-571
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- 00104140
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- Comparative Political Studies
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Shadows From the Past : Party System Institutionalization in Asia
This article explains variation in levels of party system institutionalization in Asia by testing available data against several major hypotheses in the literature. The authors make three contributions to the literature on party system institutionalization. First, this study finds that historical legacies are a crucial variable affecting current levels of party system institutionalization. In p…
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- Vol. 44 no. 5, May 2011.pp. 572-597
- ISBN/ISSN
- 00104140
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- Comparative Political Studies
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Policy Regimes and Normative Conceptions of Nationalism in Mass Public Opinion
The effect of policy regimes on immigrant incorporation has been the subject of extensive debate. Despite much theoretical literature on the subject, the relationships between specific national policies in various domains and outcomes broadly related to social solidarity have not been well explored empirically. The present work develops measures tapping the priority of “ascriptive” traits defin…
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- Vol. 44 no. 5, May 2011.pp. 598-624
- ISBN/ISSN
- 00104140
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- Comparative Political Studies
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