Statewide Parties and Regional Party Competition: An Analysis of Party Manifestos in the United Kingdom

This article explains why the stagflation and neoliberal reforms that reinforced party polarization in the United Kingdom and the United States instead led to party convergence in Japan. In Japan, industry-centered adjustment and bureaucratic coordination distributed the costs of policy changes across societal groups and facilitated party convergence, whereas the lack of such societal and state institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States led to policy changes with polarizing consequences. Focusing on industry-centered adjustment brings the unions back into Japanese politics and provides an alternative to the pluralism-neocorporatism dichotomy of organizing societal interests. Bureaucratic coordination not only includes the opposition in the framework but also provides a more nuanced view than is assumed in the debate over whether the ruling party of the bureaucracy dominates the Japanese state. When combined, these conceptualizations of market and state go a long way toward explaining the dynamics of party competition.

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Lost in the Process? The impact of devolution on abortion law in the United Kingdom

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations ◽

10.1177/1369148119857591 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 728-745

Author(s):

David S Moon ◽

Jennifer Thompson ◽

Sophie Whiting

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Women's Rights ◽

Party Competition ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

Abortion Policy ◽

Parliamentary Debates ◽

Abortion Law ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Abortion Access ◽

The Impact

Using the case study of abortion policy across the United Kingdom, this article takes a feminist institutionalist approach to advance our understanding of state architecture and party competition within decentralised political systems. Despite increasing divergences across the United Kingdom in relation to abortion policy, contemporary debates around abortion access have rarely become politicised. Moreover, as this article demonstrates, when they have, the subject has been framed by politicians as a constitutional matter, relating to legislative competencies, rather than considered in terms of women’s rights. This framing, we argue, is linked to the specific constitutional arrangements of the post-devolution UK and the political strategies of the parties operating within them. Drawing upon parliamentary debates and interviews with political representatives to map the circumstances driving changes to abortion policy in the United Kingdom, this article introduces important comparative lessons for other cases of political decentralisation on the discussions and policies concerning women’s rights.

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Patterns of Law and Order Policies in 20 Western Industrialized Countries

The Partisan Politics of Law and Order ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190920487.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 57-102

Author(s):

Georg Wenzelburger

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Quantitative Analysis ◽

Public Spending ◽

Party Competition ◽

Right Wing ◽

Industrialized Countries ◽

Law And Order ◽

Constitutional Courts ◽

The United Kingdom

Chapter 3 provides a quantitative analysis of the politics of law and order. It is presented in three steps. First, it is tested whether party competition affects how much parties emphasize law and order issues in their programs and whether this is different for issue owners. The study reveals that high public salience of security-related issues pushes all parties to emphasize law and order more strongly and that issue owners react strongly to the pressure of right-wing populist parties by emphasizing law and order in their manifestos. Second, the quantitative analysis tests whether these different programmatic stances translate into more spending on law and order. This is indeed the case, but only if constitutional courts are weak. Third, the analysis takes a closer look at legislation in France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and finds the main results of the analysis on public spending corroborated.

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Why should broadband be free? Promises and rhetoric in the United Kingdom general election of 2019

Digital Policy Regulation and Governance ◽

10.1108/dprg-12-2019-0106 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (5/6) ◽

pp. 413-435

Author(s):

Ewan Sutherland

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Conservative Party ◽

General Election ◽

Content Type ◽

Party Leaders ◽

Party Manifestos ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Dominant Parties ◽

The Uk

Purpose This paper aims to analyse the promises of the various political party in the 2019 general election in the United Kingdom (UK) concerning the provision of broadband, especially in remote and rural areas. Design/methodology/approach This is an analysis of the party manifestos, some interviews and speeches involving party leaders. It identified the various commitments, any costs for those and the reasoning given. Findings The UK lags badly on fibre to the premises, both homes and offices. Without analysing the reasons, the two dominant parties proposed to borrow large amounts of money to fund fibre deployment, the Conservative Party without explaining how it would be disbursed. The Labour Party produced a confused proposal to nationalise BT Openreach and probably other operators, without explaining how this transition would work. Nor did they explain why the service was to be free to users. Practical implications The UK political parties need to improve their understanding of broadband and digital policies, including means to simplify the governance of markets. Originality/value This is the first analysis of the broadband commitments of a UK general election and one of the very few analyses of political offers in an election.

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The Structure of Party Competition in the United Kingdom

Springer Series in Electoral Politics - The Devolution Gambit ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-72523-5_3 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 21-40

Author(s):

Tim Niendorf

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Party Competition ◽

The United Kingdom

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Stuck in the middle: Ideology, valence and the electoral failures of centrist parties

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123419000231 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 1-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Roi Zur

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

Empirical Evidence ◽

Survey Data ◽

Voting Behavior ◽

Democratic Party ◽

Political Representation ◽

Party Competition ◽

Centripetal Force ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Mathematical Simulations

Abstract In recent years centrist-liberal parties, such as the German Free Democratic Party (FDP) in 2013 and the British Liberal Democrats in 2015 and 2017, suffered enormous electoral defeats. These defeats highlight a prominent puzzle in the study of party competition and voting behavior; the empty center phenomenon. That is, empirical evidence suggests that most parties do not converge to the median voter's position, despite the centripetal force of the voters’ preference distribution. Using survey data from Canada, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom, this article shows that deterioration of centrist parties’ valence image is followed by a collapse of their vote shares. Using mathematical simulations, this article shows that centrist parties have limited strategic opportunities to regain their support. Differently from other parties, centrist parties cannot alter their policy platforms to compensate for their deteriorated valence image. These results have important implications for political representation and voters–elite linkages.

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