Assessing Party Effects on Local Policies: A Quarter Century of Progress or Eternal Recurrence?

1996 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Boyne
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Policy Variation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Political Variables

Fifty studies which test the impact of political parties on local policy variation in the UK are evaluated. A major feature of these studies over the last twenty-five years is the recurrence of the same conceptual and methodological problems. It appears that there has been little progress towards a better understanding of the impact of parties. The results suggest that party political variables are insignificant in a majority of cases. However, problems in the evidence suggest that party effects have been substantially underestimated: the measurement of party politics is weak and the conceptualization of the impact of parties is shallow. Thus progress can be discerned, despite the recurrence of these problems.

Funding Local Political Parties in England and Wales: Donations and Constituency Campaigns

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Johnston ◽  
Charles Pattie
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Liberal Democrats ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

The funding of political parties is an issue of considerable contemporary concern in the UK. Although most attention has been paid to the situation regarding national parties, the new funding regime introduced in 2001 also applies to constituency parties, and some concerns have been raised regarding the limits on spending and expenditure there. Using data released by the Electoral Commission on all donations above a specified minimum to constituency parties, this article looks at the pattern of donations over the period 2001–05. It then analyses the impact of spending on the 2005 constituency campaigns, showing that for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats substantial donations enhanced their vote-winning performances in seats where their candidates were challengers whereas for Labour substantial donations aided its performance in marginal seats that it was defending.

scholarly journals New Labour and New Surveillance: Theoretical and Political Ramifications of CCTV Implementation in the UK

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (2/3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Fussey
Keyword(s):  
Fear Of Crime ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Surveillance Society ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Criminological Theories ◽  
The Impact

This paper examines the implications of New Labour's approaches to crime and disorder on CCTV implementation. It concentrates on the usage of CCTV as one of the government's many initiatives, which are intended to address crime and disorder, including the fear of crime. In particular, the impact of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act (CDA) - the cornerstone of this government's approach to crime reduction - on the generation of such strategies is examined. The paper revisits neo-Marxist and Foucauldian analyses of the so-called surveillance society through an appraisal of the complex relationship between structure and agency in the formulation and implementation of anti-crime and disorder strategies. Drawing on fieldwork data the paper considers the activities of practitioners at a local level by focusing on the influence of central government, local communities and 'common sense' thinking based on certain criminological theories. It is argued that a myriad of micro-level operations, obligations, processes, managerial concerns (particularly conflict resolution and resource issues), structures and agency - as well as the indirect influence of central government - shape CCTV policy. Ultimately, the creation of new local policy contexts under the CDA emphasise the need to consider incremental and malleable processes concerning the formulation of CCTV policy. In turn, this allows a re-examination of theoretical accounts of surveillance, and their attendant assumptions of sovereign or disciplinary power.

The Importance of the Political and the Social in Explaining Mortality Differentials among the Countries of the OECD, 1950–1998

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicente Navarro ◽  
Carme Borrell ◽  
Joan Benach ◽  
Carles Muntaner ◽  
Agueda Quiroga ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Political Variables

This article analyzes (within the conceptual frame defined in the previous article) the impact of political variables such as time of government by political parties (social democratic, Christian democratic or conservative, liberal, and ex-dictatorial that have governed the OECD countries during the 1950–1998 period) and their electoral support on (1) redistributional policies in the labor market and in the welfare state; (2) the income inequalities measured by Theil and Gini indexes; and (3) health indicators, such as infant mortality and life expectancy. This analysis is carried out statistically by a bivariate and a multivariate analysis (a pooled cross-sectional study). Both analyses show that political variables play an important role in defining how public and social policies determine the levels of inequalities and affect the level of infant mortality. In general, political parties more committed to redistributional policies, such as social democratic parties, are the most successful in reducing inequalities and improving infant mortality. Less evidence exists, however, on effects on life expectancy. The article also quantifies statistically the relationship between the political and the policy variables and between these variables and the dependent variables—that is, the health indicators.

The Reshaping of West European Party Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Incentive Model ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Issue Content ◽  
West European

Long gone are the times when class-based political parties with extensive membership dominated politics. Instead, party politics has become issue-based. Surprisingly few studies have focused on how the issue content of West European party politics has developed over the past decades. Empirically, this books studies party politics in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK from 1980 and onwards. The book highlights the more complex party system agenda with the decline, but not disappearance, of macroeconomic issues as well as the rise in ‘new politics’ issues together with education and health care. Moreover, various ‘new politics’ issues such as immigration, the environment, and European integration have seen very different trajectories. To explain the development of the individual issues, the book develops a new theoretical model labelled the ‘issue incentive model’ of party system attention. The aim of the model is to explain how much attention issues get throughout the party system, which is labelled ‘the party system agenda’. To explain the development of the party system agenda, one needs to focus on the incentives that individual policy issues offer to large, mainstream parties, i.e. the typical Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, or Conservative/Liberal parties that have dominated West European governments for decades. The core idea of the model is that the incentives that individual policy issues offer to these vote- and office-seeking parties depend on three factors, namely issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations. The issue incentive model builds on and develops a top-down perspective on which the issue content of party politics is determined by the strategic considerations of political parties and their competition with each other.

The Film World’s Cooperative Store: Institutions and Films of the 1930s and 1940s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Meat Products ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Early History ◽  
World War ◽  
International Context ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This chapter traces the early history of state-sponsored informational filmmaking in Denmark, emphasising its organisation as a ‘cooperative’ of organisations and government agencies. After an account of the establishment and early development of the agency Dansk Kulturfilm in the 1930s, the chapter considers two of its earliest productions, both process films documenting the manufacture of bricks and meat products. The broader context of documentary in Denmark is fleshed out with an account of the production and reception of Poul Henningsen’s seminal film Danmark (1935), and the international context is accounted for with an overview of the development of state-supported filmmaking in the UK, Italy and Germany. Developments in the funding and output of Dansk Kulturfilm up to World War II are outlined, followed by an account of the impact of the German Occupation of Denmark on domestic informational film. The establishment of the Danish Government Film Committee or Ministeriernes Filmudvalg kick-started aprofessionalisation of state-sponsored filmmaking, and two wartime public information films are briefly analysed as examples of its early output. The chapter concludes with an account of the relations between the Danish Resistance and an emerging generation of documentarists.

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