scholarly journals Discrimination by politicians against religious minorities: Experimental evidence from the UK

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110210
Author(s):  
Lee Crawfurd ◽  
Ukasha Ramli
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Correspondence Study ◽  
The Uk

Are Labour party politicians anti-Semitic, and are Conservative party politicians Islamophobic? In this correspondence study we measure the responsiveness of elected local representatives in the United Kingdom to requests from putative constituents from minority religious groups. We send short email requests to 10,268 local government representatives from each of the main political parties, from stereotypically Islamic, Jewish, and Christian names. Response rates are six to seven percentage points lower to stereotypically Muslim or Jewish names. The two major political parties both show equal bias towards the two minority group names. Results suggest that the bias in response may be implicit. Bias is lower in more dense and diverse locations.

scholarly journals Discrimination by Politicians against Religious Minorities: Experimental Evidence from the UK

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Crawfurd ◽  
Ukasha Ramli
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Correspondence Study ◽  
The Uk

Are Labour party politicians anti-Semitic, and are Conservative party politicians Islamophobic? In this correspondence study we measure the responsiveness of elected local representatives in the United Kingdom to requests from putative constituents from minority religious groups. We send short email requests to 10,268 local government representatives from each of the main political parties, from stereotypically Islamic, Jewish, and Christian names. Response rates are six to seven percentage points lower to stereotypically Muslim or Jewish names. The two major political parties both show equal bias towards the two minority group names. Results suggest that the bias in response may be implicit. Bias is lower in more dense and diverse locations.

scholarly journals Financing Political Parties in France, Germany and The United Kingdom

2016 ◽  
pp. 91-110
Author(s):  
Jan Misiuna
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Accounting Standards ◽  
Financial Information ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Low Level ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Uk

The paper compares the systems of financing political parties in France, Germany and the UK. The analysis concentrates on effectiveness of collecting contributions, dependency on large donors for providing funds for financing election campaigns and daily operation of political parties, and the level of transparency of finances of political parties. The final conclusion is that only introducing limits on expenditures on election campaigns allows to keep the costs of election campaigns and political parties at a low level, while mandatory common accounting standards and public access to financial information is necessary to preserve transparency of finances of political parties.

scholarly journals Does political discourse matter? Comparing party positions and public attitudes on immigration in England

Politics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Leruth ◽  
Peter Taylor-Gooby
Keyword(s):  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Public Deficit ◽  
Net Migration ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Large Group Discussion

The 2015 UK General Election campaign was mostly dominated by the issues of immigration, public debt, and income inequality. While most political parties adopted austerity-led programmes in order to reduce the level of public deficit, their stances on immigration vary significantly despite the two main parties converging on a welfare chauvinist frame. This article compares party positions to policy recommendations formulated by participants in a democratic forum as part of the ‘Welfare States Futures: Our Children’s Europe’ project in order to determine whether recent party pledges on immigration are being used by citizens in a large group discussion over the future of welfare policy in the United Kingdom. The analysis shows that while participants are committed to tougher policies in order to reduce existing levels of net migration, most of the policy priorities formulated do not match those of the two mainstream parties (i.e. the Conservative Party and the Labour Party) but rather those of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). It also demonstrates that participants’ individual political preferences do not seem to match their own positions on immigration and that there is little difference between left-leaning and right-leaning voters.

6. The party system

UK Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Andrew Blick
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
System P ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk

This chapter switches the focus to political parties. It looks at their individual roles and how they operate. The chapter discusses the parties that constitute the ‘party system’. It considers the two main parties operating at the UK level: the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. It also looks at the smaller parties, such as the Liberal Democrats. The chapter considers the political approach of the various parties and the type of support they attract. It also looks at how parties are funded. The chapter provides a number of theoretical perspectives to help with an analysis of political parties. These are: the extent to which parties pursue values or power; the respective roles of their members and leaders; groupings within parties; how far the UK has a two-party system or whether our definition of the party system should be revised; and the relationships between the various parities. The chapter then gives examples of how these ideas play out with specific focus on recent events involving the Conversative and Labour parties. The chapter asks: do members have too much influence over their parties? The chapter ends by asking: where are we now?

scholarly journals Party Identification, the Policy Space, and Business Donations to Political Parties

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain McMenamin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Economic Nationalism ◽  
Political Finance ◽  
The Uk

Political finance scholars have paid little attention to the partisan preferences of business donors. This was because business donors were overwhelmingly concerned with the left-right dimension and enjoyed stable relationships with centre-right parties. These parties are increasingly tempted by nationalist positions on a globalisation dimension. This new ideological flux provides an opportunity to measure the extent to which donors are party identifiers or react to changes in the policy space. Dramatic shifts in party policy on both dimensions and a relatively transparent political finance regime make the UK a particularly apposite case to study this question. I analyse 19,000 donations to the Conservative Party and show that business donors reacted strongly to recent shifts on both the left-right and globalisation dimensions. Thus, centre-right parties cannot rely on party identification and their left-right position to maintain business funding. Economic nationalism costs centre-right parties money.

scholarly journals RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-195
Author(s):  
Michael P. Hornsby-Smith
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Major Player ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The Uk

This paper offers a review of religion and politics in the United Kingdom shortly after the Scottish Referendum in September 2014 and the UK General Election in May 2015. It first provides a brief historical outline of the emergence of the four separate parts of the current United Kingdom, their different experiences of Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasions and responses to the Reformation in the fifteenth century after a millennium of Roman Catholicism. It then briefly reviews data from recent censuses and social attitude surveys about religious identities, beliefs and commitment and political party preferences which generally indicate a preference for Conservative Party support by Anglicans and Labour by Roman Catholics. Recent Church of England leaders have suggested that religion is now a major player on the public stage. This is strongly rejected. Firstly, census and survey data point unambiguously to the declining salience of religion and the public’s strong belief that religion is a private and personal matter and that religious leaders should not meddle in politics. Secondly, three examples are given where it is argued that critical interventions by religious leaders in recent years have not led to any serious changes in government policies.

New Unions for Old

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil MacCormick
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Joint Attention ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Real Power ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Scottish Government ◽  
United Kingdom Government ◽  
The Uk

This chapter recommends a reversion from the 1707 Union of Parliaments to the 1603 Union of Crowns (though not of governments). Its argument is originally submitted to the joint attention of the Royal Society and the British Academy on a date very close to 5 November 2003. James succeeded in preserving peace in the islands during his long reign — long in England itself, longer yet in Scotland. In Westminster as well as Edinburgh and elsewhere, real power has come to be invested in parliaments, and thus in the governments that command parliamentary majorities through the dominance of political parties. The UK system works so long as party ties make more or less unquestioned the loyalty of the head of a devolved Scottish government to the head of the United Kingdom government. Generally, the present contribution is offered primarily as a scholarly, not a political one. It is enough if it has sketched grounds for taking seriously the question what ‘new unions for old’ might mean.

scholarly journals Financing political parties in the United Kingdom

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Rowbottom
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Political Finance ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Party Funding

Shortly after the 2010 general election in the United Kingdom, the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government promised to reform the way British political parties are financed and ‘to remove big money from politics’. Such promises are not new, and in the last decade there has been no shortage of legislative action on party funding. The problem has been that the laws failed to address some of the biggest concerns about money in politics, and that the political actors found strategies to avoid the controls. Looking at the UK approach, this article aims to give an overview of the controls in place, while highlighting some of the main difficulties experienced. While the UK laws have some differences compared with those proposed in New Zealand (particularly in relation to third-party activity), there is much common ground and the British experience may offer some lessons and show some of the pitfalls in regulating political finance. 

Perpetuating Britishness

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 729-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Scottish Parliament ◽  
Decision To Stay ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
British State

In 1999 a devolved Scottish Parliament was established within the United Kingdom following a referendum two years earlier. The current governing party in that Parliament – the SNP – held a referendum on Scottish independence in September 2014, which resulted in a decision to stay within the UK. However, during the referendum campaign promises were made by the main UK parties to transfer further power away from the British Parliament at Westminster to the Scottish Parliament in the hope this would satisfy demands for greater self-government in Scotland. This paper analyses the rhetoric of the leaders of Britain’s two main political parties in an effort to detect strategies used to construct and perpetuate Britishness in the context of devolution and a threat to the British state. It finds a number of discursive strategies deployed to promote unity and difference to (non-British) others. It also suggests the apparent need by British political leaders to deploy such British-constructivist strategies involves avoiding even acknowledging the reality of a major constitutional reform such as devolution and therefore political difference between the nations of the UK.

The UK Savings Gap

2006 ◽  
Vol 198 ◽  
pp. 97-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ehsan Khoman ◽  
Martin Weale
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
National Income ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Current Pattern ◽  
Absolute Level ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Uk

We set out a framework for measuring the adequacy of saving in the United Kingdom by assessing the absolute level of savings based on individual preferences of different ages. We examine this relationship between age and savings using data from the Expenditure and Food Survey 2004–5. We show that, while the level of national saving is about 8.4 percentage points of net national income lower than is required if one assumes that each cohort pays its own way, wealth holdings are considerably higher than are required on the same basis. Looking at household, rather than national saving, the current pattern of benefits on public sector pensions removes the need to save for old age. While perhaps £4000m of household wealth holding can be accounted for by bequest and other transfer motives, our results suggest excess wealth holding of around £1600m in 2004.

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