scholarly journals The dependence of election coverage on political institutions: Political competition and policy framing in Germany and the United Kingdom

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110607
Author(s):  
Iain McMenamin ◽  
Michael Courtney ◽  
Michael Breen ◽  
Gemma McNulty

Election coverage is often assumed to be different to everyday political coverage. We argue that this depends on political institutions. In majoritarian countries, where elections choose governments, election coverage should decisively move towards political competition and away from policy. In consensual countries, where coalitions are based on policy negotiations, there should be a less pronounced shift towards political competition and away from policy. To test this argument, we use an automatic coding system to study 0.9 billion words in Die Welt for 12 years and in the Financial Times for 30 years. The results support our institutional hypothesis.

Author(s):  
Geoffrey Marshall

The analysis of British political institutions in the twentieth century has not emerged solely from the writing of textbooks by political scientists. The genesis of general thinking about the government of the United Kingdom is to a lesser degree the product of professional reflection than is the development of theories about comparative government. It evolves more directly from the political process itself and from the controversies about government that government itself generates. This chapter discusses the powers of Parliament, the nature of cabinet government, the accountability of ministers, the dignified institutions, the re-modelling of Dicey’s institution, political institutions and public inquiry, and theory and analysis in political institutions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Demokaan Demirel

AbstractPerformance is a fundamental tool that improves results oriented on public administration. Performance management applications have become very popular in public institutions over the past 20 years. Direct accountability to the political institutions and the public is ensured by defining the performance of public administrations according to their organizational goals and objectives. Local governments are using performance management practices to assess the quality of public services offered. In the United Kingdom, performance management practices at the local level were promoted under the leadership of the central government. However, there cannot be a certain standardization or stability in performance management applications. The Best Value (BV) regime was applied primarily in England and Wales. The system was later applied in Scotland in 2003. In 2002, Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) Programme was introduced. Wales preferred to stay outside of this program. The Wales Programme for Improvement (WPI) has adopted self-assessment and holistic assessment. After 2009, the cost-effectiveness of local services was evaluated through comprehensive area assessments. This practice was abolished after 2010, adopting a governance approach based on the common negotiations of local actors. This study aims to evaluate the performance measurement systems applied in the local area in the United Kingdom.


1956 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-337

The second meeting of the Council of the Southeast Asian Defense Treaty Organization (SEATO) was held in Karachi, Pakistan from March 6 through 8, 1956, under the chairmanship of Hamidul Haq Chowdhury, Foreign Minister of Pakistan. The meeting was attended by the foreign ministers of the eight member states: Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom and United States. In the communique issued at the close of the session, the Council maintained that SEATO had made a notable contribution to the maintenance of peace in southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific. Council members affirmed that their countries would never commit aggression and that their cooperation under SEATO was directed toward mutual defense and the maintenance of peace. In regard to political developments in southeast Asia, the Council noted with satisfaction reports of the steps being taken toward establishing full self-government and independence for Malaya within the United Kingdom, and the further progress in the development of free political institutions in the region, particularly in regard to Cambodia, Laos and the Republic of Vietnam which, although not members of SEATO, were under its protection.


1961 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-512 ◽  

Case concerning the Northern Cameroons (Cameroun v. United Kingdom): On May 30, 1961, the government of the Republic of Cameroun filed in the Registry of the Court an application instituting proceedings against the United Kingdom.1 The applicant alleged that the United Kingdom had failed to respect certain obligations of the Trusteeship Agreement for the Territory of the Cameroons under British Administration of December 13, 1946. The application stated specifically: 1) that the Northern Cameroons had not been administered as a separate territory within an administrative union, but as an integral part of Nigeria; 2) that the objectives set forth in article 6 of the trusteeship agreement—the development of free political institutions and an increasing share for the inhabitants in the administrative services, as well as their participation in advisory and legislative bodies and in the government of the territory—had not been attained; 3) that the agreement did not authorize the administering power to govern the territory as two separate parts evolving differently politically; 4) that, with respect to General Assembly Resolution 1473 (XIV) of December 12, 1959, (a) provisions relating to the separation of the administration of the Northern Cameroons from that of Nigeria, had not been followed, and (b) conditions laid down for the drawing up of electoral lists had been interpreted in a discriminatory manner; and 5) that the acts of the local authorities in the period preceding the plebiscite authorized by the afore-mentioned resolution and during the subsequent election involved consequences in conflict with the trusteeship agreement.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Wills

This paper draws on existing work in the discipline of human geography and cognate fields in order to develop the concept of the ‘geo-constitution’. This concept aims to: (1) highlight the importance of intersections between geography and political institutions in the constitution of government; (2) consider the path-dependent development of political institutions and their impact on statecraft and citizenship; (3) explore the implications of this for political reform. The paper provides an overview of current thinking in political geography and applies the concept of the geo-constitution to the example of devolution and localism in the United Kingdom.


2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Higgins

This article explores the political use of discourses of nation by analysing the use of location formulation across a selection of Scottish newspapers. The article looks at a sample of the election coverage of six Scottish titles and conducts a corpus analysis to set out the patterns in their use of named locales. It argues that references to nation both come in a variety of forms and are driven by the constitutional disputes around the position of Scotland relative to the United Kingdom. In particular, the article finds that the newspapers engage in different rhetorical strategies that emphasise the Scottish dimension of the election, its British dimension, or a negotiated position between the two. The article therefore seeks to highlight the discursive role that the lexical expression of nation and nationhood might have in the articulation between nation and politics, and suggests that in the Scottish case the formulation of nation is employed in the reproduction of competing, constitutionally based political discourses.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Bevan ◽  
Peter John ◽  
Will Jennings

In the United Kingdom, the transmission between policy promises and statutes is assumed to be both rapid and efficient because of the tradition of party discipline, relative stability of government, absence of coalitions, and the limited powers of legislative revision in the second chamber. Even in the United Kingdom, the transmission is not perfect since legislative priorities and outputs are susceptible to changes in public opinion or media coverage, unanticipated events in the external world, backbench rebellions, changes in the political parties, and the practical constraints of administering policies or programmes. This paper investigates the strength of the connection between executive priorities and legislative outputs measured by the Speech from the Throne and Acts of Parliament from 1911 to 2008. These are categorized according to the policy content coding system of the UK Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org.uk). Time series cross-sectional analyses show that there is transmission of the policy agenda from the speech to acts. However, the relationship differs by party, strengthening over time for Conservative governments and declining over time for Labour and other governments.


1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (8) ◽  
pp. 1389-1408 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Jordan ◽  
N Ward ◽  
H Buller

Scholarly study of the European Community (EC) has concentrated on the macrolevel process of regional integration to the neglect of its ‘internal’ policy processes. A newly emerging literature on EC public policy is beginning to address this imbalance, but it is largely focused on the development of policy outputs culminating in the adoption of policies by the Council of Ministers, rather than the long-term outcomes of policy at the national and subnational levels. This paper develops a multitheoretical framework and applies it to a case study of the implementation of the Directive on bathing water in the United Kingdom and France to reveal the sort of intriguing questions and puzzles which emerge in the ‘postdecisional’ phase of the EC policy process. The study draws comparisons between implementation in the two countries, showing that policy ‘making’ and retuning continued long after the formal point of adoption. As in national systems, policy implementation and the interpretation and evaluation of policy outcomes in the EC are just as much part of the political process as agenda setting and policy framing.


Author(s):  
I. G. Kovalev

The article is devoted to the analysis of the consequences of the referendum on the UK’s membership in the European Union. The causes that contributed to the radical transformation of political processes and crisis phenomena in the framework of European integration processes are revealed. It is noted that the crisis of the British model of democracy and the rise of “monitoring democracy”, as well as the constitutional reforms in the UK, which were not brought to a logical conclusion, influenced the effectiveness of political institutions. The range of new complex issues of constitutional, legal, financial, economic, social and humanitarian nature that need to be addressed in the context of brexit is determined.The features of the development and implementation of the strategies of the United Kingdom and the European Union on the negotiation process are considered. The most important stages of negotiations on the problem of developing an agreement defining the conditions and principles of relations between the parties in the post-brexit period are studied. Particular attention is paid to the key controversial issues - the implementation of the financial obligations of the United Kingdom to the EU, guarantees the rights of EU citizens and their families living in the UK, as well as the preservation of the free movement of people, goods, services and capital between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.The author analyzes internal and external factors that have a direct impact on the course of the dialogue, arguments and counter-arguments of the parties, the reasons for the change in the positions of the United Kingdom and EU leaders on key issues of cooperation in the new historical conditions. There is a deep split between British society and the main political forces of the country on the issue of withdrawal from the EU. The factors that led the UK to a serious political crisis and the inability to develop an adequate and effective brexit strategy are considered.


2009 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nishan Fernando ◽  
Gordon Prescott ◽  
Jennifer Cleland ◽  
Kathryn Greaves ◽  
Hamish McKenzie

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