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Russia's invasion of Ukraine has profound implications for the EU and its 27 member states. How has the EU responded to date? What further responses are being debated? How has the crisis affected the EU's policy agenda? And what challenges lie ahead? These questions will be explored by the Secretary-General of the EU Parliament, Klaus Welle, our keynote speaker for the first Policy & Practice seminar of the 2022/23 academic year. This seminar was held in person at UCL, on the 13 October 2022.

The covid-19 pandemic has been a severe test for the European Union as well as for its member-states.

There are concerns about the rise of populism and erosion of democratic standards throughout the world. Examples include countries such as Hungary, Poland and Brazil, growing support for populist parties in western Europe, and recent development in the US. Populism has grown through new challenger parties, but also through capture of previously mainstream parties.

The 2020 US presidential election will take place amidst the background of a global pandemic, high unemployment, protests for racial justice, catastrophic wildfires wrought by climate change, and rising political polarisation. At stake is the direction of federal politics and policymaking for the next four years, as well as control of the Senate, the House of Representatives and a number of state offices. What can we expect from a Joe Biden administration or a second term of Donald Trump? In this panel discussion, four leading experts—Brian Klaas (Washington Post and UCL CUSP), Anne Joseph O'Connell (Stanford Law School), Colin Provost (UCL CUSP), and Sherrill Stroschein (UCL SPP)—will discuss politics, policy, and governance under Trump's first term and what this election may bring after Election Day.

A comment on SA 0715/D7715. Regional analysis is of some interest to all of the soc sci's. This is probably because res'ers, seeking to make a comparative analysis of soc instit's, assume, either in articulated or unarticulated fashion, that areas can be delineated in which a number of signif variables can be held constant, or nearly so. In particular, constants or independent variables by regions are sought in (1) econ base or means of livelihood, (2) a shared history & ideology, & (3) an identifiable subculture with resultant sharing of life styles. Many problems present themselves in any attempted use of regional analysis. Because, for many theoretical as well as practical reasons, pol'al sci'ts tend to use groups of states as a basis for analysis, they have encountered particular difficulties, & many are discussed here. Although the states are a better unit for sociol'al analysis than many sociol'ts have recognized, for certain purposes their internal diff's are often greater than are their similarities with neighboring states. Nevertheless, regional analysis offers more hope than does straight econ analysis for explaining some of the diff's in state gov'al policies. In addition to systematic spending diff's by region, many state policies would seem to lend themselves to regional analysis using suggested criteria other than expenditures. Only a beginning has been made in this direction, however. Despite the difficulties involved, this type of comparative study is likely to be worthwhile & should be encouraged. AA.

The American Political Science Association recently cautioned against the use of misinformation (giving research participants false information about the state of the world) in research with human subjects. This recommendation signals a growing recognition, as experimental research itself grows in prevalence in political science, that deceptive practices pose ethical problems. But what is wrong with misinformation in particular? I argue that while this question certainly has an ethical dimension, misinformation is bad for inference too. Misinformation moves us away from answering questions about the political world effectively. I propose a straightforward, intuitive solution to this twofold problem: tell the truth.

John Micklethwait is editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, and Adrian Wooldridge is political editor of the Economist, and author of their Bagehot column. In their latest book they analyse the disastrous failure of many western countries to control the Coronavirus, and what it exposes about the weaknesses of their systems of government. It is a wake up call to learn from the more successful responses of countries like Singapore or South Korea. What are the lessons in better government the west can now learn from the east? To discuss the UK's capacity to learn such lessons, and the likelihood of its doing so, they are joined by Philip Rycroft CB, former Head of the UK Governance Group in the Cabinet Office, Permanent Secretary in DExEU, and now Visiting Professor at Edinburgh University.