Suchergebnisse

Confronted with growing public skepticism concerning the value of higher education, the spiralling costs of educational services and an overall mood of economic retrenchment and uncertainty, academic organizations face the need to develop policies to maintain their institutional health under increasingly difficult conditions. This discussion briefly describes educational developments since 1945 - particularly those factors which have contributed to the present climate of adversity - and explores how these historical forces have altered the complexion of university governance. Special attention is directed toward a review of proposals for academic revitalization found in recent literature and an examination of policies currently under consideration by senior administrators at univer- sities in Western Canada. ; Face à une méfiance accrue du public envers la qualité des études supérieures, aux coûts toujours croissants de l'éducation, et à un sentiment général de malaise économique, les organisations académiques se voient dans l'obligation d'élaborer des politiques destinées à maintenir leur vitalité en tant qu 'institution, et cela dans des conditions de plus en plus difficiles. Cette présentation décrit brièvement les développements en éducation depuis 1945 — en particulier les facteurs qui ont contribués à la situation actuelle de confronta-tion - et étudie comment les forces historiques ont modifié l'aspect du gouvernement d'une université. L'attention est surtout portée sur une revue de la littérature récente traitant de propositions pour une revitalization académique, et un examen des politiques en état d'élaboration par les hauts administrateurs des université de l'ouest du Canada.

Incumbent prime ministers who win re-election often reshuffle their cabinet ministers. These post-election cabinet reshuffles have important implications for policymaking and present a puzzle: why would prime ministers alter the 'winning team' that has just received an electoral mandate? Existing literature has largely overlooked post-election reshuffles, so offers few compelling answers. At most, a plausible but under-theorised and untested conventional wisdom suggests that electoral success increases prime ministers' authority over their ministers. This article thus provides the first systematic study of post-election cabinet reshuffles in single-party governments. It argues that re-elected prime ministers use a temporary increase in their authority to pre-empt future leadership challenges by moving or sacking cabinet rivals. Larger election victories should thus produce larger reshuffles. However, analysis of post-election cabinet reshuffles in four 'Westminster' democracies since 1945 shows no support for this expectation, suggesting that further work is needed to understand these important political events.

Recent work suggests that partisan dealignment should undermine political parties by giving members of Parliament (MPs) greater incentives for personal vote seeking. The key mechanism underlying such arguments is that voters with stronger party ties are less responsive to the records of individual MPs. However, existing tests of this mechanism are largely either indirect, based on responses to rebellious voting or nonlegislative behavior, or drawn from the United States. This article thus provides a new test of whether partisan voters are less responsive to MPs' parliamentary activity. I present two complementary analyses—a natural experiment in New Zealand and a survey experiment in the United Kingdom. Both suggest that more active MPs are more popular, but that this relationship is moderated by voters' partisanship. MPs' parliamentary activity chiefly influences the behavior of voters with the weakest partisanship. This offers new evidence that partisan dealignment heightens legislators' incentives for personal vote seeking.

What shapes legislators' incentives for personal vote-seeking in parliament? Recent work suggests that partisanship among voters deters personal vote-seeking, by limiting its effectiveness. This has potentially significant implications for policy-making, election results and patterns of accountability. However, empirical tests of this argument remain few in number and have several limitations. This article thus offers a new test of the relationship between partisanship and personal vote-seeking. Using legislators' bill proposals as an indicator of their personal vote-seeking activity, I analyse legislative behaviour in the UK House of Commons between 1964 and 2017. I find that members of parliament make more legislative proposals when voters are less partisan. Moreover, partisanship appears to moderate the influence of other drivers of personal vote-seeking: electorally vulnerable legislators make more legislative proposals, but only at low levels of partisanship. These findings provide new evidence that voters' relationships with political parties affect legislators' electoral strategies and parliamentary behaviour.

During the premiership of Theresa May, parliamentary procedure in the UK was scrutinised, criticised and challenged to an extent unprecedented in recent years. This put intense pressure on the 'rules of the game' governing parliamentary politics. This article thus aims to answer three questions. First, what were the pressures on parliamentary procedure in this period? Secondly, what were their consequences? Thirdly, how can these consequences be explained? The article addresses these questions by describing challenges to the House of Commons' rules regarding agenda control, proxy voting and private members' bills. It also describes the procedural changes resulting from these challenges and evaluates their significance. Finally, it considers how far these changes support the expectations of existing literature on parliamentary rule changes. Overall, the article shows that procedural reform during Theresa May's premiership was minimal. Despite some temporary informal innovations, the formal rules of the Commons remained almost entirely unchanged. During this period, therefore, Britain's parliamentary rules were challenged extensively but changed very little.

AbstractWhat explains the power of parliamentary committees? A large literature on the United States Congress sees strong legislative committees as a consequence of legislators' incentives to cultivate a personal vote. These incentives are typically understood to be determined by formal electoral rules. How legislatures are elected thus shapes how they are organised. This article argues that explanations of legislative organisation should also consider a non‐institutional source of personal vote‐seeking incentives: voters' partisanship. Where partisan dealignment is more extensive, legislators have stronger incentives to develop a personal vote. Where committee systems are more powerful, legislators have better opportunities to do so. Partisan dealignment should thus lead to stronger committee systems. This argument is supported by analysis of original data on the postwar evolution of committee systems in five 'Westminster' parliaments. Partisan dealignment is associated with larger committee systems, and with larger expansions of committee systems.

No abstract available.