Suchergebnisse

The 2010 UK election will be remembered for a number of reasons; the end of 13 years of Labour rule, the introduction of TV debates and the creation of Britain's first coalition government for well over a generation being just three of them. Even though Britain continues to move towards multi-partyism, we should be wary of viewing the long-standing era of Labour and Conservative dominance as coming to an end. In view of the refreshing performance of Nick Clegg and the general feeling of discontent and disgruntlement with both Labour and the Tories, the smaller parties -- the Lib Dems included -- could, and arguably should, have performed better than they did. Labour and the Conservatives are unlikely to dominate British politics in the way that they once did but, to quote Mark Twain, reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractDrawing upon ideas formulated with national‐level campaigning in mind and also analyses of district or local‐level campaigning, a conceptual framework to assist in analysing the development of district‐level campaigning is presented. The proposed framework is further amplified, explained and tested using quantitative and qualitative data collected at British General Elections between 1992 and 2005. Various aspects of district (constituency) campaigning in Britain are examined and the extent of change over four General Elections analysed. In broad terms, the data show a good fit with the framework, which offers a useful way of thinking about developments in campaigning both within and across countries.

In Britain, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act has revolutionized the regulation of party finance after several half-hearted failures at attempted reform. In France, a series of high-profile corruption scandals in the 1980s and 1990s provoked a bout of 'legislative incontinence' – resulting in over eight laws in seven years, which profoundly transformed the regime regulating party finance. The comparative analysis of reforms in each country presented here questions the utility of crude 'constitutional engineering' theories, and the notion of party system 'cartelization' by major parties, neither of which offers a wholly convincing account of the paths of reform in Britain and France. It explores the use of new institutionalist theories as a comparative framework and concludes that these provide a cogent explanation for the alternative paths taken by each country with party finance regulation.