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AbstractRecent election surprises, regime changes, and political shocks indicate that political agendas have become more fast-moving and volatile. The ability to measure the complex dynamics of agenda change and capture the nature and extent of volatility in political systems is therefore more crucial than ever before. This study proposes a definition and operationalization of volatility that combines insights from political science, communications, information theory, and computational techniques. The proposed measures of fractionalization and agenda change encompass the shifting salience of issues in the agenda as a whole and allow the study of agendas across different domains. We evaluate these metrics and compare them to other measures such as issue-level survival rates and the Pedersen Index, which uses public-opinion poll data to measure public agendas, as well as traditional media content to measure media agendas in the UK and Germany. We show how these measures complement existing approaches and could be employed in future agenda-setting research.

The authors provide an encompassing eight-point characterization of regimes designed to cover all cases of this complex multicriteria concept, arguing that not all eight characteristics need be present for a regime to exist but that the larger the subset, the more a governing coalition constitutes a regime. The regime concept is then applied to six London boroughs during the early to mid-1990s. They demonstrate the utility and limits of the regime concept in identifying and explaining the politics of these boroughs at this time, suggesting that three of the cases constitute different types of regimes, and the other three constitute failed regimes.

This collection of essays brings together leading political scientists in order to address the challenges faced by democracy in the 21st century. The contributors tackle the changing nature of democratic ideas, in particular equality in society and the satisfaction of citizens

Political campaigning on social media is a core feature of contemporary democracy. However, evidence of the effectiveness of this type of campaigning is thin. This study tests three theories linking social media to vote outcomes, using a novel 6,000 observation panel data set from two British elections. We find that Twitter-based campaigning does seem to help win votes. The impact of Twitter use is small, though comparable with campaign spending. Our data suggest that social media campaign effects are achieved through using Twitter as a broadcast mechanism. Despite much literature encouraging politicians to engage with social platforms in an interactive fashion, we find no evidence that this style of communication improves electoral outcomes. In light of our results, theories of how social media are changing processes of campaigns and elections are discussed and enhanced.

AbstractIn January 2021, the editorial team of Policy & Internet changed from the Oxford Internet Institute to the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. This article invites all the past and current editors to contribute to the future directions and discussion of internet and public policy. It is collection of six contributions covering the trajectory of the internet policy research agenda, platform power in the digital economy, algorithms and the need for transparency, media diversity and platform regulation, speech in the age of content moderation and age‐gating the internet. The collection of essays highlights the past 10 years of the journal and paints a clear trajectory for the next era of Policy & Internet.