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This article explores whether the past few years have witnessed what can accurately be described as a "youthquake" in British politics, following the candidature and election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. It argues that the British Election Study team, who argue that we witnessed "tremors but no youthquake", fail to advance a convincing case that turnout did not significantly increase among the youngest group of voters in the 2017 general election in the UK, as compared to the previous election. The article explains why their rejection of the idea of a youthquake having occurred is problematic, focusing on the limitations of the BES data, the team's analysis of it and the narrowness of their conception of what the notion of a "youthquake" entails. This article argues that there is other evidence suggestive of increased youth engagement in politics, both formal and informal, and that some social scientists have failed to spot this due to an insufficiently broad understanding of both "politics" and "youth". The article concludes that vital work needs to be done to better conceptualise and measure the political experiences, understandings and actions of young people, which are not adequately captured by current methods.

In 1813 the celebrated founding editor of the Edinburgh Review, Francis Jeffrey, travelled to New York and Washington while Britain was at war with the United States and there is a surviving journal of that journey. The trip was for a romantic purpose (Jeffrey was to marry and bring back to Britain his second wife) but the timing meant that he was an enemy abroad while on US soil. As such, the journal unsettles our expectations about national identifications and this article examines Jeffrey's interactions in the White House, his reactions to encounters with African Americans and his Romantic responses to the American landscape in order to investigate his transnational politics.

Introduction This paper applies the thought of Jacques Rancière to the concept of democracy as it is traditionally understood in library studies literature. Methods The paper reviews a cross-section of instances of the link between democracy and the public library in library studies literature. It offers a close textual analysis of Michael Gorman's Our Enduring Values as typifying the link between the public library and democracy. It critically applies the theoretical account of democracy developed by Jacques Rancière to Gorman's account in Our Enduring Values. Analysis Making use of the theory of Rancière, the paper argues that the link between the public library and democracy should instead be situated in the impropriety of the public library: the assumption of equality libraries make, and the consequent open possibility for the contestation of their function and values. Results The paper finds that the link between democracy and the public library is situated in libraries' instrumental value to democracy; libraries are typically seen as holding an educative function for democracy. Conclusion The paper concludes by arguing that focusing on the impropriety of public libraries is especially important in the context of their current neo-liberal restructuring. An instrumental link between democracy and the public library too easily falls prey to neo-liberal rationalisation. A link which focuses on the improper character of public libraries encourages a contestation over this restructuring.

This article examines the introduction of the single transferable vote for the Scottish council elections of 2007. It suggests that the new system had a variety of effects barely-noticed by the media – there was, indeed, a quiet revolution – and that these will resonate in Scottish local government and politics for a long time to come.

Both camps made extensive use of social media during the referendum, both to mobilise existing supporters and to convert new ones. However, the three main groups – Stronger In, Vote Leave and Leave.EU – each took differing strategies within this. Drawing on tweets published by the groups, the paper compares the use of different positive and negative frames, as well the thematic content. While reinforcing other work that shows differentials in focus on specific themes – economics for Stronger In, politics and immigration for the Leave groups – the analysis also highlights the use on both sides of "sticks" (capitalisation on the other side's errors) and "stones" (new issues and framings that the group brings to the debate). If the latter constituted the pre-game plan, then the former became a substantial part of the practical application during the campaign, a development reinforced by the nature of the medium itself.

Audit experiments examining the responsiveness of public officials have become an increasingly popular tool used by political scientists. While these studies have brought significant insight into how public officials respond to different types of constituents, particularly those from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds, audit studies have also been controversial due to their frequent use of deception. Scholars have justified the use of deception by arguing that the benefits of audit studies ultimately outweigh the costs of deceptive practices. Do all audit experiments require the use of deception? This article reviews audit study designs differing in their amount of deception. It then discusses the organizational and logistical challenges of a UK study design where all letters were solicited from MPs' actual constituents (so-called confederates) and reflected those constituents' genuine opinions. We call on researchers to avoid deception, unless necessary, and engage in ethical design innovation of their audit experiments, on ethics review boards to raise the level of justification of needed studies involving fake identities and misrepresentation, and on journal editors and reviewers to require researchers to justify in detail which forms of deception were unavoidable.

Alongside the focus on prime ministers within an institutional setting, it is important to recognise the significance of individual skills, styles, and personality. Differing individuals will have differing performative skill levels and different leadership styles. The premise that leadership analysis should focus on the interaction between the political skills of the leader and the institutional environment in which they are operating is one that has gained some traction in contemporary political leadership scholarship. This article concentrates on the impact of the individual on the office, considering first the agent-centred approaches to prime ministerial study and applying the interactive model of leadership capital to the contemporary UK premiership, drawing some comparisons with Japan. Focusing on the three components of leadership capital: skills, relations, and reputation of the individual in office can give us a broader picture of the trajectory of prime ministerial leadership. Individual action, perceptions of the incumbent, decision making, and style can all impact on the prime minister in office in the twenty-first century

This essay establishes a framework for analysing culture wars in the post-communist space. Using Latvia's debate over the ratification of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, it outlines the central features of culture wars: moralisation, externalisation of agency, the instrumentalisation of culture and the struggle for power and resources. While existing scholarship conceptualises culture wars as a dichotomous battle between the sacred and the secular, or between liberal and illiberal, our thematic analysis of the Istanbul Convention debate in Latvia finds it was less about culture and more a complex struggle between political and religious actors competing for power and resources.

Russia's ruling regime, dominated by Vladimir Putin since he first became president in 2000, is often seen as presenting a consistent and coherent narrative and allowing little space for plurality of opinions. While it is the case that at the level of metanarrative, a consistent official story of a Russia resurgent both domestically and internationally has been told, analysis of the work of think tanks within the purview of Russia's political leadership reveals that conflicting narratives remain at play within the regime's political tent. Analysis of a decade of think tank activity shows that the Medvedev presidency (2008–2012) saw the rise and then decline of the liberal INSOR think tank, while the most prominent think tank in Putin's third term as president (2012–2018) was the anti-liberal Izborskii Club, which followed a similar pattern of waxing and waning prominence. From the point of view of Russia's leadership, the existence of these think tanks has a functionalist explanation, allowing what is essentially a non-ideological regime to engage with and adopt different positions according to its proximate requirements. Such a functionalist approach runs the risk of undermining the coherence and persuasiveness of the regime's narrative(s). From the point of view of the political science classification of the extant Russian regime, Russia's post-Soviet 'transition' remains to be resolved in terms of its chosen course even a quarter of a century on from the collapse of Communism.

This article explores supranational activism on the example of bureaucratic growth in the institutions of the EU - operationalised as the number of staff members. The main question is to what extent are the numbers of staff employed in the EU institutions and bodies dependent on member states and their decisions to increase the functions of the EU through either treaty changes or the ratifications of accession treaties. To answer this question, two hypotheses are tested based on time-series data collected from the EC/EU annual budgets (1959-2016). The first hypothesis predicts an incremental growth of staff in EU institutions and bodies. The second hypothesis tests whether member states decisions to reform treaties and ratify accession treaties affect the number of staff members in EU institutions and bodies. Results show that the growth of EU staff has not been gradual and that decisions which are under the control of member states partially impact the growth of EU staff. Decisions and willingness of member states as well as EU institutions are needed to affect the number of staff members in the EU.

We both carried out our PhD research on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) engagement with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. While Katharine's focus was on the alliance's political structures and public diplomacy and included visits to NATO in 2014, Matt's research visits took place in 2012 and examined NATO's military structures and the (re)construction of military masculinities and femininities. What follows is a conversation between us that captures some thoughts and feelings about conducting interviews at NATO headquarters.

Prime ministerial power is always contingent, based on the utilisation of personal and institutional resources, subject to various formal and informal constraints. Parliament is both a political resource to be utilised, but also a veto-player. In the absence of formal mechanisms setting out the requirements for the UK prime ministerial accountability to parliament, a fluid and essentially personalised relationship has developed. Regular prime ministerial appearances before the House of Commons Liaison Committee, begun in 2002, have added to parliament's scrutiny toolkit. This article considers the accountability of the prime minister to parliament by analysing the emergence and development of the Liaison Committee evidence sessions, and draws on interviews with participants and examination of the session transcripts, in order to assess the value of this scrutiny mechanism within the broader framework of prime ministerial-legislative relations.

This editorial introduces the special issue and considers what the articles tell us about new approaches to political leadership. The editorial explains how each article engages with the core puzzles of political leadership and brings together many diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of political leadership, a vibrant area of study currently in the midst of an academic renaissance.

This article examines five 'challenges' facing most administrative systems across Europe. The first challenge stems from the increasingly asymmetric nature of European multilevel governance; the second challenge arises from the missed opportunity of reforming in the absence of a dominant administrative paradigm; the third challenge lies in rescuing and transforming the welfare state; the fourth challenge is concerned with making the most of the knowledge generated in the field of strategic management for strategically managing public services; the fifth challenge lies in staff (de)motivation. These challenges are pitched at very different levels: some are related to issues of public governance, some to issues of scholarly and practitioners' collective understandings of public administration in Europe, and some to trends in the global economy, and notably the financial, economic and fiscal 'crises'.

This paper explores recent attempts to re-imagine and re-brand northern British cities through processes of economic and (mainly) cultural regeneration. It analyses the creation of new contemporary urban images and presentations and compares these with the economic, social and cultural life experiences of people living in the areas. It examines the process of recharacterising former industrial conurbations as being at the cutting edge of contemporary, postmodern culture. A range of features is identified here within similar political, economic and policy contexts: deindustrialisation and regeneration driven by local business and political elites; emphasis on culture as spectacle to the exclusion of other cultural configurations; reliance on tourism and advertising, hyper consumption and leisure as determining aspects of the local economy; and the reorganisation of city populations