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Scotland's 2014 Independence Referendum affords a rare opportunity to examine public support for the break-up of a long-established, stable democracy. Analyses of support for Scottish independence reveal that while issues of national identity loomed large in the vote, they were not the only factors involved. Questions around the economic and political direction of the state, and around uneven development, ideology and trust in established politicians also influenced voters' decisions. Partisanship also mattered, as voters were more likely than not to follow the lead of their party in what had become a highly partisan contest. But some parties – especially Labour – saw large minorities of their supporters vote against the party's line to support independence.

Political parties are crucial to British democracy, providing the foundations for mobilising voters. Their constituency branches are key links between voters and Parliamentary candidates and their activities require two vital resources - people and money. Much has been written on the decline of party membership but far less on money. In this much-needed new book, Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie use the latest research and hitherto unpublished material to explore financial differences across the UK's three main parties in the four years leading up to the 2010 General Election. They look at how

Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie use the latest research and hitherto unpublished material to explore financial differences across the UK's three main parties in the four years leading up to the 2010 General Election. They look at how much local parties raise for election campaigns and find that the more money candidates spend then, the better their performance.

In this book, the authors use the latest research to explore financial differences across the UK's three main parties in the four years leading up to the 2010 General Election, revealing an unhealthy picture of grassroots party organisation in which the capacity to engage with many voters is concentrated in a few constituencies.

Using information from the UK elections and scholarship, this title shows how voters and parties are affected by, and seek to influence, both national and local forces, placing the analysis of electoral behaviour into its geographical context.

One of the more striking findings in recent work on political discussion among citizens has been that exposure to disagreement in discussion networks demobilises people, making political participation less likely. This runs counter to the expectations of theories of social capital and deliberative democracy, and also to the finding that exposure to cross-cutting views leads to greater tolerance of the opinions of others. This result is of great significance if it proves to be a general finding, holding in a variety of contexts and for a range of forms of political activism. This paper therefore provides a test, analysing a wide range of forms of political activism. The results suggest that it is premature to blame disagreement for demobilisation: in some circumstances, and for some forms of activism, exposure to countervailing views may actually motivate participation. Adapted from the source document.

Open political discussion between citizens is a cornerstone of democratic theory and contextual accounts of political behaviour. It provides both a means through which individuals can discover what their peers think and a forum within which they can rationalize, explain and perhaps modify their own opinions. Much previous research has focused on the potential of political conversation as a means of influencing others and of converting holders of minority views to the opinions of the majority. However, theoretical accounts of political conversation also stress its potential impact on more systemic attitudes towards democracy, including the development of tolerance for divergent views and lifestyles. The article provides an evaluation of these potential effects in the context of recent British politics.

Henry Milner's response (2004) to our original
article (2003) is typically thorough and thoughtful, raising a number of
new (and testable) hypotheses in the process. He mounts a robust defence
of the civic literacy argument and takes us to task on two grounds.
First, he challenges our modeling strategy. Second, he mounts a defence
of aggregate level analysis of civic literacy, and points to the
limitations of individual–level models. In this brief reply, we
take up the challenges he sets.

Aggregate cross-national analyses of political participation have reported correlations between civic literacy, political knowledge and election turnout. Enhancing civic literacy among Canadian voters, in part by encouraging greater newspaper readership in the general population, has been put forward as a strategy for combating falling turnout in national general elections. The idea is evaluated comparatively at the level of individual voters, using data from the British Election Study. Newspaper readership is related to political knowledge, but increased newspaper reading does not translate into a greater propensity to vote.