The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

Conventional wisdom holds that young people in Britain are alienated from politics, with some claiming that this reflects a wider crisis of legitimacy that should be met by initiatives to increase citizenship. This article addresses these areas, presenting both panel survey and focus group data from first-time voters. It concludes that, contrary to the findings from many predominantly quantitative studies of political participation, young people are interested in political matters, and do support the democratic process. However, they feel a sense of anticlimax having voted for the first time, and are critical of those who have been elected to positions of political power. If they are a generation apart, this is less to do with apathy, and more to do with their engaged scepticism about ‘formal’ politics in Britain.

This article analyses the linkage between trade unions and the US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party in the twentieth century. A typology suited to longitudinal analysis of labour movement union-party linkages is proposed to help characterise and explain historical development of these two national movements through earlier types of linkage, into ‘New Labour’ and ‘New Democratic’ forms. The paper suggests that, from similar starting points, differences through time in the range of types of linkage in the two movements can be explained by a combination of factors of political economy and electoral strategy, a combination that today points towards weaker relationships.

Over the past decade the perceived ‘threat’ of transnational organised crime (TOC) to the security of western political economies has become a principal issue on the agendas of key international forums such as the United Nations, G7/8 elite industrial countries and the Council of Europe. The intense policy activity around this threat is indicative of a key trend in post-Cold War international relations, that is, the reorientation of western security, intelligence and defence agencies toward crime control. Risk assessments and research evidence provided by international relations departments in higher education institutions, especially in the USA, have been particularly influential in providing the rationale for this reorientation. It is argued here, however, that there is a danger of intellectuals being drawn into the legitimisation of policies the terms of which are defined for them rather than by them. This jeopardises the critical contribution which academic research can make to policy change and learning, in particular it precludes a more reflexive approach to ‘evidence-based’ government. The paper draws upon discourse analysis and the study of ‘governmentality’ to develop a more reflexive interrogation of the assumptions underpinning this policy-shift in post-Cold War international relations. This is exemplified through an analysis of the two principal competing discourses on the threat of TOC and these are distinguished in terms of their focus on ‘criminologies of the other’ and ‘criminologies of the self’. The former narrates threats to security in terms of external, nationally and ethnically defined, pressures. The later perceive threats more in terms of the internal challenges now facing ‘sovereign’ governments struggling to command highly diverse, dynamic and complex social-political problems like organised crime. The ways in which these competing discourses constrain and enable alternative policy responses to TOC are examined.

This article first describes the decline in Conservative Party representation in local government over the period 1979–97. It then explores a number of factors to account for the nature and depth of that decline, including: differential abstention; the desertion of heartland voters; tactical voting at local level; and electoral bias. Clearly, the Conservatives' performance at local elections was worse than might have been expected given the party's overall electoral popularity. It appears that Conservative council candidates largely fell victim to the changing pattern of party competition and the apparent ability of rival parties to target seats more effectively. Furthermore, the impact of these factors was compounded by the operation of biases within the electoral system.

With the emphasis on loyalty and unity and an aversion to ideological disputation the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) has traditionally been described as a party of tendencies, rather than factions. The Cowley and Norton study of the ideological and factional basis of rebellion argues that the 1992–97 PCP adhered to the party of tendencies definition. However, through the development of a new three-dimensional, eight-fold typology of Conservatism, that involves behavioural and attitudinal mapping, it can be demonstrated that between 1992 and 1997 the PCP did display evidence of factionalism.

Evolutionary theorising has a long history in social scientists' attempts to interrogate processes of change. However, for many years evolutionary theory has been damaged by its association with teleological and reductionist reasoning. Nevertheless in the past two decades, a new breed of neo-evolutionary perspective has emerged within a variety of social science sub-disciplines. This recent literature has attempted to revise the theory in order to emphasise that change is a contingent process which can take multiple paths and is underpinned by a constant interplay between agents and their environment. Although much of this literature has failed largely to impact upon the work of political scientists, recent years have also seen various attempts to apply an evolutionary conception of change to both the state and political change in general. This review article examines some of the key themes to have emerged from the renewed interest in evolutionary theorising, whilst particular attention is paid to attempts to develop the concept of political evolution.