Research areas being explored by Centre members are:
Backbench Dissent in the House of Commons
Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart have researched the way MPs vote for a number of years. Their work is based on quantitative and qualitative sources and has produced a host of publications, including The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid His Majority and a website www.revolts.co.uk which carries updates of the research. The latter is now widely used by practitioners, including MPs, lobbyists, and journalists. As Nick Robinson, the BBC’s Political Editor notes, ‘This is academic political research doing exactly what it should do – helping to inform the political debate - and in real time not years after it matters’.
The ‘Crisis’ of Trust
Most commentators believe political parties and government have lost the trust of the vast majority of the public, largely due to changes in the social and economic structure. While individualism and declining deference may be new features of the cultural landscape, it is also true that the major political parties have endured an endemic ‘crisis’ of legitimacy. Centre members are approaching this subject in three contrasting ways. First, in order to better understand the current situation Steven Fielding has explored the means by which the parties have sought – and are seeking - to negotiate their inherently problematic relationship with society. Second, Lauren McLaren looks at how far concerns about immigration are contributing to the low level of trust. Finally, Cees van der Eijk has conducted contemporary surveys of popular attitudes about public officials in Britain but also across Europe.
General Elections and Political Communications
Britain’s general elections are some of the best studied in the world – thanks to a series of research projects dating back decades. One of those – the so-called ‘Nuffield’ series – began in 1945, and has resulted in a substantial book on each general election since. Philip Cowley has co-authored the 2010 election study: like its predecessors the book examined the events leading up to the election, as well as the election itself and was based on extensive elite interviewing as well as detailed statistical analysis of the results. Steven Fielding has written an account of the Labour party’s campaign in every general election since 1997 in books edited by Andrew Geddes and Jonathan Tonge, the latest of which, Britain Votes 2010, was published by Oxford University Press. Cees van der Eijk has also taken a prominent role in studying recent elections in Britain and across Europe, employing large scale surveys and quantitative analyses of party manifestos.
Choosing a Party Leader
Since 1963, the political parties have repeatedly changed the ways in which they choose their leaders. This raises a number of questions: how and why have these changes occurred, and what have their consequences been for the parties themselves and for the nature and operation of British parliamentary democracy? Andrew Denham has published extensively on Conservative Party leadership selection in recent years and contributed articles on Labour and Liberal Democrat leadership contests to journals such as Political Quarterly and Parliamentary Affairs. He is currently completing a piece, commissioned by the journal British Politics, on the Labour leadership election of 2010.