Ballots & Bullets

The House of Commons is generally considered to be ineffective when it comes to amending government legislation. The statistics back this up: no government legislation was rejected outright in the last Parliament. Even in the much less public confines of the committee rooms, 99.9% of government amendments are accepted and successful opposition amendments are rare, averaging less than 1%. But …

In this second post in the Picturing Politics series Dr Andrew Mumford looks at the recent bombings in Boston. He questions the impact that labelling the bombings ‘terrorism’ will have on our understanding of what constitutes an act of terrorism. Dr Mumford also looks at the implications of the bombings for US foreign and security objectives.

Photo by John Tlumacki/The

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Governor Kanokov uses Twitter to report terrorist attacks in his troubled North Caucasus Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.

State control over most of the national media in Russia has meant that Russian newspapers and TV today are a lot less interesting as a source of political research than they were in the 1990s. The situation regarding the internet is different. This is …

George Arliss is a long forgotten figure. But in the 1930s he meant a lot to British movie audiences, so much in fact one poll made him the most popular film star of 1934, knocking Clark Gable into second place. Arliss was, however, an unlikely star – in his sixties, he had a stoop and bad teeth – but his …

Image by Justin Russell

How do we end up supporting a specific political party? Why do some people in the UK, for instance, call themselves Labour or Conservative supporters, whereas others fail to identify with any individual party at all?

One of the most oft-cited explanations alludes to the role of parents. Through family socialisation, young individuals get to know …

Image by Christian Bauer

At the last Conservative conference, George Osbourne announced “We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business”. While he was referring specifically to climate change, he articulated a commonly-held view: that protecting the environment always comes at an economic cost. And so in times of economic hardship, environmental action is a …

In the first post in the Picturing Politics series Prof Katharine Adeney looks at the Pakistan Peoples Party 2013 manifesto, which features a prominent image of Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated former Prime Minister of Pakistan. Prof Adeney looks at what the use of Benazir Bhutto’s image tells us about Pakistani politics and question why, despite Benazir’s continued resonance, the PPP …

We’ve been producing end-of session reports on the behaviour of government MPs at Westminster for almost a decade. Last year’s was a record-breaker: Coalition MPs rebelling more often than MPs in any other session since 1945. This morning we’ve launched the report on the 2012-13 session. It tells a more nuanced story, but with plenty to concern the party whips:…

Image by Jurgen Appelo

Twitter is becoming an indispensable tool for the modern academic. Sceptics might doubt it, but the social media platform is perfectly designed to facilitate the dissemination of research findings, information about research projects and teaching materials. Beyond that, Twitter can significantly enhance the profile of an academic, their research and their respective School and University more …

The School of Politics and International Relations is committed to the use of social media to share our research and further a wider understanding of politics. Our latest project, Picturing Politics, will feature a series of audio and video clips that will see our academics commenting on the political significance of a diverse range of images.

The series is intended to …