Uniquely among leading generalist journals in political science, the BJPolS is independent of any professional association. Although organizational sponsorship confers great advantages, the BJPolS has thrived during its first forty years because able editors exploited their independence to adopt policies that were less feasible for official journals subject to membership pressures – a distinctive focus on contemporary theory, receptivity to overseas contributors, flexibility about longer articles and dual submissions, and active editorial discretion. These practices should continue to serve the journal well despite challenges posed by technological change. In responding to specialized competitors, the BJPolS should maintain its aspiration to publish papers that address ‘problems of general significance to students of politics’ by connecting analytical models to empirical evidence and enduring normative goals.

Lawyers talk of the common law offence of ‘perverting the course of justice’ by bribing or intimidating judges or jurors, lying to the police or court, concealing or destroying or fabricating evidence. This article argues that the same things are wrong, and wrong for the same reasons, politically as judicially: they prevent people from knowing and applying for themselves the rules by which they are ruled. The sort of excuses typically offered for those perverse practices in politics – that ‘it made no difference’, that ‘they could and should have resisted’ or that it is merely a matter of ‘fair adversarial competition’ – would be laughed out of a court of law, and they should be shunned politically for the same reasons as judicially.

Democracy is frequently framed as a distributional game. Much of the evidence supporting this possibility rests on the World Bank’s 1996 ‘high-quality’ inequality dataset. Using the updated and revised ‘high-quality’ dataset of 2007, this article revisits those results. Using the same country sample, more years and similar specifications to previous studies, as well as a larger country sample with more appropriate statistical models, we find no relationship between democracy/civil liberties and aggregate measures of economic inequality. Whether, and how, democracy decreases economic inequality remains an open question.

This article utilizes the statistical analysis of an original dataset of African legislative seat volatility levels and three case studies to demonstrate that the size and configuration of politically salient ethnic groups bear a strong relationship with patterns of legislative seat volatility in Africa. Legislative seat volatility is highest in countries where either no social group is large enough to form a majority on its own, or a majority group contains within itself a second smaller majority group; it is lowest in countries where one, and only one, group forms a majority. In contrast, most standard explanations for volatility, including variations in economic performance, democratic period of origin and democratic duration, do not appear relevant in the African context.

Operationalized as a simulation and checked against 1,737 policy shifts in twenty-four post-war democracies, this theory of party position-taking offers both an explanation and specific postdictions of party behaviour, synthesizing some previous approaches and linking up with mandate theories of political representation. These wider implications are considered at the beginning and the end of the article.

Bargaining theory predicts that as a political system’s polarization increases, parties have fewer opportunities to form coalitions without resorting to elections, inducing constraints on the management of political crises. This study tests the hypothesis that political polarization has a positive effect on cabinet duration, and draws on Social Networks Analysis to conceptualize and measure political polarization. Combining information about party ideology, inter-party distances and party size, this polarization index measures the structure of political systems in terms of possible and actual coalitions, and identifies proto-coalitions ex ante. The propositions regarding the effect of the bargaining environment on cabinet survival are tested with data covering sixteen European states in 1945–99, and are fairly robustly supported. The measure of political polarization outperforms alternative measures of this concept.

Some scholars use the ‘dynamic representation’ approach to test how much current policy changes reflect past public preferences. This article tests hypotheses derived from this approach in a left–right context for the United Kingdom from 1976 to 2006. This shows that government policy on the left–right scale shifts as public preferences change (‘rational anticipation’). Secondly, a public with right-wing preferences elects the Conservatives, who pursue right-wing policies in office (‘electoral turnover’). However, popular incumbents are less likely to adjust their policy position to the public. The Westminster system is criticized for its weak link between the rulers and the ruled, but dynamic representation on the left–right scale in the United Kingdom seems to have functioned admirably in this period.

Recent policy documents in Britain that have emphasized the importance of integration can be understood as addressing the question of what conditions are required in order to achieve and sustain a just society. The answer they give is that minority cultural groups need to be integrated into society, and that this involves community cohesion, secured through ‘meaningful contact’, and sharing a national identity based on common values. Here, it is argued that although meaningful contact between members of different cultural groups may promote trust between them, this does not warrant the key role which has been given to the idea of community cohesion. It is suggested instead that policies should aim to foster a widespread sense of belonging to the polity, and that this is not the same as sharing a national identity.

In 1996, New Zealand changed its electoral system from single-member plurality (SMP) to a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system. This article addresses the effects on turnout of electoral system change, generational differences and national and district-level competitiveness. Both theory and cross-sectional empirical evidence indicate that turnout should be higher after the change to MMP. Yet turnout has declined. Most of this turns out to be an effect of lag effects generated by longer-term trends of declining competition, and generational experiences. MMP has shifted the main focus of electoral competition from the district to the national level, with consequent changes in turnout distribution. Electoral boundary changes also have negative effects under MMP, and most MMP elections have taken place after an electoral redistribution.

Compulsory voting is sometimes thought to be justified in democracies because it promotes high levels of voting and mitigates inequalities of turnout amongst social groups. Proponents of compulsory voting also argue that it helps to prevent the free-riding of non-voters on voters. This article casts a sceptical eye on both arguments. Democratic citizens do not have a duty to promote their self-interest, and their duties to others do not generally require them to vote, or to attend the polls. So, while people are sometimes morally obliged to vote, and to vote one way rather than another, legal compulsion to vote or to turn out is generally unjustified and inconsistent with democratic government.