This article analyses voting records of the European Union's (EU) Council of Ministers. Governments’ voting patterns are assumed to be partly affected by national‐level factors and partly by EU‐level factors. The results support the view that the political space of the EU is defined by two dimensions: the traditional left‐right dimension, and the independence versus integration dimension. In general, left‐wing governments tend to vote less against the Council majority than their right‐wing counterparts. However, if the government is a strong supporter of increased integration, its position on the left‐right dimension does not matter much. All other things being equal, pro‐integration governments are least likely to raise their voice against the Council majority. However, considerable differences are found among eurosceptic parties. Of these, right‐wing governments are the most active ‘no’ voters. In addition, large countries are more likely to vote ‘no’ than small countries. When they hold the presidency, governments take the role of arbitrator and vote less against the majority in the Council than otherwise.

Voluntary organizations have been praised as “schools of democracy” that promote citizens’ political participation. The neo-Tocquevillian approach argues that civic engagement in voluntary organizations facilitates higher levels of political participation. However, empirical studies on the theory have been inconclusive. One possible reason for this is the heterogeneity of voluntary organizations and of political participation. This paper explores the relationship between the civic engagement and political participation of U.S. respondents to the World Values Survey. The results show that only certain types of voluntary organizations facilitate certain types of political participation. Voluntary organizations that pursue social missions are more likely to facilitate political participation. Active civic engagement is more strongly associated with political participation, but passive civic engagement can also promote political participation in some organizations.

Using the data from a survey undertaken in the United States in 1992, this article examines the effects of altruism, self-interest and social ties on motivations to give and volunteer, as well as the effects of volunteering on definitions of life goals. Social ties with non-profit organisations were good predictors of both the value of charitable contributions and the time volunteered for charitable causes. The level of prior philanthropic activism and social connections with philanthropic institutions had an effect on life goals. Altruism and the desire for self-improvement had effects on volunteering, but not on giving. Utilitarian motives (expected career advancement) had no observable effects on volunteering or giving. Based on those findings, a general microstructural model of philanthropic behaviour is proposed.

Estimates of voting by occupational class are provided for each of 22 regions in the UK for every general election since 1964. These are analysed, using a log-linear modelling strategy, to identify the changing degree of class dealignment and spatial polarisation within the British electorate over the period. The growing regional variability is consistent with expectations regarding the increasing volume of economic voting and the pattern of uneven development in the country: the north-south and urban-rural divides have both widened.

How do nonstate organizations carry out their programs in political contexts hostile to civil society activity? This paper examines the case of refugee-supporting organizations in Turkey, which hosts over 3.6 million Syrians under a temporary protection regime. While the Turkish state has taken a central role in refugee reception, nonstate organizations have played a sizeable role in refugee support. Analyzing interviews with key personnel across 23 organizations in Istanbul, the paper finds that organizational capacity and organizational identity together explain variations in CSO-state relations. While high-capacity organizations that adopt a variety of “rights-based” and “needs-based” identities will cooperate with state institutions, lower-capacity organizations use comparable signifiers to justify selective engagement or avoidance of state institutions. The paper argues that analyzing how organizations negotiate their identities can help explain variations in CSO-state relations in restrictive contexts without relying on a priori assumptions about CSO alignment with or opposition to the state.

The change in political leadership in the UK in 2010 has created financial uncertainty and instability for many third sector organisations. In a shifting funding landscape, it is clear that an over-reliance on Government funding is a risky strategy and that there is a need to diversify and seek out alternative sources of revenue. This article considers the impact of political change on the financial sustainability of community sports trusts associated with Premier League and Football League clubs in England. It explores sources of revenue through the analysis of financial statements, revealing that on average community sports trusts receive a significant proportion of income from grant funding whilst sponsorship income is relatively small. The article goes on to discuss the potential for community sports trusts to diversify revenue streams by developing social partnerships that address the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agendas of commercial organisations. It illustrates that although commercial sponsorship can provide benefits including the provision of additional funding that can enable financial stability, key issues include the balance of power, the impact on organisational flexibility, whether there is a need to restructure, and the development of long-term partnerships. Although the findings from this article are focused on a particular type of charity, given the importance of CSR partnership income for the charities sector they may also have broader implications for other charitable organisations.

Over recent years, UK universities have undergone a government-driven expansion of their student intake, with a target of fifty per cent of each age cohort graduating with a degree. The aim was to increase the average educational standard of the UK educational system as a whole - albeit at the cost of reducing the average academic standard within the university sector (Smith and Webster, 1997; Charlton, 2002).

The combination of necessarily reduced student selectivity (both in admissions and examinations) and substantially reduced funding per student created the problem of how to manage the decline in academic standards and inflation of the degree qualification. After some years of trying more informal methods (Williams, 1997), the government set-up the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education; QAA, 1998), which would use the managerial tool of quality assurance auditing.

Yet the QAA is now regarded as a failed experiment - expensive, damaging to efficiency, and probably ineffective (THES, 2001; Baty, 2001).

Public Ancillary Funds (PubAFs) are grantmaking philanthropic foundations, largely held to be independent. However, some PubAFs exist in significant and exclusive relationships (dyadic partnerships) with a dominant stakeholder involving shared values, strategy, resources, and goals. This paper examines the benefits and challenges for PubAFs of being in a dyadic partnership and how this relationship affects their identity, accountability, and independence. Interviews with 28 PubAFs reveal significant differences between the operating forms and practices of PubAFs in dyadic partnerships, and those which were not. While dyadic partnerships are most commonly associated with donor organisations that establish and provide ongoing funding to foundations (e.g. corporate foundations), this study’s findings show that to be a limited understanding, with PubAFs existing in dyadic partnerships in a range of different contexts. Further, the closeness and exclusiveness of a dyadic partnership presented both benefits and challenges which PubAFs must actively manage over time.

Massive open online courses (MOOC) have been considered by some observers as a powerful opportunity to improve distant learning. The Université catholique de Louvain was the first Belgian university to deliver a political science MOOC (Louv3x) in French, entitled ‘Discovering political science’ (Découvrir la science politique). This paper seeks to explore the challenges a pedagogical team faces when transforming a ‘traditional’ political science introductory course into a MOOC. The paper also explores how the use of a MOOC might impact the learning outcome within on-campus and worldwide students.

Democracy manifests itself in a range of ways and is an imperfect, dynamic struggle for collective decision-making. This article discusses the multifaceted processes of deliberative democratic praxis found in traditional Māori society. Central to decision-making in te ao Māori, hui provide formal and informal structures for deliberative democracy, precedent setting, learning, and transformation through consensus making, inclusive debate, and discussion across all levels of society. Rather than coercion and voting, rangatira relied on a complex mix of customary values and accomplished oratory skills to explore issues in family and community meetings and in public assemblies. Decisions made through inclusive deliberative processes practiced in hui established evident reasoning and responsibility for all community members to uphold the reached consensus. This article claims that practicing deliberative democracy as a fundamental way of life, learned through ongoing active and meaningful participation throughout childhood, improves the integrity of democratic decision-making.

Implementation analyses have increasingly gone beyond the study of the working of well-defined bureaucratic hierarchies. The key role played by informally co-ordinated clusters or complexes of different organizations, so-called implementation structures, has instead been emphasized. This article on a major programme for energy research and development in Sweden agrees with the thrust of this latter approach. However, three substantial reformulations of the basic thesis about non-hierarchical implementation are advanced. First, it is argued that the role of implementation structures is by no means limited to the implementation process proper but may involve a crucial contribution to the definition and setting of a policy problem. Second, the article rejects the thesis that a purposive commitment to some common programme objective or rationale is a prerequisite for the successful implementation of a programme. Third, it underscores the importance of understanding linkages between public and private sectors in different bargaining arenas. But analysis cannot focus only on the uses of existing linkages and arenas. Programmes may well involve policies for affecting distant transactions. They will then have to cope with uncertainties about the future nature of such arenas as well as the conditions for shaping, or even creating, them.

Butler and Stokes’ Political Change in Britain is reviewed, and criticised for focussing on a notion of electoral change which is singularly restrictive and which, moreover, has been noticeably absent in post-war Britain compared with other Western democracies. Three other kinds of electoral change, although ignored in the book, are shown to have been peculiar to Britain since 1945. These are (i) a persistent decline in the combined major party share of the electorate; (ii) a gradual fall in turnout; and (iii) an accelerating volatility of support between the two main parties. A more disturbing weakness in the study is that its general model of electoral behaviour, largely borrowed from the earlier Michigan studies, cannot account for these three electoral trends. Indeed, the model leads to predictions of electoral behaviour which are the very opposite of what has in fact taken place. In the light of the model's failure, some of its key concepts such as party identification, political generation and the model of partisan development as a learning process are subjected to critical scrutiny. No alternative model is tested, but plausible explanations of British voting behaviour since 1945 are offered which place a much greater emphasis on sociological and historical factors and on changes at the macro and elite level.