The Dog that Finally Barked:England as an Emerging Political Community

This report presents evidence which suggests the emergence of a new kind of Anglo-British identity in which the English component is increasingly the primary source of attachment for English people. It also suggests that English identity is becoming more politicised: that is, the more English a person feels, the more likely they are to believe that the current structure of the UK is unfair and to support a particularly English dimension to the governance of England

Burundi: A Critical Security Perspective

In the last few years Critical Security Studies (CSS) has emerged as a new approach to the academic study of security. This article argues that its genesis is best understood as a reaction to two developments, namely ‘real world’ changes after the end of the Cold War and the far-reaching philosophical debates that have recently been taking place within the social sciences. The authors argue for a conceptualisation of CSS based on an explicit commitment to human emancipation. They then illustrate their preferred understanding of security through a discussion of Burundi. This case study not only illustrates the theoretical claims of CSS but also serves as a contribution to a more comprehensive understanding of the security issues with which this country and its inhabitants are faced

Unions of the mind:The UK as a subjective state

Those seeking to understand attitudes to decentralization focus on attitudes to constitutional change or to the ideal level of government to control particular areas of jurisdiction. Within this is a wider approach to understanding subjective dimensions of multi-level states and the different communities of interest or polities that exist within them. Drawing on data from successive rounds of the Future of England (including parallel surveys in Scotland and Wales), this article develops a conceptual framework through which to understand political unions as well as a multi-dimensional measure through which to evaluate the location of unions from a scale that runs from subjective unionism to subjective autonomism. It outlines the various unions of the mind, including an identity union, a union of economic solidarity, of social solidarity and of fairness (or legitimacy) and then proceeds to map these within the UK. It then evaluates what impact each of these has on attitudes to the wider state, including attitudes to its continued survival. The article draws primarily on individual-level survey data collected by the authors but refers also to campaigns for constitutional change in unions and relates this to what we know about how individuals conceive of the states in which they live

What about Wales? Brexit and the future of the UK

Since the results of the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union were declared, the fact that a narrow majority of the Welsh electorate voted alongside a similarly narrow majority of English voters to Leave (Table 1) seems to have provided succour to those who would reject the notion that Brexit was driven by English nationalism. Now that detailed statistical analysis has confirmed that English national sentiment was indeed very strongly aligned with Eurosceptic sentiment (see Henderson et al. 2017, 2020; Henderson and Wyn Jones 2021), this view is no longer tenable. English nationalism clearly was one of the key drivers of Brexit. This, however, leaves open the question: what about Wales? How do we explain the Brexit result in Wales? Moreover, in a context in which Brexit is clearly acting as a major centrifugal force within the UK, leading to renewed calls for Scottish independence and Irish unity, what is its impact of Brexit on Wales’ relationship with the Union

Security studies : the next stage?

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The public legitimacy of the National Assembly for Wales

This article examines the public legitimacy of the National Assembly for Wales. Both the Assembly and the broader system of devolved government for Wales initially enjoyed very limited public support. It is shown that support for devolution in general has risen substantially, while some elements of public attitudes towards the Assembly itself now appear distinctly positive. However, it is also demonstrated that public legitimacy, defined as ‘diffuse support’ for the Assembly, remains limited. The article then examines what factors explain levels of diffuse support for the National Assembly. It is found that variation in such support is best accounted for by factors associated with ‘non-material consequentialism’: perceptions of the impact of the Assembly on the process of government. The conclusion assesses the implications of the findings for the National Assembly, as well as for the study of devolutio