The Future of Citizenship

A discussion of what constitutes identity and citizenship is timely and welcome. The linkage of citizenship to history and the association of citizenship with rights and responsibilities are appropriate. Nonetheless, we have concerns with some aspects of the discussion on citizenship

The next step for local government should be the right to pass primary legislation

Councillors are currently limited in how much influence they are able to have over their local area, locked in local governance networks in which they feature but don’t control. Assessing these networks and their democratic credentials, Colin Copus concludes that the right to pass primary legislation, over for example the legal drinking age or fox hunting, would refocus politics on local government at the expense of the centre

There is much that can be learned from Scotland’s decision to lower the voting age for the independence referendum

The Electoral Commission this week began a publicity drive to ensure that people register to vote in the referendum. It has launched a dedicated website and is working with Facebook to target potential younger voters including 16 and 17 year olds who will be able to vote for the first time. Andy Mycock looks at the enfranchising of younger people and the lessons for the whole of the UK. He says much can be learnt but there shouldn’t be an uncritical implementation of ‘votes at 16’ in all elections

The manifesto for youth: young people are demanding to be heard in the General Election

Young voters are very likely to turn out to vote in smaller numbers than older voters at the General Election, with party politics achieving little to no cut through with younger age groups. Despite this, there are signs of encouragement, according to Andy Mycock, who was involved in Huddersfield University’s Manifesto for Youth

Votes at 16: seeking a more enlightened debate on youth disengagement from politics

Democratic Audit recently produced an collection of pieces which addressed the question of whether it is right to re-examine the UK’s minimum voting age. The aim of the publication was to heighten the level of debate around the issue, an aim which one of the contributors, Andrew Mycock, shares. Here, he argues that one of the most encouraging things about the contributions is the consensus amongst their authors that, regardless of their views of the specific issue of votes at 16, it it alone is not a panacea to youth disengagement, and that a wider package of progressive reforms is needed

The Anglosphere: Past, present and future

Andrew Mycock (with Dr Ben Wellings, Monash University) discuss the renewed aspirations for greater collaboration among the ‘English-speaking peoples’, and the likelihood of their success. This article links to the organisation of a special British Academy conference, The Anglosphere and its Others: The 'English-speaking Peoples’ in a Changing World Order, convened by Dr Mycock (with Dr Wellings and Professor Michael Kenny, University of Cambridge) in London in June 2017.<br/

Learning to vote? Don’t start with a referendum

Educating 16 and 17-year-olds about voting and citizenship takes time, says Andrew Mycock, and the Scottish referendum was a divisive introduction to politics for some of them. Nor is it mere coincidence that 18 is the voting age in 27 of the 28 EU member states

Multiple-clause constituent questions: intonation and variation in Hungarian

When a question phrase bears a grammatical function in a subordinate clause but the interrogativity it introduces extends over a higher clause, there are two main possibilities in Hungarian: (i) the question phrase appears preverbally in the clause over which it takes scope, or (ii) the question phrase appears in the subordinate clause while the scope of interrogativity is indicated by the presence of another question phrase in the higher clause (the scope-marking construction). In order to understand the features shared by these two types of question and the ways in which they differ, this article explores the intonation of these types of multiple-clause constituent questions in Hungarian. The results of experimental investigation are reported and discussed, and the significance of these findings is evaluated in the context of wider typological variation in the formation of multiple-clause constituent questions