Constitutional Reform: A Recipe for Restoring Faith in Our Democracy?

The first coalition since the Second World War is itself an innovation at Westminster. But it also came to power committed to an ambitious programme of constitutional reform – including fixed-term parliaments, directly elected mayors and local police commissioners, and the wider use of referendums. Could any of these changes reverse the long-term decline in public trust in government

Exploring Political Disappointment

Disappointment is often identified as a pathology of modern politics; citizens expect much of politicians, yet governments are ill-equipped to deliver outcomes commensurate with those expectations. The net result is said to be a widespread disappointment; a negative balance between what citizens expect of government and what they perceive governments to deliver. Yet little attention has hitherto been paid to which kinds of citizens are particularly disappointed with politics, and why. This article offers one of the first empirical analyses of political disappointment. Drawing on a survey conducted in Britain, it provides a quantitative measure of political disappointment and explores its prevalence among citizens. It then considers which social groups might be more prone to disappointment than others. In particular, it explores whether certain groups are more disappointed by virtue of holding very high expectations of government or very low perceptions of government performance. The article concludes by considering what strategies might be open to policy makers to alleviate political disappointment

Democracy and constitutional change in Britain

Since 1997, Britain has undergone a major programme of constitutional reform. The programme was introduced against a backdrop of declining electoral participation and political trust. A key objective of the reforms was to strengthen citizens' engagement with the political system. This analysis explores how far the reforms have succeeded in generating closer linkages between citizens and governments, manifested in higher rates of electoral turnout and political trust. Four reforms are analysed in detail: the regulation of party funding, electoral reform, devolution, and directly elected local mayors. In evaluating the impact of these reforms, the analysis draws on a variety of input (ie. pre-reform) and outcome (ie. post-reform) measures. In relation to devolution to Scotland, the analysis finds that institutional reform has established a tier of government in which a substantial proportion of Scots invest their trust. However, devolution appears to have had a less substantive impact on electoral turnout. In the case of new electoral rules, the opposite appears to be the case: those who favour the new voting rules are mildly more likely to participate in elections than those who do not, although there is no relationship with political trust. Directly elected mayors have had little impact on aggregate rates of turnout, although the evidence from London suggests that support for the model is positively associated with electoral turnout. The dividend from the tighter regulation of party funding appears less positive, since people with low levels of political trust are only marginally more likely to favour reform than those with high levels of trust. Thus, the constitutional reforms appear to have had some impact, although the effects are not substantial and consistent. The analysis concludes by examining the likely impact of a more radical set of institutional reforms, either within the representative model, or extending to forms of direct democracy

The forward march of party members: has the shift in power to the grassroots gone too far?

Patrick Seyd writes that while parliamentarians are in a much better position to decide who should lead the party than party members, in recent years the balance has shifted in favour of the latter. This plebiscitary politics negatively affects both the quality of political leadership and of decision-making

Expectation management: can politicians win back political trust by limiting what the public expects of them?

Politicians may be feverishly campaigning for votes, but fewer and fewer citizens say they trust them and the institutions they inhabit. In this post, Ben Seyd considers what politicians can do to strengthen the public’s confidence in their work. He suggests that trust may not be responsive to the expectations that people have of politicians; instead, trust seems more affected by perceptions of how well politicians are seen to perform. Boosting the public’s trust might therefore require improving political performance rather than simply limiting what the public expects of its elected representatives

Stand und Entwicklungsperspektiven der beruflichen Rehabilitation Erwachsener (The state and development prospects of the occupational rehabilitation of adults)

"Occupational rehabilitation centres continue to be the central institutions for the occupational rehabilitation of adults who are unable to carry out their own occupation. These institutions provide a high quality of training and care in diverse offers from didactic, social education, psychological and medical specialists. They are at present under a great deal of restructuring pressure: on the one hand they have to reckon with considerable reductions in financial resources and on the other hand they are compelled to make intensive conceptional developments as a result of the inclusion of more problematic participant groups and limited placement opportunities on the labour market. This article examines the critical situation and at the same time shows the lines of development in five fields of action. Furthermore it outlines a research and development project which is intended to optimise the didactic idea of the occupational rehabilitation centres in the direction of 'orientation of action'. Initial research results emphasise the workability of this didactic idea for the occupational rehabilitation of adults." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))berufliche Rehabilitation - Konzeption, Erwachsene, Berufsförderungswerk, Qualitätsmanagement, Didaktik, handlungsorientiertes Lernen

An integrated approach to analyze strategy map using BSC – FUZZY AHP: A case study of Dairy companies

In an environment, which is highly competitive and everything changes rapidly, managers of organizations face with problems such as how to identify important factors preventing organizations from optimum use of available resources and capacities and invest more on key factors. To achieve this goal, we need to develop an effective strategy map for organizations. The strategy map is a constructional and expanding procedure to identify relationships among all the organization's strategic goals, which play a key role in achieving competitive advantage. Undoubtedly, representing a model to identify and to evaluate the important items for each of available goals in strategy map of each organization is a significant help for management to access higher competition benefits. In this paper, strategic objectives in the strategy map of one of the best producer of electric auto part makers in Iran called Electric Vehicle Co. East are evaluated based on balanced score card perspective and to assign appropriate values to available factors we use a hybrid method consist of AHP technique with Fuzzy logic