March 2023 Seminars

Seminars will take place in 1 West North 2.4 from 13.15-14.05 GMT.

Tuesday 28th March 2023

Speaker: Dr Jonathan Wheatley, Oxford Brookes University
Time: 13.15-14.05
Title: Do Candidates’ Policy Positions Matter to Voters? Evidence from the 2021 Elections to the Welsh Senedd
Abstract: Candidate-based electoral systems are designed to ensure that those elected are individually accountable to voters. However, legislators are only likely to represent constituents’ policy interests if voters cast their ballots for those candidates who are closest to them on policy issues. We study the impact of candidates’ policy positions on voters’ electoral preferences in the 2021 elections to the Welsh Parliament. Using mass online survey data and a fixed-effects approach, we find that despite the “second-order” character of Welsh parliamentary elections, candidates’ policy positions did have an impact on voters’ electoral preferences. However, that effect is small, limited to issues that voters see as particularly important, and only emerges among voters with high political interest. Overall, our findings question one of the core justifications for candidate-based electoral systems.

Seminars will take place in 1 West North 2.4 from 13.15-14.05 GMT.

Speaker: Dr James Pow, Queen's University Belfast
Time: 13.15-14.05
Title: Polarisation and Participation: Do Deep Divisions Mobilise Ethnic Hardliners and Deter Moderates?
Abstract: In polities with a recent history of ethnic conflict, elections typically remain dominated by the ethnic dimension. As voters seek to maximise the strength of their group’s political representation, other issues and ideological divisions tend to play a lesser role. At the same time, many eligible voters abstain from these often-polarising contests, giving rise to important questions. Do such elections largely mobilise those with the strongest ethnic identities and deter moderates? Or are the attitudes of voters and non-voters fundamentally similar in terms of ethnicity, but different in relevant non-ethnic ways, such as perceived internal efficacy? Using cross-sectional survey data collected after Northern Ireland Assembly elections in 2016 and 2022, this paper seeks to explain the main determinants of voting versus non-voting against a backdrop of ethnic polarization. The findings will deepen our understanding of democratic inclusion and representation in deeply divided places, particularly those with power-sharing institutions.

Seminars will take place in 1 West North 2.4 from 13.15-14.05 GMT.

Speaker: Prof Edward Welch, University of Aberdeen
Time: 13.15-14.05
Title: Mosquito Eradication and the Environments of Spatial Planning in Post-War France
Abstract: Post-war France was transformed by a sustained period of spatial planning and development, what the French term aménagement du territoire, most notably during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle (1958-69). Alongside motorways, hydroelectric dams and other forms of infrastructure, aménagement produced a string of tourist resorts along the Mediterranean coast. In order to be viable, they required an extensive programme of mosquito eradication (démoustication). This paper explores the politics of mosquito eradication as it played out during the 1960s and government planners clashed with local interest groups concerned by the methods and consequences of démoustication. It goes on to consider broader perspectives on the relationship between spatial planning and the environment opened up by the policy: first in terms of how spatial planning involved the radical reengineering of landscapes and environments in visible and invisible ways; and second in terms of the often unforeseen legacies of those interventions as they have emerged over time, not least as France begins to face the realities of climate crisis.

Find details of past events from the Department's seminar series.

Speaker: Leah Owen, Swansea University
Title: ‘Enemies within, Enemies without’: Exploring the Role of Location and Urgency in Far Right/Extreme Securitising Politics

Speaker: Charlotte Luckner, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Title: Does Gender Matter? An Analysis of Women Cabinet Ministers and Their Influence on Climate Policies

Speaker: Jess Mezo, University of Bath
Title: Jou-Naissance - Or How We Recover from 'the Modern Condition' through Modes of Surrealist Resistance

Speaker: Dr Federica Genovese, University of Essex
Title: Papal Dividends: Popes’ Political Communications and Financial Markets

Speaker: Prof Peter John, King's College London
Title: Nudge+: How to Encourage Citizen Empowerment in Behavioural Public Policy