Publications

Access to higher education (HE) has become an extremely controversial area of policy, as successive UK administrations have sought to balance increasing student fees with ensuring that HE is open to individuals from as wide a range of social backgrounds as possible. There have also been numerous initiatives that have sought to increase participation by…

This article explores the substantive representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in party manifestos in general elections and regional elections in the United Kingdom, 1945–2011. The findings show that while there is some evidence of progress, there is also significant variation in the attention that parties afford to LGBT issues, and a…

But what, after all, is ‘the regional’? A region can be as largeas the European peninsula. Within the political enterprisethat is the European Union, however, regions subdivide acontinent already sliced up into nation-states – and eventhen what counts as a region is far from certain. Accordingto the latest Map of European Regions, a region might…

This article examines the electoral discourse associated with state decentralisation. It offers an original perspective that complements existing studies by detailing the discourse-based dimension of policy agenda-setting associated with Scottish and Welsh devolution in UK state-wide parties’ general election manifestos 1945–2010. Innovative aspects include a combined quantitative (issue-salience) and qualitative (policy framing) methodological technique transferable…

During the mid-to-late 1980s, ‘locality’ was the spatial metaphor to describe and explain the shifting world of regional studies. The paper argues that the resulting ‘localities debate’ threw this baby out with the bathwater and rather than invent new concepts to capture socio-spatial relations in the twenty-first century, the paper urges a ‘return to locality’…

This paper explores the spatial practices of public engagement through the consideration of an audio walk project that took place in Ebbw Vale in the summer of 2010. In the current political climate public engagement is often seen as a universal good, a way of demonstrating the productive dialogues that exist between ‘experts’ and their…

This paper seeks to help reconceptualize the spaces of local and regional economies by developing the idea of the compound economy. It is set in the context of a growing body of work in geography that emphasizes the importance of culture as a factor shaping differentiated local and regional economic development and, correspondingly, as an…

Insufficient research attention has been paid to the way that electoral politics shape public policy on overseas development aid. Accordingly, this study makes an original contribution by examining party politicisation, issue-salience and the policy discourse of international aid in the principal parties’ manifestos in post-war UK state-wide elections. The findings show that over the past…

This paper examines everyday interactions, and particularly the role of traditional ritual and relationships, in the mobilization of rural social movements in Taiwan. In Chinese society, ‘guanxi’ (interpersonal relationships) are involved in everyday social interactions. Studies of collective action, such as social movements, cannot ignore the role that ‘guanxi’ play. This paper argues that collective…

This paper examines the impact of devolution on social welfare for older people and the associated administration of age equality. Analysis of policy discourse, rights and stakeholders’ views reveals divergent practice in the constituent nations of the UK. In normative terms this is shown to present a tension between universal welfare rights and entitlements –…