The Political Quarterly最新文献

This article explores why the Swiss Federal Council and the Swiss Federal Parliament were reluctant to follow the majority views of the scientific epidemiological community at the beginning of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We propose an institutionalist take on this question and argue that one major explanation could be the input overload that is characteristic of the Swiss federal political system. We define input overload as the simultaneous inputs of corporatist, pluralist, federalist and direct democratic subsystems. Adding another major input-this time from the scientific subsystem-may have threatened to further erode the government's and parliament's discretionary power to cope with the pandemic. We assume that the federal government reduced its input overload by fending off scientific advice.

In this article, we consider the one-year review (OYR) by Parliament of temporary powers in the Coronavirus Act 2020 (CVA). The OYR stands as a key concession on the part of the UK government to enable scrutiny of Covid-19 law making, after the CVA was rushed through Parliament at the beginning of the pandemic. The principal argument of this article is that despite appearances, this review was another example of Parliament being marginalised during the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, there were four obstacles to meaningful scrutiny in the OYR: inadequate parliamentary time scheduled for the review; the 'all-or-nothing' framing of the review; late and inaccurate government reporting prior to the OYR; and the failure to address key issues regarding the operation of the CVA, including major human rights concerns. In light of such obstruction to scrutiny, it is clear that the review represents a broken promise on the part of the current government to Parliament. The review is also part of a broader pattern of marginalising Parliament during the pandemic. In presenting this analysis, we argue that two changes could be made in the upcoming and penultimate review of the CVA in September 2021, in order to enable Parliament to engage in meaningful scrutiny in this review.

This article analyses the changing character of the contemporary Conservative Party. It argues that the period since the Brexit referendum has seen the creation of a new politics in which voter alignments have shifted, and that the experience of the Covid pandemic has created a new agenda of issues facing government. Taken together, these developments constitute formidable challenges to the Conservative Party as it seeks to maintain its electoral support and its ability to manage the politics of power.

This article explores the question of devolution in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic's impact on English local government. Criticism of the government's handling of the crisis is widespread and tends to focus on the highly centralised nature of the British state. Here, we attribute the challenges faced by regional and local government in responding to the pandemic primarily to the asymmetric nature of power relations that characterise financial planning and control mechanisms, devised and overseen by the Treasury. We argue that the ongoing crisis underlines the need for a democratic form of devolution-including further fiscal powers for regional and local government-to support the economic recovery. In a context of increasing fiscal uncertainty, the Treasury should seek to unlock the existing powers of local leaders by reforming centralised budgetary constraints and taking accountability and monitoring mechanisms closer to citizens.

This article looks at the financial performance and position of English professional football before Covid-19 and the impact that the pandemic has had on the industry. It analyses revenue streams in different divisions, the dependency that clubs have on them and how they have changed as a result of the pandemic. The article also reviews key costs for football clubs, the extent to which they can be reduced, different business models that operate, and possible funding sources for the sport from third parties and within the industry.