UCL Uncovering Politics

This week we welcome a special guest who has direct experience at the sharp end of politics. Charles Dunst is a former foreign correspondent who has reported from many countries around the world, who is now deputy director of research & analytics at The Asia Group – a business advisory firm based in Washington, D.C. – and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an independent and bipartisan DC-based think tank. 

Charles has just published a new book, Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman, in which he argues that democracies that are struggling with low public trust and poor performance might have a thing or two to learn about effective governance from the world’s more successful autocracies – most notably Singapore, but also others. 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Chales Dunst. Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman

The last seven years in British politics have been tempestuous. The turmoil has had multiple causes: Covid, Putin’s attack on Ukraine, and Trussonomics among them. But the politics of much of the period has been dominated by Brexit: by a referendum on an ever so simple question, followed by years of wrangling over what the question meant and how the answer that voters gave to it should be interpreted and implemented. Much of that contest took place in parliament. Meaningful voters, indicative votes, the Brady amendment, the Malthouse compromise, the Cooper–Letwin Bill and the legality or otherwise of prorogation – all became the stuff of prime-time television.

So what should we make of that period? And what can we learn from it – about how parliament and our constitution work, and about how they should work?

Well a new book recently published by Oxford University Press explores all these questions and many more. It’s called The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit. And its authors join me now. They are Meg Russell (Director of the UCL Constitution Unit and Professor of British and Comparative Politics in the UCL Department of Political Science) and Lisa James (Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit).

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit. For 30% off please visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/parliamentary-battle-over-brexit

In 1998, after three decades of conflict, lasting peace was achieved in Northern Ireland through an accord variously known as the Good Friday Agreement or the Belfast Agreement. The 25th anniversary of that Agreement comes next month. 

Though there are problems – the institutions of power-sharing government established through the Agreement are currently suspended, and pockets of paramilitary violence remain – the settlement reached a quarter of a century ago has been strikingly successful in its central aim: conflict has not returned; and contestation over Northern Ireland’s constitutional future is now conducted solely by political means. People in Northern Ireland have lived in much greater freedom and security as a result. For most people, life has got much better.

Nevertheless, 30 years of conflict were always going to leave lasting legacies that would take time to heal. And research conducted in part here in UCL is exploring those legacies and comparing them with patterns found in other post-conflict societies around the world. 

This week we are joined by Professor Kristin Bakke and Dr Kit Rickard.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The past, Brexit, and the future in Northern Ireland: a quasi-experiment
• ‘Ten pound touts’: post-conflict trust and the legacy of counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland

Immigration is back near the top of the political agenda, here in the UK and elsewhere. The UK government’s so-called ‘Stop the Boats Bill’, which targets those who cross the Channel in search of asylum, is one rather extreme manifestation of the idea that you can stop unwanted migration by making it unattractive. A wider expression of the same view is the concept of ‘benefit tourism’: the idea that migrants are more likely to come if welfare benefits are higher, and that and that you can therefore reduce immigration be keeping benefits low.

Now, there are clearly questions to ask about whether such ideas are morally defensible, but it’s also important to ask whether they work on their own terms. And new research carried out here at UCL casts important doubt on that. We are joined by one of the co-authors of that research, Dr Moritz Marbach, Associate Professor in Data Science & Public Policy in the UCL Department of Political Science.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Jeremy Ferwerda, Moritz Marbach and Dominik Hangartner, ‘Do Immigrants Move to Welfare? Subnational Evidence from Switzerland’

This week, we have a slightly different kind of episode to normal. Rather than discussing an academic publication, we’ll be looking at the ideas and career of Professor Marc Stears. 

Marc is currently the inaugural director of the UCL policy lab, set up to break down the barriers between academic researchers and broader society. His career to date has included stints in academia at Cambridge, Oxford and Macquaire, being the Chief Speechwriter of the Labour Party, writing major speeches for Ed Milliband, the CEO of the New Economics Foundation, and the Director of the Sydney Policy Lab.

Marc has some big ideas about politics and political reform. Two particularly attractive and compelling facets of Marc's work, found especially in two of his books, Out of the Ordinary and Demanding Democracy, are his optimism about the prospects for a better politics, and his vision of putting citizens at the heart of change and progress. His work offers us a faith in ordinary people, and in the possibility of a non-utopian kind of ordinary hope – and these are ideas that we discuss in this episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Prof Stears' Inaugural lecture.
• Out of the Ordinary How Everyday Life Inspired a Nation and How It Can Again. Marc Stears.
• Progressives, Pluralists and the Problem of the State. Ideologies of Reform in the United States and Britain, 1909-1926. Marc Stears.
• Demanding Democracy. Marc Stears.

If you managed to catch our episode last week, you’ll know that we were talking about the European Court of Justice. This week we are looking at another international court –  the European Court of Human Rights. 

This court has long been contentious in some circles in the UK. The Conservative Party’s election manifesto in 2015 pledged to ‘break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights, and make our own Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights matters in the UK’. In the last year, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has repeatedly expressed her view that the UK should leave the Court’s jurisdiction.

So what should we make of these arguments? What is the European Court of Human Rights, how does it function, and what does it do?

Joining us to discuss these questions is Dr Veronika Fikfak, Associate Professor in International Law here in the UCL Department of Political Science. Veronika leads an ongoing research project called Human Rights Nudge. She also serves as a judge ad hoc at the European Court of Human Rights and has recently published an article examining the Court’s practices in relation to settling cases before they reach a formal court hearing.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Veronika Fikfak. Against settlement before the European Court of Human Rights. International Journal of Constitutional Law

One of the chief stumbling blocks in negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol has concerned the role of the EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice, and parts of the Conservative Party are ever agitated by the quite separate European Court of Human Rights and its role in adjudicating on human rights disputes. So we have made two episodes looking at these institutions, starting with this one. 

We’re focusing this week on the European Court of Justice. Joining us is Dr Michal Ovádek, Lecturer in European Institutions, Politics and Policy here in the UCL Department of Political Science. 

Michal has recently published an article on a 2018 European Court of Justice ruling concerning the pay of Portuguese judges. That might seem a little obscure. But it turns out that the case had important real-world impacts, and also tells us a lot about how the court operates.

Mentioned in this episode:

• "The making of landmark rulings in the European Union: the case of national judicial independence." Michal Ovádek. Journal of European Public Policy 

At first blush, it might seem obvious that praise is a good thing. It involves complimenting others on what they have done; it tends to make them feel good; and it’s a way for us to communicate insights about virtuous behaviour.

But dig a little deeper and things are not always as they seem. Take an example from almost three years ago. A bright moment for many people in the first Covid lockdown was the weekly ‘clap for carers’, instigated to praise and give thanks to NHS workers and others who were on the frontline of the battle against the disease. But the weekly claps went sour. Many of the intended recipients of the praise came to resent them.

So what was going on here? What makes praise sometimes inappropriate or wrong?

These are some of the questions at the heart of the research of Hannah McHugh, a political philosopher currently completing her PhD in the UCL Department of Political Science. Long-time podcast listeners may remember that Hannah joined us last year to explore another aspect of her work: the role of blame in politics. We are delighted that Hannah joins us again, this time to discuss the role of praise.

Mentioned in this episode:

• I'm not your inspiration, thank you very much. Stella Young. TEDxSydney

Two current news stories raise important questions about online speech, and how it should be regulated. 

First, twitter has been taken over by Elon Musk, who has slashed staff numbers, allowed previously barred users – not least, Donald Trump – to return, and pledged a new era of free speech and less regulation. Some claim that as a result, Twitter has seen a deluge of disinformation and hate speech.

In the UK, meanwhile, the Online Safety Bill is making its way through parliament. This was originally intended in part to protect democracy against disinformation. But these provisions have now largely been stripped out, weakening the protections it will provide.

This week we are joined by Dr Jeff Howard, Associate Professor in Political Theory here in the UCL Department of Political Science, an expert in free speech and on the ethics of online speech.

Regular listeners know that normally on this podcast we have conversations with our academic colleagues here at UCL. But this week we’re doing something a little bit different. In the first of what we hope will be an occasional series of episodes with real-world political actors, we’re discussing the state of democracy in the UK today – and what can be done about it – with the leader of a UK political party. 

That party is the True and Fair Party. And its leader is Gina Miller.