Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)-invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust-inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent-triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust-inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May-led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left-wing or non-Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.

What is the association between partisanship, individual views and behaviours towards the pandemic? This research note explores this question empirically using two datasets collected before and during the Covid‐19 pandemic: a daily survey covering nearly 100,000 individuals and county level mobility matched to UK 2019 general election results. At the individual level, our findings show that partisanship is strongly correlated with differences in both views and behaviours. Conservative voters were less likely to perceive Covid‐19 as dangerous and less likely to stay home during the national lockdown. At the county level, the effect of the national lockdown on mobility was negative and statistically significant only in less Conservative counties. Thus, partisanship is associated with different individual views and behaviours towards the pandemic even when there is broad consensus among the main political parties and the government about the nature of a public health problem and the appropriate policy response.

Income and political attitudes are powerfully correlated in cross-sectional data, yet research based on panel data finds at most a weak correlation. In this paper, we examine this puzzling pattern by exploring the long-term evolution of attitudes over the life cycle. We evaluate the predictions of five different explanations on the relationship between attitudes and income experiences. These explanations focus on, respectively: socialization, anticipation, myopic self-interest, learning and status maximization. We employ accelerated longitudinal design models using data on core political values that span up to sixteen years from the British Household Panel Survey. Our findings reconcile the mixed evidence in the literature: the correlation between income and political attitudes, strong in cross-sectional studies but weak in short panel studies, emerges because attitudes crystallize – slowly but systematically – as income evolves over the life cycle. This pattern is most consistent with the learning explanation.

Numerous studies show an association between military pressures and fiscal development, often based on cross-national correlations between wars and fiscal outcomes (e.g., tax ratios). However, investments in fiscal capacity may take time to yield higher tax revenues, obscuring the importance of factors that contributed to those investments. This article shifts attention from fiscal outcomes to the policymaking process. Using text-as-data techniques to analyse British parliamentary debates from 1803 to 1913, it offers new micro-level evidence of the relationship between military pressures and fiscal policymaking in the United Kingdom during the long 19th century. Our analyses show that military issues were associated with higher fiscal salience and lower contestation in tax debates. Qualitative analyses indicate that military issues were recurrently invoked to support the renewal of the personal income tax despite attempts to repeal it, confirming the close link between military and fiscal issues in shaping the modern British fiscal state.

As nationalist sentiments gain traction globally, the attitudinal and institutional foundations of the international liberal order face new challenges. One manifestation of this trend is the growing backlash against international courts. Defenders of the liberal order struggle to articulate compelling reasons for why states, and their citizens, should continue delegating authority to international institutions. This article probes the effectiveness of arguments that emphasise the appropriateness and benefits of cooperation in containing preferences for backlash among the mass public. We rely on IR theories that explain why elites create international institutions to derive three sets of arguments that could be deployed to boost support for international courts. We then use experimental methods to test their impact on support for backlash against the European Court of Human Rights in Britain (ECtHR). First, in line with principal‐agent models of delegation, we find that information about the court's reliability as an ‘agent’ boosts support for the ECtHR, but less so information that signals Britain's status as a principal. Second, in line with constructivist approaches, associating support for the court with the position of an in‐group state like Denmark, and opposition with an out‐group state like Russia, also elicits more positive attitudes. This finding points to the importance of ‘blame by association’ and cues of in/out‐group identity in building support for cooperation. The effect is stronger when we increase social pressure by providing information about social attitudes towards Denmark and Russia in Britain, where the public overwhelmingly trusts the Danes and distrusts the Russians. Finally, in contrast to Liberal explanations for the creation of the ECtHR, the study finds no evidence that highlighting the court's mission to promote democracy and international peace contains backlash. We show that the positive effects of the first two arguments are not driven by pre‐treatment attitudes such as political sophistication, patriotism, internationalism, institutional trust or political preferences.

Comparing educational experience, culture and academic practice within Europe can often be an interesting and rewarding exercise. The observations in this article are based on the author's experience of six and half years' teaching at two universities in Bavaria, the completion of a doctorate at the Free University Berlin, two degrees at the University of Edinburgh (one in history, the other in social sciences), and, most recently, two years' teaching in the Politics and Contemporary History Subject Group at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom. The aim is to reflect on the experience of teaching in two different European academic systems, with a view to making some comparisons as well as observations on the changes which have taken place in the UK higher education system over the last two decades.

In the United Kingdom, there has been a resurgence of interest in philanthropy amongst the media, policymakers, and scholars alike. In this context, the analysis of new and innovative forms of philanthropy is paramount. This paper focuses on an innovation in the philanthropic form: the community foundation. The success of community foundations in the United States provided the impetus for the establishment of community foundations in the UK in the 1980s. This paper examines how the community foundation form has been adapted to the UK and the factors which have influenced the development and roles of British community foundations. It is argued that this study is both timely and important for three reasons. First, the analysis of new structures through which people give furthers our understanding of Britain’s culture of giving. Second, the paper examines the role of community-based philanthropy in the civil renewal of Britain’s communities. Finally, the study makes an important contribution to efforts to promote the community foundation form worldwide as it highlights the challenges of transferring philanthropic forms from one context to another.

This paper explores the legitimacy of third sector organizations in the policy process in the United Kingdom. It draws on empirical research to examine how legitimacy is defined, both by third sector organizations and by those they target within government. The paper argues that while many third sector organizations give high priority to political forms of legitimacy—in the sense of participatory structures and accountability to members and beneficiaries—government is generally more likely to give priority to technical forms of legitimacy, e.g., the quality of research and the ability to implement policy. Nonetheless, political legitimacy is still important, first because this is the form of legitimacy that third sector organizations claim for themselves and second because, as government gives way to governance with an increase in partnerships and collaboration, the dilemmas faced by third sector organizations in achieving political legitimacy are being faced on a broader canvas.

Within the mixed economy of care in the United Kingdom there are debates about the ways in which impact can be evaluated, in order to shape funding and policy decisions. One of the tensions evident in this debate is whether the evaluation approach should reflect the perspectives and goals of the voluntary organizations and their members, or whether evaluation should reflect the wider goals of the whole system of provision. The former runs the risk of being insular and self-congratulatory, while the latter may be inappropriate and dismissive of achievements. This paper explores this tension by reporting on a study that used Appreciative Inquiry to evaluate 10 small-scale not-for-profit schemes for older people. The data indicated some unexpected and long-term impacts that demonstrated the distinctiveness of the sector. Subsequently the findings were mapped on to the “impact grid” developed by Wilding and Lacey (2003). While this was straightforward at the levels of individuals and interorganizationally, it was more difficult at the sector/community level, suggesting that more work needs to be done to bring these two perspectives together.

This paper uses research from two projects, conducted for Sport England and for the Central Council of Physical Recreation (CCPR), to analyze pressures on volunteers in sport in the United Kingdom (UK). Both research projects were contract research, conducted to inform policy and therefore were not designed to build on theoretical insights. However, from the results the research developed an understanding of the interrelated pressures on the voluntary sector in sport, which was informed by theory. This paper describes the pressures and relates them to previous research into volunteers. Contextualizing the issues faced by volunteers in sports organizations suggests several questions for further academic work, not only focussed on sports volunteers, but the voluntary sector in general. In particular, are the pressures experienced by the voluntary sector in UK sport common to sports volunteers in other countries, and to what extent are they also a reflection of general pressures on the voluntary sector?

Voluntary organisations have become major providers of numerous social welfare services that previously were supplied by the state. In Britain, between 35 and 40% of the average human services charity’s annual income now derives from government (predominantly local government) sources, meaning that the acquisition of fresh contracts to undertake government funded work, in conjunction with the maintenance of good relations with government funders vis-à-vis current assignments, is increasingly important for ensuring a human service charity’s financial survival. An organization that wishes to obtain new contracts and to keep government bodies satisfied with its present activities will need to market itself effectively. This empirical study examined two aspects of charity marketing relevant to this requirement: the extent to which voluntary organizations applied the principles of strategic account management (otherwise known as key account management) to their relations with government funders, and the organizational characteristics (passion and commitment, low wage costs, etc.) that they emphasized to government bodies when making bids. A number of organizational variables (e.g., mission rigidity, strategic intent, short term operational focus) were employed in regression analyses as possible determinants of: (i) the degree to which a charity used strategic account management; and (ii) the genres of the organizational characteristics that it accentuated when tendering for government funded work.

Over the last two decades, nonprofit organizations in the United Kingdom (UK) have faced increased pressure to measure their activities in order to demonstrate their competency, to achieve legitimacy, and to obtain funding. This paper draws from recent literature in the sociology of science to examine quantification in the British voluntary sector as a historically situated and socially constructed process. Using archival and secondary documents, I find that quantification is not a new practice for charities in the UK; moreover, while they have employed metrication in the past, what activities nonprofits have measured, and the importance of measurement for their organizational success, has altered over the course of the century.

The Family Expenditure Survey provides a long time series of household-level data on U.K. charitable giving, which previously has not been exploited. Data analyzed for the period 1978-93 reveal a long-term decline in the proportion of households giving to charity, which persists once we control for changes in other characteristics that affect giving, such as income and wealth. The biggest declines in the number of givers are among younger and poorer households. We also draw out generation-specific trends in a way that is crucial to thinking about future trends in funding for the voluntary sector.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of giving ethos and behavior in the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular the relationship of giving to civic life. Obvious disparities between the two countries exist when overall levels of giving are considered. In the United States, individual giving as a percentage of gross national or domestic product has consistently hovered around 2% of Gross Domestic Product. By contrast, charitable giving in the United Kingdom has yet to reach 1% of GDP. The paper identifies the differences in giving ethos and behavior in the two countries in relation to the complexity of the differences between the political structures, social attitudes, and the role of charitable giving in the two countries. In particular, the paper postulates a set of models—generosity and altruism—for explaining the differences.

This paper focuses upon ways in which National Lottery funding impacts upon aspects of identity for small- to medium-sized organizations in the United Kingdom, and highlights some of the less-anticipated difficulties that groups may experience after receipt of a grant. A large Lottery grant can facilitate rapid expansion and may necessitate a degree of organizational learning for which groups are often unprepared. The paper suggests that a Lottery grant may lead to changes in the ways in which an organization identifies itself, or is identified by stakeholders. However, these changes may not be accompanied by a corresponding change in the organization’s capacity or underlying cultural ethos. On the basis of the primary research carried out in 2003, the paper examines the implications of these changes for individual organizations and for the sector more widely.

This article examines the charity financial reporting regimes of three common law jurisdictions: Ireland, the UK and the US. It assesses whether these respective disclosure models improve either nonprofit behaviour or enforcement odds. Three core aspects of the regimes are reviewed: the reliability of the disclosed information, the consistency of such information and its ability to facilitate comparison between charities, and the level of enforcement arising from disclosure. Particular attention is paid to oversight mechanisms, including audits, and their rates of effectiveness in the regulation of charities. The article examines ongoing efforts to reform broader international accounting standards and considers the impact such moves are likely to have at both regional and national level for charity accountability. It concludes that given the markedly different spheres in which for-profits and nonprofits operate, care should be taken in modelling charity disclosure regimes on those developed for for-profit entities.

This research analyzes the concept of financial vulnerability of nonprofits in depth. We review the definitions given by the prior literature, concluding that none of them is complete. We propose a definition in which financial vulnerability consists of three dimensions: operational (variation of net assets over time), leverage (relationship between total assets and debt), and liquidity (ratio of current assets to short-term debt). We use a sample of 212 Non-Governmental Development Organizations (NGDOs) from the United Kingdom to analyze these measures, observing a limited number of nonprofits simultaneously classified as vulnerable according to the different traditional concepts. Applying our proposed multidimensional model, we find that 6 % of the sample is highly financially vulnerable according to the three dimensions, and a high proportion (18 %) of nonprofits is simultaneously vulnerable in leverage and liquidity dimensions. Finally, we compare the obtained results using traditional variables and those derived from our model.