UCL Uncovering Politics

Democracy is what one social scientist once famously called an ‘essentially contested concept’ – one that we are never likely all to agree about. And disagreements over the form that democracy should take have lately sparked major political conflicts in many democratic countries. How far were politicians in the UK obliged to follow the so-called ‘will of the people’ as expressed in the Brexit refe...

We’re returning this week to the topic of climate change. You may have heard our episode a few weeks ago exploring global climate governance. Well this week, we turn our attention to global climate justice. The climate crisis has been caused mostly by the rich countries of the old industrial world. But many of the effects of that crisis are being felt first and most harshly elsewhere – in countrie...

We typically divide the modern state into three branches: the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. On a traditional view, the legislature makes the laws, the executive implements them, and the judiciary decides on disputes.  In reality, in most states, the executive in fact plays a much bigger role than that. It not only executes the will of the legislature, but also shapes the policy ag...

How the European Union relates to the world of business has long been a matter of great contention. Scepticism towards the EU on the right of politics has for decades been fuelled by the perception that Brussels is a bureaucratic regulation generator, with little understanding of how business operates. On the Eurosceptic left, by contrast, the EU has been seen as a capitalist club, in hock to big...

There is common agreement that climate change poses the greatest policy challenge of our age. The costs of getting it wrong would be immense, but the barriers to getting it right are dauntingly high. Action is needed on a global scale. But global politics is deeply fractured, and individual countries may be tempted to free ride on the actions of others.  So what are the global governance structure...

The politics of asylum is more important than ever before. At the end of 2019, according to data from the UNHCR, there were 80 million displaced persons around the world. More than half of those were displaced within their own countries. But 25 million were refugees, and a further 4.2 million were seeking asylum in another country.  So how do the countries that refugees and asylum-seekers flee to...

Care ethics is a branch of moral philosophy that focuses on how we relate to, respond to, and care for each other. Its central question is not about what abstract principles of justice we should follow, but rather about how we should respond to the needs of a given person in a particular set of circumstances. It’s been around for several decades, but now one of our colleagues here at UCL has appli...

Talking with each other about matters of politics and policy is an essential part of democracy. And today much of that conversation takes place online, through social media. The digital revolution has given voice to millions of people who previously had little chance to be heard beyond the dinner table or the pub or the local town hall. That has great benefits, opening up the democratic conversati...

Joe Biden is President, Kamala Harris is Vice-President, and Donald Trump is out of office. The Senate and the House are both controlled by Democrats. A dramatic power shift is (more or less) complete. But the process of getting there has been fraught, and potentially damaging for American democracy for years to come. So what are the repercussions of the last few weeks – and indeed the last four y...

This week we focus on the political impact of Covid-19, and particularly the pandemic’s effects on so-called ‘contentious politics’ – politics conducted through confrontational means, whether protests, or strike actions or, indeed, insurrections. What is the role of contentious politics in the political process as a whole? And how has the pandemic changed contentious politics around the world? Has...

Brexit is back in the news, at least here in the UK. A huge amount is said in the UK media about UK perspectives on how the talks are going and what the key issues are but we hear much less about thinking within the EU. Despite this, there’s a whole lot of other stuff that the EU is also up to. It has just agreed its budget for the next few years. It is responding to the challenge of Covid-19 and...

Politics is the process by which we make collective choices – by which we decide how generous the welfare state will be, what kind of education system we will operate, what crimes will be punishable with what penalties, and so on. But what are the basic principles that should guide us in making such choices. How should a society go about making its collective decisions? That is perhaps the most fu...

When we look back at the extraordinary year of 2020, one of the major themes – alongside, of course, Covid-19 – will be Black Lives Matter. Large-scale protests began in Minneapolis in late May following the killing of George Floyd, and rapidly spread across much of the world. In consequence, as shown through analysis by the Oxford English Dictionary, references to ‘systemic racism’ grew seventeen...

Civil war has ravaged all too many societies in recent decades. And civil wars leave deep scars long after the fighting is over. Our colleague Dr Kate Cronin-Furman, who is Lecturer in Human Rights and Director of the MA in Human Rights here at UCL, conducts research into the experiences of victims of civil war violence. One of her recently published papers, co-authored with Roxani Krystalli from...

Many of us are very concerned about the quality of information that’s available to voters during election and referendum campaigns. Misinformation and manipulation appear to be rampant, and voters can struggle to find the information that they want from sources they trust. Few people would doubt the importance in democracy of ensuring that voters can hear a wide range of different viewpoints and t...

What does the election tell us about the state of US democracy, and what does the future hold? And what are the next four years likely to bring in policy terms – on the domestic front, in foreign policy, and on action against climate change? Host: Professor Jennifer Hudson Dr Colin Provost Dr Julie Norman Dr Thomas Gift

We talk endlessly about the economy in politics. The state of the economy is said to shape election results, with incumbents doing well if it's up, and badly if its down, but what is the economy? Do we all agree on what this idea means? Do different conceptions lead to different ideas across society about the policies that should be pursued? Questions such as these were cast into sharp light by th...

Serious books on monarchy are rare, but a new volume on Europe’s eight contemporary democracies helps to fill the gap. Does monarchy still deserve the attention of students of politics? And is the fact that most of the world’s healthiest democracies are monarchies anything more than a coincidence? We ask one of the new book’s co-authors, Robert Hazell. Host: Dr Alan Renwick Professor Robert Hazell

Amidst pandemic and economic recession, living with risk – the possibility that something bad may happen to you – is part of many people’s daily reality. Some political philosophers suggest that risk is good for us – that it can enhance our self-respect. But is that supported by evidence? We discuss with Lucy Barnes, whose recent research gives cause for doubt. Host: Dr Alan Renwick Dr Lucy Barnes

The long-standing idea that democracy needs checks and balances is questioned in some quarters. So what is the case for checks and balances, and what are the arguments against? Should we look upon different kinds of checks and balances in different ways? And what are the contemporary tensions bringing these debates to the fore? We explore with three of our leading thinkers on constitutional politi...