first-past-the-post

48 results back to index

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society by Will Hutton

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, centre right, choice architecture, cloud computing, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, debt deflation, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, discovery of the americas, discrete time, disinformation, diversification, double helix, Edward Glaeser, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, full employment, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Dyson, James Watt: steam engine, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, language acquisition, Large Hadron Collider, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, moral panic, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Neil Kinnock, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, plutocrats, power law, price discrimination, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, tail risk, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, too big to fail, unpaid internship, value at risk, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, work culture , working poor, world market for maybe five computers, zero-sum game, éminence grise

The first-past-the-post voting system is palpably unfair. Governments can have substantial parliamentary majorities that are vastly disproportionate to their vote – like the Labour government of 2005–10, which had a parliamentary majority of over sixty with only 36 per cent of the popular vote. The Conservatives won a quarter of a million more votes in England but had fewer seats, while the Liberal Democrats won 21 per cent of the vote but somewhat less than 10 per cent of the parliamentary seats. Now the battle is set to be joined over which voting system should replace first past the post. In effect, it will be a battle for the future of the state.

…

So there are no constituencies where it is purposeless to vote because the result is a foregone conclusion. Consequently, no single party will be able to form a government, which will force bargaining between parties to form coalitions rather than the ‘strong government’ beloved of advocates of first past the post. We enter a world in which the government overtly reflects evolving and changing shades of opinion, and where argument and reason play a greater role than the whips’ office. It is fair politics for grown-ups. But democracy is still based on the national demos. International law is made by states; it is not yet legitimised by the involvement of an international citizenry.

…

Unfortunately, British politics has never been good at squaring up to vested interest groups and challenging the sometimes absurd assumptions on which they build their arguments in the wider public interest. Nor is it good at long-term planning for the future. Most politicians in any democracy find it hard to think beyond the next election. But in Britain the first-past-the-post electoral system, winner-takes-all politics and the centralisation of the state make steady, proportional, long-term policy-making even less likely. The struggle to manage the present exhausts most British politicians, leaving no energy for them to worry about the future. One of the great advantages of the old paradigm ‘leave it to the markets’ was that politicians were not required to take a view of the future, nor try to build it.

22 Days in May: The birth of the Lib Dem - Conservative coalition by Laws, David

first-past-the-post, high-speed rail, income inequality, low interest rates, pension reform, smart grid, smart meter

It would also help to deliver what both parties were committed to – fewer MPs. ‘So what I am suggesting is this,’ said Danny. ‘We will support your proposals on redrawing the constituency boundaries, to make voting fairer. But in return, we want your support for a referendum on a reformed first-past-the-post system.’ George Osborne frowned and looked interested. ‘What do you mean by a reformed first-past-the-post system?’ Chris Huhne explained. George thought for two seconds, smiled weakly, and then said: ‘Oh! You mean AV don’t you! No. That won’t work for us. Good try though!’ Danny said that this was key to securing the support of Lib Dem MPs, and that it could help usher in a new and more co-operative politics and a fairer voting system.

…

Electoral reform is tough for us, but on the rest of the political reform agenda we are very open to your ideas. But I agree that this is the trickiest issue.’ William Hague now intervened: ‘We have to start by recognising a big difference between our parties on this. It is a very difficult issue for Conservatives, most of whom support first-past-the-post. There isn’t any support for proportional representation in the Conservative Party. You need to understand that.’ Chris Huhne responded robustly: ‘We understand how this is difficult for you. But our party has been strung along before on PR – not least by Tony Blair in 1997. We don’t want to repeat that experience.

…

In addition, from a Conservative perspective, a coalition with the Lib Dems might improve their chances of picking up Lib Dem second preference votes. I suggested before our meeting on 9 May that this proposal should now be seriously tabled. Danny Alexander had half-jokingly suggested that we should seek to ‘sell’ AV to the Conservative team as just an ‘enhanced’ first-past-the-post system. Chris Huhne added that the Conservatives used an AV type system to elect their own leaders. Now, in the actual talks, Danny set out just how important electoral reform is to the Lib Dems. He said: ‘The bottom line is that we need a bankable commitment to change. Our MPs will expect that, if we are going to have a coalition.

Corbyn by Richard Seymour

anti-communist, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, capitalist realism, centre right, collective bargaining, credit crunch, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fake news, first-past-the-post, full employment, gender pay gap, gentrification, housing crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, land value tax, liberal world order, mass immigration, means of production, moral panic, Naomi Klein, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, pension reform, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, precariat, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent control, Snapchat, stakhanovite, systematic bias, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, Wolfgang Streeck, working-age population, éminence grise

Many an erring pundit has been christened a ‘melt’ and invited to ‘eat your tweet’ or, better still, ‘delete your account’. At some point, however, this has to give way to a more sober appraisal of the dilemmas facing Labour. The problem is not just that Labour must now find a way to turn its advantage into electoral victory, which raises a question about where to find the necessary voters in a first-past-the-post system, and how. Even if a fresh election is called soon and Labour does win, it will be in the position of having to try to implement a radical programme in an economy where there is very little investment. It will have to persuade corporations to invest, in spite of the higher taxes, regulations, and workers’ rights they will face.

…

Why might this be, and why have the pundits been so easily impressed by the claims of Labour’s right-wing? Thinking through the electoral arithmetic on the Blairites’ own terms, it was never obvious that the electoral bloc comprising people who think the same way as they do is even close to 25 per cent. The reason this hasn’t been a problem in the past is that elections in Britain’s first-past-the-post system are usually decided by a few hundred thousand ‘median’ voters based in marginal constituencies. As long as Labour could take the votes of the Left for granted, they could focus on serenading the ‘aspirational’ voters of Nuneaton. Even the erosion of ‘heartland’ votes didn’t register, so long as this erosion was happening to mountainous, seemingly unassailable majorities.

…

Certainly, once they were in place, the Tories evinced no appetite for rolling them back, despite a brief, testerical campaign against ‘socialism’ in the elections of 1950 and 1951. No doubt this was in part because, despite exploiting real popular discontent with rationing and linking such policies to ‘socialism’, the Conservatives only gained office in 1951 due to the irregularities of the first-past-the-post system. Labour had in fact won slightly more votes than the Conservatives, and the Tories’ polling suggested to them that they needed to accept existing social democratic policies if they were to win support among skilled workers.29 As such, the Conservatives held on to governmental power, once obtained, by preserving rather than rolling back Labour’s reforms.

Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics by Peter Geoghegan

4chan, Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, corporate raider, crony capitalism, data science, deepfake, deindustrialization, demographic winter, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, East Village, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, fake news, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Greta Thunberg, invisible hand, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open borders, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, post-truth, post-war consensus, pre–internet, private military company, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, Torches of Freedom, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, éminence grise

Elliott’s CV also contained a particularly rare qualification: he already had experience winning a British referendum. In 2011, Britain held its first national referendum since the vote on joining the European project more than thirty-five years earlier. This time around, the proposal was more narrowly procedural. Should Westminster switch from the first-past-the-post electoral system to the slightly more proportional alternative vote? The proposed alteration was a fudge. The Liberal Democrats, who wanted full proportional representation, had agreed to a referendum on a less democratic electoral measure as part of their coalition agreement with David Cameron’s Conservatives.

…

Researchers in Berlin found that online adverts increased a party’s vote by just 0.7 per cent.27 But in closely fought elections, even such fine margins can be decisive – especially in non-proportional voting systems like the US or the UK. In 2016, just 80,000 ballots in the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania won Donald Trump the White House. In 2019, under first-past-the-post electoral system, Britain’s Conservatives won 56.2 per cent of Commons seats with just 43.6 per cent of the vote. A shift of just 51,000 voters across 40 seats would have wiped out Boris Johnson’s “stonking” majority entirely. When elections depend on small numbers of swing voters, the influence of a digital campaign only needs to be very, very slight to make a major difference.

…

Rather than demonstrating utopian transparency, digital parties are often extremely opaque. Money flows in from anonymous sources. The elision of the political party and the private business hints at a dystopian digital future, in which democracy becomes even less participative and pluralist. (This is a particularly worrying vista in Britain, where the first-past-the-post electoral system and the consequent marginalisation of smaller parties has already reduced much of the country to political irrelevance.) Digital parties have, of course, struggled in the face of real-world politics. In Italy, Five Star’s support has plummeted since 2018, when Beppe Grillo went into government with the far-right League led by Matteo Salvini, who is a far more ruthless political operator.

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason by William Davies

active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, citizen journalism, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, Colonization of Mars, continuation of politics by other means, creative destruction, credit crunch, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, first-past-the-post, Frank Gehry, gig economy, government statistician, housing crisis, income inequality, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Johannes Kepler, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, planetary scale, post-industrial society, post-truth, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Social Justice Warrior, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, Turing machine, Uber for X, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Valery Gerasimov, W. E. B. Du Bois, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

In April 2018, police in Nanchang used facial recognition technology to identify a crime suspect from a crowd of 60,000 people at a pop concert. Modern political campaigners understand that public opinion and sentiment can often best be swayed through small-scale and seemingly marginal interventions, rather than big formal announcements or information. Electoral systems which employ “first past the post,” such as the United States and Britain, have a particular vulnerability to viral campaign tactics and crowd surges, as it is only ever a small number of people in pivotal regions that need persuading in order to sway the overall outcome. A focus on small-scale but influential triggers is also a feature of “nudge” techniques, through which policymakers seek to influence our decision making in areas such as nutrition and personal finance by subtly redesigning how choices are presented to us.

…

A/B testing, 199 Acorn, 152 ad hominem attacks, 27, 124, 195 addiction, 83, 105, 116–17, 172–3, 186–7, 225 advertising, 14, 139–41, 143, 148, 178, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 aerial bombing, 19, 125, 135, 138, 143, 180 Affectiva, 188 affective computing, 12, 141, 188 Agent Orange, 205 Alabama, United States, 154 alcoholism, 100, 115, 117 algorithms, 150, 169, 185, 188–9 Alsace, 90 alt-right, 15, 22, 50, 131, 174, 196, 209 alternative facts, 3 Amazon, 150, 173, 175, 185, 186, 187, 192, 199, 201 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 24 American Civil War (1861–5), 105, 142 American Pain Relief Society, 107 anaesthetics, 104, 142 Anderson, Benedict, 87 Anthropocene, 206, 213, 215, 216 antibiotics, 205 antitrust laws, 220 Appalachia, 90, 100 Apple, 156, 185, 187 Arab Spring (2011), 123 Arendt, Hannah, xiv, 19, 23, 26, 53, 219 Aristotle, 35, 95–6 arrogance, 39, 47, 50 artificial intelligence (AI), 12–13, 140–41, 183, 216–17 artificial video footage, 15 Ashby, Ross, 181 asymmetrical war, 146 atheism, 34, 35, 209 attention economy, 21 austerity, 100–101, 225 Australia, 103 Australian, 192 Austria, 14, 60, 128, 153–75 Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), 153–4, 159 authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 108, 114, 118–19, 211–12 autocracy, 16, 20, 202 Babis, Andrej, 26 Bacon, Francis, 34, 35, 95, 97 Bank of England, 32, 33, 55, 64 Banks, Aaron, 26 Bannon, Steve, 21, 22, 60–61 Bayh–Dole Act (1980), 152 Beck Depression Inventory, 107 Berlusconi, Silvio, 202 Bernays, Edward, 14–15, 16, 143 “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud), 110 Bezos, Jeff, 150, 173 Big Data, 185–93, 198–201 Big Government, 65 Big Science, 180 Bilbao, Spain, 84 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 127 Birmingham, West Midlands, 85 Black Lives Matter, 10, 225 Blackpool, Lancashire, 100 blind peer reviewing, 48, 139, 195 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 blue sky research, 133 body politic, 92–119 Bologna, Italy, 96 bookkeeping, 47, 49, 54 Booth, Charles, 74 Boston, Massachusetts, 48 Boyle, Robert, 48–50, 51–2 BP oil spill (2010), 89 brainwashing, 178 Breitbart, 22, 174 Brexit (2016–), xiv, 23 and education, 85 and elites, 33, 50, 61 and inequality, 61, 77 and NHS, 93 and opinion polling, 80–81 as self-harm, 44, 146 and statistics, 61 Unite for Europe march, 23 Vote Leave, 50, 93 British Futures, 65 Brooks, Rosa, 216 bullying, 113 Bureau of Labor, 74 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 77 Bush, George Walker, 77, 136 cadaverous research, 96, 98 call-out culture, 195 Calvinism, 35 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 85 University, 84, 151 Cambridge Analytica, 175, 191, 196, 199 Cameron, David, 33, 73, 100 cancer, 105 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 74 capital punishment, 92, 118 car accidents, 112–13 cargo-cult science, 50 Carney, Mark, 33 cartography, 59 Case, Anne, 99–100, 102, 115 Catholicism, 34 Cato Institute, 158 Cavendish, William, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, 34 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 136, 151, 199 Center for Policy Studies, 164 chappe system, 129, 182 Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 34, 68, 73 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 Chelsea, London, 100 Chevillet, Mark, 176 Chicago School, 160 China, 13, 15, 103, 145, 207 chloroform, 104 cholera, 130 Chongqing, China, 13 chronic pain, 102, 105, 106, 109 see also pain Churchill, Winston, 138 citizen science, 215, 216 civil rights movements, 21, 194 civilians, 43, 143, 204 von Clausewitz, Carl, 128–35, 141–7, 152 and defeat, 144–6 and emotion, 141–6, 197 and great leaders, 146–7, 156, 180–81 and intelligence, 134–5, 180–81 and Napoleon, 128–30, 133, 146–7 and soldiers, number of, 133–4 war, definition of, 130, 141, 193 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 Climate Mobilization, 213–14 climate-gate (2009), 195 Clinton, Hillary, 27, 63, 77, 99, 197, 214 Clinton, William “Bill,” 77 coal mining, 90 cognitive behavioral therapy, 107 Cold War, 132, 133, 135–6, 137, 180, 182–4, 185, 223 and disruption, 204–5 intelligence agencies, 183 McCarthyism (1947–56), 137 nuclear weapons, 135, 180 scenting, 135–6 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 space race, 137 and telepathy, 177–8 colonialism, 59–61, 224 commercial intelligence, 152 conscription, 127 Conservative Party, 80, 154, 160, 163, 166 Constitution of Liberty, The (Hayek), 160 consumer culture, 90, 104, 139 contraceptive pill, 94 Conway, Kellyanne, 3, 5 coordination, 148 Corbyn, Jeremy, 5, 6, 65, 80, 81, 197, 221 corporal punishment, 92 creative class, 84, 151 Cromwell, Oliver, 57, 59, 73 crop failures, 56 Crutzen, Paul, 206 culture war, xvii Cummings, Dominic, 50 currency, 166, 168 cutting, 115 cyber warfare, xii, 42, 43, 123, 126, 200, 212 Czech Republic, 103 Daily Mail, ix Damasio, Antonio, 208 Darwin, Charles, 8, 140, 142, 157, 171, 174, 179 Dash, 187 data, 49, 55, 57–8, 135, 151, 185–93, 198–201 Dawkins, Richard, 207, 209 death, 37, 44–5, 66–7, 91–101 and authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 211, 224 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 and Descartes, 37, 91 and Hobbes, 44–5, 67, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224, 226 life expectancy, 62, 68–71, 72, 92, 100–101, 115, 224 suicide, 100, 101, 115 and Thiel, 149, 151 death penalty, 92, 118 Deaton, Angus, 99–100, 102, 115 DeepMind, 218 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 176, 178 Delingpole, James, 22 demagogues, 11, 145, 146, 207 Democratic Party, 77, 79, 85 Denmark, 34, 151 depression, 103, 107 derivatives, 168, 172 Descartes, René, xiii, 36–9, 57, 147 and body, 36–8, 91, 96–7, 98, 104 and doubt, 36–8, 39, 46, 52 and dualism, 36–8, 39, 86, 94, 131, 139–40, 179, 186, 223 and nature, 37, 38, 86, 203 and pain, 104, 105 Descartes’ Error (Damasio), 208 Devonshire, Earl of, see Cavendish, William digital divide, 184 direct democracy, 202 disempowerment, 20, 22, 106, 113–19 disruption, 18, 20, 146, 147, 151, 171, 175 dog whistle politics, 200 Donors Trust, 165 Dorling, Danny, 100 Downs Survey (1655), 57, 59, 73 doxing, 195 drone warfare, 43, 194 drug abuse, 43, 100, 105, 115–16, 131, 172–3 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt, 74 Dugan, Regina, 176–7 Dunkirk evacuation (1940), 119 e-democracy, 184 Echo, 187 ecocide, 205 Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Mises), 154, 166 economics, 59, 153–75 Economist, 85, 99 education, 85, 90–91 electroencephalography (EEG), 140 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 embodied knowledge, 162 emotion and advertising, 14 artificial intelligence, 12–13, 140–41 and crowd-based politics, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 21, 23–7 Darwin’s analysis, 8, 140 Descartes on, 94, 131 and experts, 53, 60, 64, 66, 90 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Hobbes on, 39, 41 James’ analysis, 140 and markets, 168, 175 moral, 21 and nationalism, 71, 210 pain, 102–19 sentiment analysis, xiii, 12–13, 140, 188 and war, 124–6, 142 empathy, 5, 12, 65, 102, 104, 109, 112, 118, 177, 179, 197 engagement, 7, 219 England Bank of England founded (1694), 55 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 civil servants, 54 Civil War (1642–51), 33–4, 45, 53 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 hospitals, 57 Irish War (1649–53), 59 national debt, 55 Parliament, 54, 55 plagues, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 Royal Society, 48–52, 56, 68, 86, 208, 218 tax collection, 54 Treasury, 54 see also United Kingdom English Defense League, ix entrepreneurship, 149, 156, 162 environment, 21, 26, 50, 61, 86, 165, 204–7, 213–16 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 flying insects, decline of, 205, 215 Environmental Protection Agency, 23 ether, 104 European Commission, 60 European Space Agency, 175 European Union (EU), xiv, 22, 60 Brexit (2016–), see under Brexit and elites, 60, 145, 202 euro, 60, 78 Greek bailout (2015), 31 immigration, 60 and nationalism, 60, 145, 146 quantitative easing, 31 refugee crisis (2015–), 60, 225 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 Exeter, Devon, 85 experts and crowd-based politics, 5, 6, 23, 25, 27 Hayek on, 162–4, 170 and representative democracy, 7 and statistics, 62–91 and technocracy, 53–61, 78, 87, 89, 90 trust in, 25–33, 63–4, 66, 74–5, 77–9, 170, 202 violence of, 59–61 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, The (Darwin), 8, 140 Exxon, 165 Facebook, xvi, 15, 201 advertising, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 data mining, 49, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 198, 219 and dog whistle politics, 200 and emotional artificial intelligence, 140 as engagement machine, 219 and fake news, 199 and haptics, 176, 182 and oligarchy, 174 and psychological profiling, 124 and Russia, 199 and sentiment analysis, 188 and telepathy, 176–8, 181, 185, 186 and Thiel, 149, 150 and unity, 197–8 weaponization of, 18 facial recognition, 13, 188–9 failed states, 42 fake news, 8, 15, 199 Farage, Nigel, 65 fascism, 154, 203, 209 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 137 Federal Reserve, 33 feeling, definition of, xii feminism, 66, 194 Fifth Amendment, 44 fight or flight, 111, 114 Financial Times, 15 first past the post, 13 First World War, see World War I Fitbit, 187 fixed currency exchange rates, 166 Florida, Richard, 84 flu, 67, 191 flying insects, 205, 215 France censuses, 66, 73 conscription introduced (1793), 127 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92 Hobbes in (1640–51), 33–4, 41–2 Le Bon’s crowd psychology, 8–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 38 life expectancy, 101 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), see Napoleonic Wars Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Paris Commune (1871), 8 Prussian War (1870–71), 8, 142 Revolution (1789–99), xv, 71, 126–9, 141, 142, 144, 204 statistics agency established (1800), 72 unemployment, 83 Franklin, Benjamin, 66 free markets, 26, 79, 84, 88, 154–75 free speech, 22, 113, 194, 208, 209, 224 free will, 16 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 14, 44, 107, 109–10, 111, 112, 114, 139 Friedman, Milton, 160, 163, 166 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92, 101–2 full spectrum warfare, 43 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 140 futurists, 168 Galen, 95–6 Galilei, Galileo, 35 gambling, 116–17 game theory, 132 gaming, 193–4 Gandhi, Mohandas, 224 gate control theory, 106 Gates, Sylvester James “Jim,” 24 Gavotti, Giulio, 143 geek humor, 193 Gehry, Frank, 84 Geller, Uri, 178 geometry, 35, 49, 57, 59, 203 Gerasimov, Valery, 123, 125, 126, 130 Germany, 34, 72, 137, 205, 215 gig economy, 173 global financial crisis (2007–9), 5, 29–32, 53, 218 austerity, 100–101 bailouts, 29–32, 40, 42 and gross domestic product (GDP), 76 as “heart attack,” 57 and Obama administration, 158 and quantitative easing, 31–2, 222 and securitization of loans, 218–19 and statistics, 53, 65 and suicide, 101 and unemployment, 82 globalization, 21, 78, 84, 145, 146 Gonzales, Alberto, 136 Google, xvi, 174, 182, 185, 186, 191, 192 DeepMind, 218 Maps, 182 Transparency Project, 198 Government Accountability Office, 29 Graunt, John, 67–9, 73, 75, 79–80, 81, 85, 89, 127, 167 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 great leaders, 146–8 Great Recession (2007–13), 76, 82, 101 Greece, 5, 31, 101 Greenpeace, 10 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 Grillo, Beppe, 26 gross domestic product (GDP), 62, 65, 71, 75–9, 82, 87, 138 guerrillas, 128, 146, 194, 196 Haldane, Andrew, 32 haptics, 176, 182 Harvey, William, 34, 35, 38, 57, 96, 97 hate speech, 42 von Hayek, Friedrich, 159–73, 219 health, 92–119, 224 hedge funds, 173, 174 hedonism, 70, 224 helicopter money, 222 Heritage Foundation, 164, 214 heroin, 105, 117 heroism and disruption, 18, 146 and genius, 218 and Hobbes, 44, 151 and Napoleonic Wars, 87, 127, 142 and nationalism, 87, 119, 210 and pain, 212 and protection, 202–3 and technocracy, 101 and technology, 127 Heyer, Heather, 20 Hiroshima atomic bombing (1945), 206 Hobbes, Thomas, xiii, xvi, 33–6, 38–45, 67, 147 on arrogance, 39, 47, 50, 125 and body, 96, 98–9 and Boyle, 49, 50, 51 on civil society, 42, 119 and death, 44–5, 67, 69–70, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 on equality, 89 on fear, 40–45, 52, 67, 125 France, exile in (1640–51), 33–4, 41 on geometry, 35, 38, 49, 56, 57 and heroism, 44, 151 on language, 38–9 natural philosophy, 35–6 and nature, 38, 50 and Petty, 56, 57, 58 on promises, 39–42, 45, 148, 217–18 and Royal Society, 49, 50, 51 on senses, 38, 49, 147 and sovereign/state, 40–45, 46, 52, 53, 54, 60, 67, 73, 126, 166, 217, 220 on “state of nature,” 40, 133, 206, 217 war and peace, separation of, 40–45, 54, 60, 73, 125–6, 131, 201, 212 Hobsbawm, Eric, 87, 147 Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 221 holistic remedies, 95, 97 Holland, see under Netherlands homeopathy, 95 Homer, xiv Hungary, 20, 60, 87, 146 hysteria, 139 IBM, 179 identity politics, 208, 209 Iglesias Turrión, Pablo, 5 imagined communities, 87 immigration, 60, 63, 65, 79, 87, 145 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224 in-jokes, 193 individual autonomy, 16 Industrial Revolution, 133, 206 inequality, 59, 61, 62, 76, 77, 83, 85, 88–90 inflation, 62, 76, 78, 82 infographics, 75 information theory, 147 information war, 43, 196 insurance, 59 intellectual property, 150 intelligence, 132–9 intensity, 79–83 International Association for the Study of Pain, 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 64, 78 Internet, 184–201, 219 IP addresses, 193 Iraq War (2003–11), 74, 132 Ireland, 57, 73 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 43 “Is This How You Feel?

…

., Roger, 24, 25 Piketty, Thomas, 74 Pinker, Stephen, 207 plagues, 56, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 95 pleasure principle, 70, 109, 110, 224 pneumonia, 37, 67 Podemos, 5, 202 Poland, 20, 34, 60 Polanyi, Michael, 163 political anatomy, 57 Political Arithmetick (Petty), 58, 59 political correctness, 20, 27, 145 Popper, Karl, 163, 171 populism xvii, 211–12, 214, 220, 225–6 and central banks, 33 and crowd-based politics, 12 and democracy, 202 and elites/experts, 26, 33, 50, 152, 197, 210, 215 and empathy, 118 and health, 99, 101–2, 224–5 and immediate action, 216 in Kansas (1880s), 220 and markets, 167 and private companies, 174 and promises, 221 and resentment, 145 and statistics, 90 and unemployment, 88 and war, 148, 212 Porter, Michael, 84 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 111–14, 117, 209 post-truth, 167, 224 Potsdam Conference (1945), 138 power vs. violence, 19, 219 predictive policing, 151 presidential election, US (2016), xiv and climate change, 214 and data, 190 and education, 85 and free trade, 79 and health, 92, 99 and immigration, 79, 145 and inequality, 76–7 and Internet, 190, 197, 199 “Make America Great Again,” 76, 145 and opinion polling, 65, 80 and promises, 221 and relative deprivation, 88 and Russia, 199 and statistics, 63 and Yellen, 33 prisoners of war, 43 promises, 25, 31, 39–42, 45–7, 51, 52, 217–18, 221–2 Propaganda (Bernays), 14–15 propaganda, 8, 14–16, 83, 124–5, 141, 142, 143 property rights, 158, 167 Protestantism, 34, 35, 45, 215 Prussia (1525–1947), 8, 127–30, 133–4, 135, 142 psychiatry, 107, 139 psychoanalysis, 107, 139 Psychology of Crowds, The (Le Bon), 9–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25 psychosomatic, 103 public-spending cuts, 100–101 punishment, 90, 92–3, 94, 95, 108 Purdue, 105 Putin, Vladimir, 145, 183 al-Qaeda, 136 quality of life, 74, 104 quantitative easing, 31–2, 222 quants, 190 radical statistics, 74 RAND Corporation, 183 RBS, 29 Reagan, Ronald, 15, 77, 154, 160, 163, 166 real-time knowledge, xvi, 112, 131, 134, 153, 154, 165–70 Reason Foundation, 158 Red Vienna, 154, 155 Rees-Mogg, Jacob, 33, 61 refugee crisis (2015–), 60, 225 relative deprivation, 88 representative democracy, 7, 12, 14–15, 25–8, 61, 202 Republican Party, 77, 79, 85, 154, 160, 163, 166, 172 research and development (R&D), 133 Research Triangle, North Carolina, 84 resentment, 5, 226 of elites/experts, 32, 52, 61, 86, 88–9, 161, 186, 201 and nationalism/populism, 5, 144–6, 148, 197, 198 and pain, 94 Ridley, Matt, 209 right to remain silent, 44 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 160, 166 Robinson, Tommy, ix Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 52 Royal Exchange, 67 Royal Society, 48–52, 56, 68, 86, 133, 137, 186, 208, 218 Rumsfeld, Donald, 132 Russian Empire (1721–1917), 128, 133 Russian Federation (1991–) and artificial intelligence, 183 Gerasimov Doctrine, 43, 123, 125, 126 and information war, 196 life expectancy, 100, 115 and national humiliation, 145 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 and social media, 15, 18, 199 troll farms, 199 Russian Revolution (1917), 155 Russian SFSR (1917–91), 132, 133, 135–8, 155, 177, 180, 182–3 safe spaces, 22, 208 Sands, Robert “Bobby,” 43 Saxony, 90 scarlet fever, 67 Scarry, Elaine, 102–3 scenting, 135, 180 Schneier, Bruce, 185 Schumpeter, Joseph, 156–7, 162 Scientific Revolution, 48–52, 62, 66, 95, 204, 207, 218 scientist, coining of term, 133 SCL, 175 Scotland, 64, 85, 172 search engines, xvi Second World War, see World War II securitization of loans, 218 seismology, 135 self-employment, 82 self-esteem, 88–90, 175, 212 self-harm, 44, 114–15, 117, 146, 225 self-help, 107 self-interest, 26, 41, 44, 61, 114, 141, 146 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 sentiment analysis, xiii, 12–13, 140, 188 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 shell shock, 109–10 Shrecker, Ted, 226 Silicon Fen, Cambridgeshire, 84 Silicon Valley, California, xvi, 219 and data, 55, 151, 185–93, 199–201 and disruption, 149–51, 175, 226 and entrepreneurship, 149–51 and fascism, 203 and immortality, 149, 183–4, 224, 226 and monopolies, 174, 220 and singularity, 183–4 and telepathy, 176–8, 181, 185, 186, 221 and weaponization, 18, 219 singularity, 184 Siri, 187 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 slavery, 59, 224 smallpox, 67 smart cities, 190, 199 smartphone addiction, 112, 186–7 snowflakes, 22, 113 social indicators, 74 social justice warriors (SJWs), 131 social media and crowd psychology, 6 emotional artificial intelligence, 12–13, 140–41 and engagement, 7 filter bubbles, 66 and propaganda, 15, 18, 81, 124 and PTSD, 113 and sentiment analysis, 12 trolls, 18, 20–22, 27, 40, 123, 146, 148, 194–8, 199, 209 weaponization of, 18, 19, 22, 194–5 socialism, 8, 20, 154–6, 158, 160 calculation debate, 154–6, 158, 160 Socialism (Mises), 160 Society for Freedom in Science, 163 South Africa, 103 sovereignty, 34, 53 Soviet Russia (1917–91), 132, 133, 135–8, 177, 180, 182–3 Spain, 5, 34, 84, 128, 202 speed of knowledge, xvi, 112, 124, 131, 134, 136, 153, 154, 165–70 Spicer, Sean, 3, 5 spy planes, 136, 152 Stalin, Joseph, 138 Stanford University, 179 statactivism, 74 statistics, 62–91, 161, 186 status, 88–90 Stoermer, Eugene, 206 strong man leaders, 16 suicide, 100, 101, 115 suicide bombing, 44, 146 superbugs, 205 surveillance, 185–93, 219 Sweden, 34 Switzerland, 164 Sydenham, Thomas, 96 Syriza, 5 tacit knowledge, 162 talking cure, 107 taxation, 158 Tea Party, 32, 50, 61, 221 technocracy, 53–8, 59, 60, 61, 78, 87, 89, 90, 211 teenage girls, 113, 114 telepathy, 39, 176–9, 181, 185, 186 terrorism, 17–18, 151, 185 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 emergency powers, 42 JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x, xiii, 41 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 suicide bombing, 44, 146 vehicle-ramming attacks, 17 war on terror, 131, 136, 196 Thames Valley, England, 85 Thatcher, Margaret, 154, 160, 163, 166 Thiel, Peter, 26, 149–51, 153, 156, 174, 190 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 34, 45, 53, 126 Tokyo, Japan, x torture, 92–3 total wars, 129, 142–3 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 34, 53 trends, xvi, 168 trigger warnings, 22, 113 trolls, 18, 20–22, 27, 40, 123, 146, 148, 194–8, 199, 209 Trump, Donald, xiv and Bannon, 21, 60–61 and climate change, 207 and education, 85 election campaign (2016), see under presidential election, US and free trade, 79 and health, 92, 99 and immigration, 145 inauguration (2017), 3–5, 6, 9, 10 and inequality, 76–7 “Make America Great Again,” 76, 145 and March for Science (2017), 23, 24, 210 and media, 27 and opinion polling, 65, 80 and Paris climate accord, 207 and promises, 221 and relative deprivation, 88 and statistics, 63 and Yellen, 33 Tsipras, Alexis, 5 Turing, Alan, 181, 183 Twitter and Corbyn’s rallies, 6 and JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x and Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x and Russia, 18 and sentiment analysis, 188 and trends, xvi and trolls, 194, 195 Uber, 49, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192 UK Independence Party, 65, 92, 202 underemployment, 82 unemployment, 61, 62, 72, 78, 81–3, 87, 88, 203 United Kingdom austerity, 100 Bank of England, 32, 33, 64 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 Brexit (2016–), see under Brexit Cameron government (2010–16), 33, 73, 100 Center for Policy Studies, 164 Civil Service, 33 climate-gate (2009), 195 Corbyn’s rallies, 5, 6 Dunkirk evacuation (1940), 119 education, 85 financial crisis (2007–9), 29–32, 100 first past the post, 13 general election (2015), 80, 81 general election (2017), 6, 65, 80, 81, 221 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 gross domestic product (GDP), 77, 79 immigration, 63, 65 Irish hunger strike (1981), 43 life expectancy, 100 National Audit Office (NAO), 29 National Health Service (NHS), 30, 93 Office for National Statistics, 63, 133 and opiates, 105 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 and pain, 102, 105 Palantir, 151 Potsdam Conference (1945), 138 quantitative easing, 31–2 Royal Society, 138 Scottish independence referendum (2014), 64 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 Society for Freedom in Science, 163 Thatcher government (1979–90), 154, 160, 163, 166 and torture, 92 Treasury, 61, 64 unemployment, 83 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 World War II (1939–45), 114, 119, 138, 143, 180 see also England United Nations, 72, 222 United States Bayh–Dole Act (1980), 152 Black Lives Matter, 10, 225 BP oil spill (2010), 89 Bush Jr. administration (2001–9), 77, 136 Bush Sr administration (1989–93), 77 Bureau of Labor, 74 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 136, 151, 199 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 Civil War (1861–5), 105, 142 and climate change, 207, 214 Clinton administration (1993–2001), 77 Cold War, see Cold War Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 176, 178 Defense Intelligence Agency, 177 drug abuse, 43, 100, 105, 115–16, 131, 172–3 education, 85 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 137 Federal Reserve, 33 Fifth Amendment (1789), 44 financial crisis (2007–9), 31–2, 82, 158 first past the post, 13 Government Accountability Office, 29 gross domestic product (GDP), 75–7, 82 health, 92, 99–100, 101, 103, 105, 107, 115–16, 158, 172–3 Heritage Foundation, 164, 214 Iraq War (2003–11), 74, 132 JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x, xiii, 41 Kansas populists (1880s), 220 libertarianism, 15, 151, 154, 158, 164, 173 life expectancy, 100, 101 March For Our Lives (2018), 21 March for Science (2017), 23–5, 27, 28, 210 McCarthyism (1947–56), 137 Million-Man March (1995), 4 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 23, 175 National Defense Research Committee, 180 National Park Service, 4 National Security Agency (NSA), 152 Obama administration (2009–17), 3, 24, 76, 77, 79, 158 Occupy Wall Street (2011), 5, 10, 61 and opiates, 105, 172–3 and pain, 103, 105, 107, 172–3 Palantir, 151, 152, 175, 190 Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Parkland attack (2018), 21 Patriot Act (2001), 137 Pentagon, 130, 132, 135, 136, 214, 216 presidential election (2016), see under presidential election, US psychiatry, 107, 111 quantitative easing, 31–2 Reagan administration (1981–9), 15, 77, 154, 160, 163, 166 Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” speech (2002), 132 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 Tea Party, 32, 50, 61, 221 and torture, 93 Trump administration (2017–), see under Trump, Donald unemployment, 83 Vietnam War (1955–75), 111, 130, 136, 138, 143, 205 World War I (1914–18), 137 World War II (1939–45), 137, 180 universal basic income, 221 universities, 151–2, 164, 169–70 University of Cambridge, 84, 151 University of Chicago, 160 University of East Anglia, 195 University of Oxford, 56, 151 University of Vienna, 160 University of Washington, 188 unknown knowns, 132, 133, 136, 138, 141, 192, 212 unknown unknowns, 132, 133, 138 “Use of Knowledge in Society, The” (Hayek), 161 V2 flying bomb, 137 vaccines, 23, 95 de Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban, 73 vehicle-ramming attacks, 17 Vesalius, Andreas, 96 Vienna, Austria, 153–5, 159 Vietnam War (1955–75), 111, 130, 136, 138, 143, 205 violence vs. power, 19, 219 viral marketing, 12 virtual reality, 183 virtue signaling, 194 voice recognition, 187 Vote Leave, 50, 93 Wainright, Joel, 214 Wales, 77, 90 Wall Street, New York, 33, 190 War College, Berlin, 128 “War Economy” (Neurath), 153–4 war on drugs, 43, 131 war on terror, 131, 136, 196 Watts, Jay, 115 weaponization, 18–20, 22, 26, 75, 118, 123, 194, 219, 223 weapons of mass destruction, 132 wearable technology, 173 weather control, 204 “What Is An Emotion?”

Programming in Haskell by Graham Hutton

domain-specific language, Eratosthenes, first-past-the-post, functional programming, higher-order functions, type inference

Using the higher-order functions map and composition, this conversion can be implemented as follows: encode :: String -> [Bit] encode = concat . map (make8 . int2bin . ord) For example: > encode "abc" [1,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,0] To decode a list of bits produced using encode, we first define a function chop8 that chops such a list up into eight-bit binary numbers: chop8 :: [Bit] -> [[Bit]] chop8 []= [] chop8 bits = take 8 bits : chop8 (drop 8 bits) It is now easy to define a function that decodes a list of bits as a string of characters by chopping the list up, and converting each resulting binary number into a Unicode number and then a character: decode :: [Bit] -> String decode = map (chr . bin2int) . chop8 For example: > decode [1,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,0] "abc" Finally, we define a function transmit that simulates the transmission of a string of characters as a list of bits, using a perfect communication channel that we model using the identity function: transmit :: String -> String transmit = decode . channel . encode channel :: [Bit] -> [Bit] channel = id For example: > transmit "higher-order functions are easy" "higher-order functions are easy" 7.7Voting algorithms For our second extended programming example, we consider two different algorithms for deciding the winner in an election: the simple first past the post system, and the more refined alternative vote system. First past the post In this system, each person has one vote, and the candidate with the largest number of votes is declared the winner. For example, if we define votes :: [String] votes = ["Red", "Blue", "Green", "Blue", "Blue", "Red"] then candidate "Green" has one vote, "Red" has two votes, while "Blue" has three votes and is hence the winner.

…

This function could be defined using recursion, but a simpler definition is possible using higher-order functions by selecting all elements from the list that are equal to the target value, and taking the length of the resulting list: count :: Eq a => a -> [a] -> Int count x = length . filter (== x) For example: > count "Red" votes 2 In turn, the higher-order function filter can also be used to define a function that removes duplicate values from a list: rmdups :: Eq a => [a] -> [a] rmdups []= [] rmdups (x:xs) = x : filter (/= x) (rmdups xs) For example: > rmdups votes ["Red", "Blue", "Green"] The functions count and rmdups can then be combined using a list comprehension to define a function that returns the result of a first-past-the-post election in increasing order of the number of votes received: result :: Ord a => [a] -> [(Int,a)] result vs = sort [(count v vs, v) | v <- rmdups vs] For example: > result votes [(1,"Green"), (2,"Red"), (3,"Blue")] The sorting function sort :: Ord a => [a] -> [a] used above is provided in the library Data.List.

Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism by Pippa Norris, Ronald Inglehart

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, bank run, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cass Sunstein, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, declining real wages, desegregation, digital divide, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, liberal world order, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, machine readable, mass immigration, meta-analysis, obamacare, open borders, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, post-industrial society, post-materialism, precariat, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Bannon, War on Poverty, white flight, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

UKIP in the 2015 and 2017 UK General Elections The electoral fortunes of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in recent British general elections provides another illustration of the decisive impact of vote threshold hurdles in preventing support for minor parties from translating into seats. The case of Brexit is discussed in detail in Chapter 11, but first we will summarize some key aspects of the Plurality electoral system and why it proved critical for UKIP. The Single Member Plurality electoral system (known also as first-past-the-post) is used for elections to the House of Commons. There are 650 constituencies, voters cast a ballot for one candidate in their constituency, and the candidate winning the largest share (a simple plurality) wins the seat. During the post-­war era, the electoral system usually produced a stable two-­party system in which the Labour and Conservative parties rotated in office, winning an absolute majority of the seats in parliament, even with much less than a majority of the total votes.

…

This gave UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, a public platform and media visibility on their core anti-­Brussels message. As Figure 11.2 shows, this strong performance was again repeated in the 2009 European Parliamentary elections – but not at the 2005 and 2010 general elections, which continued to be held under the first-past-the-post system. Their best performance, in terms of their share of the vote, came in the 2014 European elections, where UKIP broke through with more than a quarter of the vote and one-­third of the seats. This surge in the vote, the gain of two Eurosceptic Conservative MPs who switched parties to join them, and the popularity of UKIP in the opinion polls during a mid-­term period of government unpopularity, was critical in influencing Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union, if the Conservatives were returned to government in the next general election.

…

Compared with systems of Proportional Representation, Majoritarian elections characterized by high electoral thresholds are expected to create disproportional results with greater mechanical and psychological hurdles for minor parties, and hence to prevent many Authoritarian-­Populist parties from gaining parliamentary seats. To classify the electoral laws during these years, we use data from the Varieties of Democracy project.57 Electoral systems in the European countries under comparison are classified into three major families, each including a number of sub-­categories: majoritarian formula (including first-past-the-post, second ballot, the block vote, single non-­transferable vote, and alternative voting systems); mixed systems (incorporating both majoritarian and proportional formula); and proportional formula (including party lists as well as the single transferable vote systems).58 The results of the comparison in Figure 9.3 confirm the importance of the electoral system.

The politics of London: governing an ungovernable city by Tony Travers

active transport: walking or cycling, bread and circuses, congestion charging, Crossrail, first-past-the-post, full employment, job satisfaction, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, post-Fordism, radical decentralization, urban sprawl, vertical integration

The creation of the GLA followed a year behind the Scottish and Welsh reforms: if Margaret Thatcher had not abolished the GLC, there would almost certainly have been no London reform as part of the devolution process. Yet commentators have generally included the creation of the GLA within the wider constitutional picture. The fact that the 2000 London election was fought on the basis of proportional representation (as opposed to the first-past-the-post system used for all other local government elections in Britain) further stressed a link to the PR-based Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies. Nevertheless the GLA is fully included within the scope of legislation passed by the Blair administration to ‘modernize’ local government.

…

The first vote would be cast within a constituency using the firstpast-the-post system. The second vote would be for a political party or independent candidate. For the London-wide vote, parties (or independents) would list the names of candidates to be elected, in order, on the ballot paper. Constituency members would be elected in the usual first-past-the-post way (that is, the candidate with the largest number of votes, whether over 50 per cent or not, would win). All the second (that is, London-wide) votes cast would be counted, with winning candidates drawn from the list of parties (or independent groups) so that the overall number of assembly members would match the proportion cast for each party.

…

By contrast, Frank Dobson’s result was a huge embarrassment for him and, in particular, for the Prime Minister – a candidate manoeuvred into place by a carefullyconstructed electoral college came third (though only just), with less than half of the Conservative’s votes. Fourteen members of the Assembly were elected on a constituency basis, using the ‘first-past-the-post’ system. The remaining eleven were elected on a London-wide basis using the ‘de Hondt’ formula for allocating seats under proportional representation. Under this system, Labour and the Conservatives obtained nine seats each, the Liberal Democrats four and the Greens three, giving the London Assembly, like the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, a distinctly un-British, even ‘European’ multiparty look.

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History by David Edgerton

active measures, Arthur Marwick, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blue-collar work, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, centre right, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, company town, Corn Laws, corporate governance, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, Donald Davies, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, endogenous growth, Etonian, European colonialism, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, full employment, gentrification, imperial preference, James Dyson, knowledge economy, labour mobility, land reform, land value tax, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, packet switching, Philip Mirowski, Piper Alpha, plutocrats, post-Fordism, post-industrial society, post-truth, post-war consensus, public intellectual, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, technological determinism, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, trade liberalization, union organizing, very high income, wages for housework, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor

A small National Labour Party existed as part of the National coalition, 1931–45, and the new Liberal Nationals, also formed in 1931, were more successful than the original Liberals for many years. The nature of politics was determined by the elite, but also by the electoral system. At the beginning of the century the first-past-the-post electoral system operated differently from its later incarnations. This was because not all seats were contested by all the big parties. Before 1918 many candidates were unopposed, notably but not only in Ireland. Candidates did not stand where there was no hope of winning. Liberals abstaining in favour of Labour allowed the Labour Party to exist before 1918 as the fourth party in parliament.

…

Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of the red telephone box and Battersea power station) and engineered by Oscar Faber (of modernist flour mills of the 1930s), it was disguised to look like the old one. Much remained the same in the political system too. Labour had retained the House of Lords, only limiting its powers. It had abolished university seats and other forms of plural voting but retained the first-past-the-post system. After 1950 the pace of change was glacial. In 1958 life peerages were introduced, for men and women, who were now allowed into the Lords for the first time. From the 1964 Labour government onwards, except in some odd cases, no new hereditary peerages were created. The Lords continued otherwise unreformed until 1999.

…

Through indirect means – supporting trade unions, the tax and benefit systems, a certain amount of redistribution was effected. THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM Although the basic structures of the early twentieth-century political system remained, their outward appearance, and the effects they generated, was very different. The first-past-the-post electoral system now entrenched two class-based parties covering nearly the whole United Kingdom. The Conservative and Labour Parties were now roughly equally matched. Labour, in opposition, had 47 per cent of the seats in 1951 and 44 per cent in 1955. Other parties were driven out of the House of Commons.

Routes to Rejoin by Stay European

Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, first-past-the-post, lockdown, Rishi Sunak

Many strides were made in 2017 and 2019 in setting up digital resources and social media campaigns to encourage tactical voting – not enough to overcome the particular circumstances of those elections, but a strong base for next time. If the leaderships won’t construct a progressive alliance, we can build one from the grassroots. Proportional representation In our current electoral system, first-past-the-post, the Tories are wildly overrepresented – they have a large parliamentary 68 majority on a 44% minority of the overall vote. That is why many pro-EU campaigners have realised that campaigning for more democracy in Britain is likely to be a necessary intermediate step to rejoin – one that can offer an immediate shared aim for progressive alliances to cohere around.

Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics by Manuel Arriaga

banking crisis, behavioural economics, business climate, David Graeber, digital divide, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, Gunnar Myrdal, John Bogle, Occupy movement, principal–agent problem, Slavoj Žižek

It is also possible for the more powerful parties to “break” proportional representation by splitting the territory into a larger number of constituencies, each of them electing just a handful of seats. As the number of seats in each constituency decreases, so do the smaller parties’ chances of securing any representation at all. This “trick” makes so-called “proportional representation” systems produce results that resemble those of first-past-the-post elections—thus cementing the power of the large, entrenched parties at the expense of non-establishment voices. Campaigning like the French Another issue central to electoral reform is that of campaign and party finance. The promiscuity between private funds and political parties is a well-known issue in almost every country.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, Cambridge Analytica, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, data science, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, gender pay gap, gig economy, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, lifelogging, low skilled workers, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, phenotype, post-industrial society, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, speech recognition, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, tech bro, the built environment, urban planning, women in the workforce, work culture , zero-sum game

This being the case, gender quotas are nothing more than a corrective to a hidden male bias, and it is the current system that is anti-democratic. The form of quota that is available to a country depends on the electoral system it operates. In the UK, each of the country’s 650 constituencies has a single MP. This MP is voted in using ‘first past the post’ (FPTP), which means that the candidate with the most votes gets returned to Parliament. Since there is only one candidate per constituency, in a FPTP system all-women shortlists are really the only practicable corrective to male bias. In Sweden, a party list is used. In this system, each constituency is represented by a group of MPs allocated under proportional representation (PR).

…

Australia gender pay gap gendered poverty Gillard ministries (2010–13) homelessness leisure time maternity. leave medical research military murders paternity. leave political representation precarious work school textbooks sexual assault/harassment taxation time-use surveys unpaid work Australia Institute Austria autism auto-plastics factories Autoblog autoimmune diseases automotive plastics workplaces Ayrton, Hertha Azerbaijan babies’ cries baby bottles Baker, Colin Baku, Azerbaijan Ball, James Bangladesh Bank of England banknotes Barbican, London Barcelona, Catalonia beauticians de Beauvoir, Simone Beer, Anna Beijing, China Belgium Berkman Center for Internet and Society Besant, Annie BI Norwegian Business School bicarbonate of soda Big Data bile acid composition biomarkers biomass fuels biomechanics Birka warrior Birmingham, West Midlands bisphenol A (BPA) ‘bitch’ bladder ‘Blank Space’ (Swift) blind recruitment blood pressure Bloom, Rachel Bloomberg News Bock, Laszlo body fat body sway Bodyform Boesel, Whitney Erin Boler, Tania Bolivia Boosey, Leslie Boserup, Ester Bosnia Boston Consulting Group Botswana Bouattia, Malia Boulanger, Béatrice Bourdieu, Pierre Bovasso, Dawn Boxing Day tsunami (2004) boyd, danah brain ischaemia Brazil breasts cancer feeding and lifting techniques pumps reduction surgery and seat belts and tactile situation awareness system (TSAS) and uniforms Bretherton, Joanne Brexit Bricks, New Orleans brilliance bias Brin, Sergey British Electoral Survey British Journal of Pharmacology British Medical Journal British Medical Research Council British National Corpus (BNC) Broadly Brophy, Jim and Margaret Buick Bulgaria Burgon, Richard Bush, Stephen Buvinic, Mayra BuzzFeed Cabinet caesarean sections Cairns, Alex California, United States Callanan, Martin Callou, Ada Calma, Justine calorie burning Cambridge Analytica Cameron, David Campbell Soup Canada banknotes chemical exposure childcare crime homelessness medical research professor evaluations sexual assault/harassment toilets unpaid work Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Canadian Institutes of Health cancer canon formation Cape Town, South A.ica carcinogens cardiac resynchronisation therapy devices (CRT-Ds) cardiovascular system care work and agriculture elderly people and employment gross domestic product (GDP) occupational health and paternity leave time-use surveys and transport and zoning Carnegie Mellon University carpenters cars access to crashes driving tests motion sickness navigation systems Castillejo, Clare catcalling Cavalli, Francesco cave paintings CCTV Ceccato, Vania cell studies Center for American Progress Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) Center for Talent Innovation Central Asia Centre of Better Births, Liverpool Women’s Hospital chemicals Chiaro Chicago, Illinois chief executive officers (CEO) child benefit child marriage childbirth childcare and agriculture cost of and employment and gross domestic product (GDP) and paternity leave time-use surveys and zoning children’s television China cholera Chopin, Frédéric Chou, Tracy chromosomes chronic illness/pain Chronic Pain Policy Coalition chulhas Cikara, Mina circadian rhythms Citadel classical music clean stoves cleaning climate change Clinton, Hillary clitoridectomies Clue coal mining coastguards Collett Beverly colon cancer Columbia University competence vs warmth composers Composers’ Guild of Great Britain computer science confirmation bias confounding factors Congo, Democratic Republic of the Connecticut, United States Conservative Party construction work contraception contractions cooking cookstoves Corbusier, Le Cornell University coronary stents Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) corrective rape cosmetology Cosmopolitan Cotton, Dany Coyle, Diane crash test dummies Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Crewe, Emma Crick, Francis Crime Prevention and Community Safety crime crime scene investigators Croatia crochet Crockety, Molly CurrMIT CVs (curriculum vitaes) Czech Republic daddy quotas Daly, Caroline Louisa Data2x Davis-Blake, Alison Davis, Wendy Davison, Peter defibrillators deforestation Delhi, India dementia Democratic Party Democratic Republic of the Congo Democratic United Party dengue fever Denmark dental devices Department for Work and Pensions depression diabetes diarrhoea diet diethylstilbestrol (DES) disabled people disasters Ditum, Sarah diversity-valuing behavior DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) Do Babies Matter (Goulden, Mason, and Wolfinger) Doctor Who domestic violence Donison, Christopher Doss, Cheryl ‘draw a scientist’ driving dry sex Dyas-Elliott, Roger dysmenorrhea E3 Eagle, Angela early childhood education (ECE) Ebola economics Economist, The Edexcel education Edwards, Katherine Einstein, Albert elderly people Eliot, George Elks lodges Elvie emoji employment gender pay gap occupational health parental leave precarious work sexual assault/harassment and unpaid work ‘End of Theory, The’ (Anderson) endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) Endocrine Society endometriosis endovascular occlusion devices England national football English language ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) Enlightenment entrepreneurs epilepsy Equal Times Equality Act (2010) erectile dysfunction Estonian language Ethiopia EuroNCAP European Parliament European Union academia bisphenol A (BPA) chronic illnesses crash test dummies employment gap endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) gender-inflected languages life expectancy medical research parental leave precarious work sexual harassment taxation transport planning Evernote EverydaySexism evolution exercise extension services Facebook facial wrinkle correction fall-detection devices Fallout Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) farming Fawcett Society Fawlty Towers female Viagra feminism Feminist Frequency films Financial crash (2008) Finland Finnbogadóttir, Vigdís Finnish language firefighters first past the post (FPTP) First World War (1914–18) Fiske, Susan Fitbit fitness devices flexible working Folbre, Nancy Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) football forced marriage Ford Fordham, Maureen fragile states France Franklin, Rosalind Frauen-Werk-Stadt free weights Freeman, Hadley French language Freud, Sigmund From Poverty to Power (Green) funeral rites FX gaming GapJumpers Gates Foundation Gates, Melinda gathering Geffen, David gender gender data gap academia agriculture algorithms American Civil War (1861–5) brilliance bias common sense crime Data2x female body historical image datasets innovation male universality medical research motion sickness occupational health political representation pregnancy self-report bias sexual assault/harassment smartphones speech-recognition technology stoves taxation transport planning unpaid work warmth vs competence Gender Equality Act (1976) Gender Global Practice gender pay gap gender-fair forms gender-inflected languages gendered poverty genderless languages Gendersite General Accounting Office generic masculine genius geometry Georgetown University German language German Society of Epidemiology Germany academia gender pay gap gender-inflected language Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten (LAF) medical research precarious work refugee camps school textbooks unpaid work Gezi Park protests (2013) Ghana gig economy Gild Gillard, Julia GitHub Glencore Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Global Gender Gap Index Global Media Monitoring Project Golden Globes Google artificial intelligence (AI) childcare Images maternity leave News Nexus petabytes pregnancy parking promotions search engine speech-recognition software Translate Gosling, Ryan Gothenburg, Sweden Gove, Michael Government Accounting Office (GAO) Great Depression (1929–39) Greece Green, Duncan Greenberg, Jon groping gross domestic product (GDP) Grown, Caren Guardian Gujarat earthquake (2001) Gulf War (1990–91) gyms H1N1 virus Hackers (Levy) hand size/strength handbags handprints haptic jackets Harman, Harriet Harris, Kamala Harvard University hate crimes/incidents Hawking, Stephen Haynes, Natalie Hayward, Sarah Hazards Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) Health and Safety Executive (HSE) health-monitoring systems healthcare/medicine Hearst heart attacks disease medication rhythm abnormalities surgery Heat St Heinrich Böll Foundation Helldén, Daniel Henderson, David Henry Higgins effect Henry VIII, King of England Hensel, Fanny hepatitis Hern, Alex high-efficiency cookstoves (HECs) Higher Education Statistics Agency Himmelweit, Sue hip belts history Hodgkin’s disease Holdcrofity, Anita Hollaback ‘Hollywood heart attack’ Homeless Period, The homelessness hopper fare Hopper, Grace hormones House of Commons Household Income Labour Dynamics of Australia Survey housekeeping work Howard, Todd human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) Human Rights Act (1998) Human Rights Watch human–computer interaction Hungary hunter-gatherer societies Huntingdon, Agnes Hurricane Andrew (1992) Hurricane Katrina (2005) Hurricane Maria (2017) hyperbolic geometry hysterectomies hysteria I Am Not Your Negro Iceland identity Idomeni camp, Greece Illinois, United States images immune system Imperial College London Inc Income of Nations, The (Studenski) indecent exposure Independent India Boxing Day tsunami (2004) gendered poverty gross domestic product (GDP) Gujarat earthquake (2001) political representation sexual assault/harassment stoves taxation toilets unpaid work Indian Ocean tsunami (2004) Industrial Revolution (c. 1760–1840) influenza Inmujeres innovation Institute for Fiscal Studies Institute for Women’s Policy Research Institute of Medicine Institute of Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) institutionalised rape Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Inter-agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) Internal Revenue Service (IRS) International Agency Research on Cancer International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning International Council of Nurses International Encyclopaedia of Women Composers International Labour Organization (ILO) International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Peace Institute International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) interrupting intestinal enzymes iPhone Ireland IRIN irritable bowel syndrome Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) isometric exercises Israel Italy Jackson, Henry Japan Jenkins, Simon Jepson, Peter job interviews job vacancies Jones, Anna Jones, Brigid Juárez, Victoria ‘just in time’ scheduling so.ware Kail, Eva Karlskoga, Sweden Karnataka Household Asset Survey Katebe, Uganda Keecoo K1 Kelly, Paul Kenya Khayelitsha, South Africa kidneys kinesiology Knausgaard, Karl Ove Knope, Leslie Koofi, Fawzia Korea Kronos Kuznets, Simon Labour Party Lammy, David Lancet Lancet Planetary Health Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten (LAF) language Latin America Latvia Lau, Tessa Lauer, Matt Lawrence, David Lean In (Sandberg) Lebanon Legro, Richard Leicester, Leicestershire leisure time lesbians Lesotho lethal violence Levy, Steven Lewis, Brandon Leyster, Judith Liberal Democrats Liberia libertarianism life expectancy Life of Pi Lilla, Mark Lim, Angelica Limpsfield Grange, Surrey Lin Qing Linder, Astrid literacy literature Littman, Ellen liver failure Liverpool, Merseyside lobotomies Local Government Act (1972) London, England Fire Brigade general election (2017) precarious work sexual assault/harassment transportation London School of Economics (LSE) London Review of Books Long Friday long-hours culture longevity Los Angeles Times Los Angeles, California Loughborough University Louisiana, United States Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia lubricant lung capacity lung diseases Macedonia Mackinnon, Catherine Maconchy, Elizabeth Made by Many Madrid, Spain malaria Malawi male universality Malmö, Sweden Malta mammary carcinogens ‘Man the Hunter’ Manchester University Martínez-Román, Adi Martino, Tami Marvel Comics maternal mortality maternity leave mathematics Mazarra, Glen McCabe, Jesse McCain, John McGill University McKinsey McLean, Charlene Medela medicine/healthcare Medline Memorial University Mendelssohn, Felix Mendes, Eva Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo menopause menstruation mental health meritocracy Messing, Karen meta gender data gap MeToo movement Metroid mewar angithi (MA) Mexico Miami, Florida mice Microsoft migraines military Milito, Beth Miller, Maria Minassian, Alek Minha Casa, Minha Vida miscarriages Mismeasure of Woman, The (Tavris) misogyny Mitchell, Margaret Mogil, Jeffrey Mongolia Montreal University Morgan, Thomas Hunt morphine motion parallax motion sickness Motorola multiple myeloma Mumbai, India murders Murray, Andrew muscle music My Fair Lady myometrial blood ‘Myth’ (Rukeyser) nail salons Naipaul, Vidiadhar Surajprasad naive realism National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Autistic Society National Democratic Institute National Health Service (NHS) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) National Institute for Health and Case Excellence (NICE) National Institute of Health Revitalization Act (1993) National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Union of Students (NUS) natural gender languages Nature Navarro, Jannette Naya Health Inc Nea Kavala camp, Greece Neitzert, Eva Neolithic era Netflix Netherlands neutrophils New Jersey, United States New Orleans, Louisiana New Statesman New York, United States New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health (NYCOSH) New York Philharmonic Orchestra New York Times New Yorker New Zealand Newham, London Nigeria Nightingale, Florence Nobel Prize nomunication Norris, Colleen Norway Nottingham, Nottinghamshire nurses Nüsslein-Volhard, Christiane O’Neil, Cathy O’Neill, Rory Obama, Barack Occupational Health and Safety Administration occupational health Oedipus oestradiol oestrogen office temperature Olympic Games Omron On the Generation of Animals (Aristotle) orchestras Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Organisation for the Study of Sex Differences Orissa, India osteopenia osteoporosis ovarian cancer Oxfam Oxford English Dictionaries Oxford University oxytocin pacemakers pain sensitivity pairing Pakistan Pandey, Avanindra paracetamol parental leave Paris, France Parkinson’s disease parks passive tracking apps paternity leave patronage networks pattern recognition Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia peace talks pelvic floor pelvic inflammatory disease pelvic stress fractures pensions performance evaluations periods Persian language personal protective equipment (PPE) Peru petabytes Pew Research Center phantom-limb syndrome phenylpropanolamine Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philippines phobias phthalates Physiological Society pianos Plato plough hypothesis poetry Poland police polio political representation Politifact Pollitzer, Elizabeth Portland, Oregon Portugal post-natal depression post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) poverty Powell, Colin PR2 Prada prams precarious work pregnancy Pregnant Workers Directive (1992) premenstrual syndrome (PMS) primary percutaneous coronary interventions (PPCI) Prinz-Brandenburg, Claudia progesterone projection bias prolapse promotions proportional representation (PR) Prospect Union Prospect Public Monuments and Sculptures Association public sector equality duty (PSED) public transport Puerto Rico purchasing authority ‘quantified self’ community Quebec, Canada QuiVr radiation Rajasthan, India rape RateMyProfessors.com recruitment Red Tape Challenge ‘Redistribution of Sex, The’ Reference Man Reformation refugees Renaissance repetitive strain injury (RSI) Representation of the People Act (1832) Republican Party Resebo, Christian Reykjavik, Iceland Rhode Island, United States Rio de Janeiro, Brazil risk-prediction models road building Road Safety on Five Continents Conference Roberts, David Robertson, Adi robots Rochdale, Manchester Rochon Ford, Anne Rudd, Kevin Rukeyser, Muriel Russian Federation Rwanda Sacks-Jones, Katharine Saenuri Party Safecity SafetyLit Foundation Sánchez de Madariaga, Inés Sandberg, Sheryl Sanders, Bernard Santos, Cristine Schalk, Tom Schenker, Jonathan Schiebinger, Londa School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) school textbooks Schumann, Clara science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) Scientific American scientists Scotland Scythians ‘sea of dudes’ problem Seacole, Mary seat belts Second World War (1939.45) self-report bias September 11 attacks (2001) Serbia Sessions, Jefferson severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) sex Sex Discrimination Act (1975) sex robots sex-disaggregated data agriculture chemical exposure conflict employment fall-detection devices fitness devices gendered poverty medical research precarious work smartphones taxation transport urban design virtual reality voice recognition working hours sexual violence/harassment shape-from-shading Sherriff, Paula Shield, The shifting agriculture Sierra Leone sildenafil citrate Silicon Valley Silver, Nate Singh, Jyoti single parents single-member districts (SMD) Siri Skåne County, Sweden skeletons skin Slate Slocum, Sally Slovenia smartphones snow clearing social capital social data Social Democratic Party (SDP) social power socialisation Solna, Sweden Solnit, Rebecca Somalia Sony Ericsson Sounds and Sweet Airs (Beer) South Africa South Korea Soviet Union (1922–91) Spain Spanish language Speak with a Geek speech-recognition technology Sphinx sports Sprout Pharmaceuticals Sri Lanka St Mark’s, Venice St Vincent & the Grenadines stab vests Stack Overflow Stanford University staple crops Star Wars Starbucks Starkey, David statins statues stem cells Stevens, Nettie Stockholm, Sweden Stoffregen, Tom stoves Streisand, Barbra streptococcal toxic shock syndrome stress strokes Strozzi, Barbara Studenski, Paul Sulpicia Supreme Court Sweden Birka warrior car crashes councils crime depression gender pay gap heart attacks murders paternity leave political representation refugee camps snow clearing sports taxation unpaid work youth urban regeneration Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute Swift, Taylor swine flu Swinson, Joanne Kate ‘Jo’ Switzerland Syria Systran tactile situation awareness system (TSAS) Taimina, Daina Taiwan Tate, Angela Tatman, Rachael Tavris, Carol taxation teaching evaluations Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) tear gas tech industry television temperature Temperature Temporary Assistance to Needy Families tennis tenure-track system text corpora thalidomide ThinkProgress Thor three-stone fires time poverty time-use surveys TIMIT corpus Tin, Ida toilets Toksvig, Sandi tools Toronto, Ontario Tottenham, London Toyota Trades Union Congress (TUC) tradition transit captives transportation treadmills trip-chaining troponin Trump, Donald tuberculosis (TB) Tudor period (1485–1603) Tufekci, Zeynep Turkey Twitter Uberpool Uganda Ukraine ulcerative colitis Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher Umeå, Sweden Understanding Girls with ADHD (Littman) unemployment unencumbered people Unicode Consortium Unison United Association of Civil Guards United Kingdom academia austerity autism banknotes breast pumps Brexit (2016–) Fire Brigade caesarean sections children’s centres chronic illness/pain coastguards councils employment gap endometriosis Equality Act (2010) flexible working gender pay gap gendered poverty general elections generic masculine gross domestic product (GDP) heart attacks homelessness Human Rights Act (1998) leisure time maternity leave medical research military murders music nail salons occupational health paternity leave pedestrians pensions personal protective equipment (PPE) police political representation precarious work public sector equality duty (PSED) Representation of the People Act (1832) scientists Sex Discrimination Act (1975) sexual assault/harassment single parents statues stress taxation toilets transportation trip-chaining universities unpaid work Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Commission on the Status of Women Data2x Economic Commission for Africa Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) homicide survey Human Development Report and peace talks Population Fund Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and stoves and Switzerland and toilets and unpaid childcare Women’s Year World Conference on Women United States academia Affordable Care Act (2010) Agency for International Development (USAID) Alzheimer’s disease banknotes bisphenol A (BPA) breast pumps brilliance bias Bureau of Labor Statistics car crashes chief executive officers (CEO) childbirth, death in Civil War (1861–5) construction work councils crime early childhood education (ECE) employment gap endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) endometriosis farming flexible working gender pay gap gendered poverty generic masculine Great Depression (1929–39) gross domestic product (GDP) healthcare heart attacks Hurricane Andrew (1992) Hurricane Katrina (2005) Hurricane Maria (2017) immigration detention facilities job interviews ‘just in time’ scheduling so.ware leisure time maternity leave medical research meritocracy military mortality rates murders nail salons National Institute of Health Revitalization Act (1993) occupational health personal protective equipment (PPE) political representation precarious work presidential election (2016) school textbooks September 11 attacks (2001) sexual assault/harassment single parents soccer team Supreme Court taxation tech industry toilets transportation Trump administration (2017–) universities unpaid work universal credit (UC) universality universities University and College Union University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) University of Chicago University of Liverpool University of London University of Manchester University of Michigan University of Minnesota University of North Carolina University of Stirling University of Sussex University of Washington University of York unpaid work agriculture and algorithms and gross domestic product (GDP) and occupational health and stoves and transport in workplace and zoning upper body strength upskirting urinals urinary-tract infections urination uro-gynaecological problems uterine failure uterine tybroids Uttar Pradesh, India Uzbekistan vaccines vagina Valium Valkrie value-added tax (VAT) Van Gulik, Gauri Venice, Italy venture capitalists (VCs) Veríssimo, Antônio Augusto Viagra Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom video games Vienna, Austria Vietnam Vikings Villacorta, Pilar violence virtual reality (VR) voice recognition Volvo voting rights Vox voyeurism Wade, Virginia Walker, Phillip walking wallet to purse Walmart warfare warmth vs competence Warsaw Pact Washington Post Washington Times Washington, DC, United States WASHplus WaterAid Watson, James We Will Rebuild weak contractions Weapons of Math Destruction (O’Neil) West Bengal, India whiplash Wiberg-Itzel, Eva Wikipedia Wild, Sarah Williams, Gayna Williams, Serena Williams, Venus Williamson, £eresa Willow Garage Wimbledon Windsor, Ontario Winter, Jessica Wired Wolf of Wall Street, The Wolfers, Justin Wolfinger, Nicholas ‘Woman the Gatherer’ (Slocum) Women and Equalities Committee Women Will Rebuild Women’s Budget Group (WBG) Women’s Design Service Women’s Engineering Society Women’s Refugee Commission Women’s Year Woolf, Virginia workplace safety World Bank World Cancer Research Fund World Cup World Economic Forum (WEF) World Health Organization (WHO) World Meteorological Organisation worm infections Woskow, Debbie Wray, Susan Wyden, Robert XY cells Y chromosome Yale University Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre, Bedford Yatskar, Mark Yemen Yentl syndrome Yezidis Youth Vote, The youthquake Zambia zero-hour contracts Zika zipper quotas zombie stats zoning Zou, James Photo by Rachel Louise Brown CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ is a writer, broadcaster, and feminist activist and was named Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year and OBE by the Queen.

The Extreme Centre: A Warning by Tariq Ali

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, bonus culture, BRICs, British Empire, centre right, deindustrialization, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, first-past-the-post, full employment, Great Leap Forward, labour market flexibility, land reform, light touch regulation, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, mortgage debt, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, North Sea oil, obamacare, offshore financial centre, popular capitalism, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, Wolfgang Streeck

The decline of large parts of the country continued apace, and in turn, the country became increasingly restive. How would the people react? After eighteen years of Conservative rule, they voted Labour and Tony Blair into office with a huge parliamentary majority, achieved by virtue of an antiquated and blatantly unrepresentative first-past-the-post system: 13.5 million, against 9.6 million for the Conservatives and 5.2 million for the Liberal Democrats. Blair had fought a slick campaign that made few promises, but traditional Labour supporters nodded their heads in appreciation and thought him wise. The key was to return Labour to power after the locust years.

Hacking the Code of Life: How Gene Editing Will Rewrite Our Futures by Nessa Carey

Barry Marshall: ulcers, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, CRISPR, double helix, epigenetics, first-past-the-post, Gregor Mendel, Helicobacter pylori, Recombinant DNA, seminal paper, stem cell

In February 2013 Feng Zhang from the Broad Institute* in Cambridge, Massachusetts published his paper in which the gene editing took place inside the nucleus of cells. His employer filed a patent application in December 2012. This might all seem straightforward, with Doudna and Charpentier being the first to publish and the first to file patent applications. Patenting is basically a first-past-the-post system, where the winner takes it all. If only it were that simple and clean. The Broad Institute paid to have its application fast-tracked by the US Patent Office and its patent was granted in April 2014. Many observers were surprised that the Patent Office agreed to rule on the Broad’s application when the earlier one from UC Berkeley and University of Vienna was still going through the system.

The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics by John B. Judis

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, Charlie Hebdo massacre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, full employment, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, mass immigration, means of production, neoliberal agenda, obamacare, Occupy movement, open borders, plutocrats, Post-Keynesian economics, post-materialism, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, white flight, Winter of Discontent

In Great Britain, for instance, laissez-faire capitalism, associated with Adam Smith’s invisible hand, prevailed for much of the nineteenth century, but after World War II it was superseded by Keynesian economics. American politics is structured to sustain prevailing worldviews. Its characteristics of winner takes all, first past the post, single-member districts have encouraged a two-party system. Third-party candidates are often dismissed as “spoilers.” Moreover, in deciding on whom to nominate in party primaries, voters and party bigwigs have generally taken electability into account, and in the general election, candidates have generally tried to capture the center and to stay away from being branded as an “extremist.”

Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State by Paul Tucker

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, conceptual framework, corporate governance, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, forensic accounting, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, Greenspan put, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, iterative process, Jean Tirole, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, means of production, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Northern Rock, operational security, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, public intellectual, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, seigniorage, short selling, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stochastic process, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Representative democracy’s most basic institution, the system of voting, also comes in different shapes. Democracies are typically made up of districts (or constituencies as they are known in the UK), with elections to choose either a single candidate or multiple candidates to represent each district. Some have a first-past-the-post (plurality) decision rule; others have proportional elections, which can involve voting for party lists rather than individual candidates. In some countries, the whole state-structure package, including the electoral system, is formally enshrined in a written constitution or “basic law,” of greater or lesser length and prescription, subject to higher or lower hurdles for amendment, and whose meaning emerges and evolves through practice and interpretation.

…

The construction of governments and the independence of individual legislators relative to party bosses depend on these high-level rules and conventions. And the same underlying incentives and constraints have a powerful influence on the structure of the administrative state and how it is overseen. Two First-Past-the-Post (Plurality) Systems: The UK versus the US While profoundly different in other respects, the US and UK lie at one end of the spectrum of electoral systems. Their legislative assemblies comprise single-member-district representatives elected on a plurality of votes and with the public having no legal obligation to vote.

…

Their legislative assemblies comprise single-member-district representatives elected on a plurality of votes and with the public having no legal obligation to vote. Often termed majoritarian, a common shorthand for modern representative democracy, in neither country does government in fact require a majority of the popular vote, let alone of those entitled to vote. A UK versus US comparison illustrates, however, how things can differ even across first-past-the-post (plurality) systems. In the UK, the election (or reelection) prospects of individual candidates typically depend heavily on the popularity of their party, and in particular their party leaders, as voters know they are very likely to be choosing a single-party executive government that will be able to legislate its program.

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw

airport security, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, centre right, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, fixed income, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, labour market flexibility, land reform, late capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, liberation theology, low interest rates, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open borders, post-war consensus, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sinatra Doctrine, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, trade liberalization, union organizing, upwardly mobile, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, young professional

The war had produced unprecedented levels of national solidarity, temporarily at least overriding deep class divisions, and there was national pride in the victory over Nazism. The monarchy enjoyed great popularity. The British parliamentary democracy had almost total backing from the population. The ‘first past the post’ electoral system, unlike the proportional representation systems of most countries in Western Europe, strongly militated against small parties and tended to produce stable governments with sizeable majorities. Clear election winners emerged even though, in fact, the electorate was almost evenly split between Conservative and Labour.

…

And sure enough in June 2007 the most successful leader in Labour’s electoral history resigned as Prime Minister, leaving Parliament soon afterwards. The Iraq War had lastingly sullied his reputation. His notable achievements as Prime Minister were as a consequence widely overlooked or played down. Gerhard Schröder did not have the luxury of the large majority that the British ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system presented to Blair in 1997. The Social Democrats won the German election the following year, though with only slightly more of the popular vote than the Christian Union parties. The government Schröder was able to form, in coalition with the Greens (who were backed by a mere 6.7. per cent of the electorate), nonetheless embarked on an ambitious programme of social reforms.

…

But opposition to immigration was a potent factor in the increased support for nationalist parties also in much of Northern and Western Europe. UKIP won 26.6 per cent of the British vote, the largest proportion of any party, at the 2014 election to the European Parliament. (UKIP had far less success in the British general election the following year, winning only a single seat in parliament on the first-past-the-post electoral system though still gaining 12.6 per cent of the vote.) The Front National was backed by around a third of the French electorate. Alternative für Deutschland (founded only in 2012 and turning from initial Euroscepticism to an anti-migrant party) saw its support rise to more than 20 per cent of the electorate in a number of state elections during 2016.

A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s by Alwyn W. Turner

Alan Greenspan, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, British Empire, call centre, centre right, deindustrialization, demand response, Desert Island Discs, endogenous growth, Etonian, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, full employment, gentrification, global village, greed is good, inflation targeting, lateral thinking, means of production, millennium bug, minimum wage unemployment, moral panic, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, period drama, post-war consensus, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, upwardly mobile, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce

Elections to the House of Commons and local councils remained unchanged, operating under the first past the post system (the former in single-member constituencies, the latter in multi-member wards), but elsewhere various systems were in use: the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the London Assembly employed one system, the mayor of London (and mayors of any other cities who might follow) another, and the European Parliament yet another. There was little apparent logic in any of this jigsaw. In places it was progressive – the mix of first past the post and top-up lists in Scotland, Wales and London took a decisive step towards proportional representation – but elsewhere there were signs of Labour’s centralising tendency.

…

Whether someone like Critchley could be regarded as typical of the stay-at-home Tories was a matter of some dispute, though the anti-Europe parties’ comparatively poor showing suggested that he might well have been; it seemed unlikely that the absentees were distressed by the lack of right-wing policies. The debate over who those missing supporters were, and how to win them back, was to preoccupy the Conservative Party for the next decade. For now, Labour had the luxury of simply ignoring the details. Thanks to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system, the party had a majority of 179 seats in the Commons, more than 63 per cent of the MPs, and – taking into account boundary changes – had gained 145 seats. In parliamentary terms, it dwarfed even the 1945 landslide of Clement Attlee (though he had won a shade under half the popular vote), a moment that had largely passed into the realm of fable.

The Knowledge Economy by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

additive manufacturing, adjacent possible, balance sheet recession, business cycle, collective bargaining, commoditize, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, first-past-the-post, full employment, global value chain, information asymmetry, knowledge economy, market fundamentalism, means of production, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, post-Fordism, radical decentralization, savings glut, secular stagnation, side project, tacit knowledge, total factor productivity, transaction costs, union organizing, wealth creators

So, too, the experimentalist culture of a high-energy democracy finds inspiration in a great wealth of contending interests and identities. These clashing perspectives need to win a political voice: hence the preference in most (but not all) circumstances for proportional representation and multiple rounds of balloting rather than first-past-the-post electoral regimes and conclusive decision on a single ballot. For the same reason, the state must have many parts, so that a tendency of interest or opinion that fails to find expression in one part may secure it in another. The danger that the manifestation of conflict not only in politics but in the state will lead to paralysis of coherent initiative is addressed by the second principle, of rapid resolution of impasse.

How Democracy Ends by David Runciman

barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Internet of things, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norman Mailer, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, Russell Brand, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Travis Kalanick, universal basic income, Yogi Berra

The most persistent conspiracy theorists are the people who feel they can never win under the rules of democratic politics. A recent survey of UK voters showed that conspiracy theories are most prevalent among those who feel permanently disenfranchised.24 If you support a party that has no chance of winning power – especially under a two-party, first-past-the-post system – democracy does appear biased against you. It will be worse if you support no party at all. An old anarchist slogan says that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. It is not just anarchists who think like that. Anyone who has lost faith in the possibility of political change is likely to believe voting is not worth the bother; anyone who stops voting is likely to find that the system ignores them because their views don’t count.

The Global Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Mason

active measures, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Easter island, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, industrial robot, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, planetary scale, post-oil, price stability, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, systematic trading, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

But the one thing that did not happen was that for which Mrs Thatcher was given credit: real wages per hour did not drop. In fact, and in sharp contrast to the US experience, they rose considerably.7 It is now clear that Mrs Thatcher’s impressive electoral successes in 1983 and 1987 (Britain’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system notwithstanding) was due to two factors. First, many of the 4.5 million jobless people were too glum and disgruntled to bother to vote. Secondly, the workers who did hang on to their jobs saw their real wages rise. In addition, Mrs Thatcher gave them bonuses that roped them into a speculative mood, in tune with the financial frenzy in Wall Street and the City of London.

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, bank run, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, dematerialisation, demographic transition, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, first-past-the-post, full employment, Gini coefficient, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Leo Hollis, market fundamentalism, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, urban sprawl, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, World Values Survey

This is a system in which all major parties are complicit, which offers no obvious exit from a model that privileges neoliberal economics over other aspirations.13 It treats the natural world, civic life, equality, public health and effective public services as dispensable luxuries, and the freedom of the rich to exploit the poor as non-negotiable. Its lack of a codified constitution permits numberless abuses of power. It has failed to reform the House of Lords, royal prerogative, campaign finance and first-past-the-post voting (another triumph for the no brigade).14 It is dominated by a media owned by tax exiles, who, instructing their editors from their distant chateaux, play the patriotism card at every opportunity. The concerns of swing voters in marginal constituencies outweigh those of the majority; the concerns of corporations with no lasting stake in the country outweigh everything.

Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World by Paul Collier

Ayatollah Khomeini, Boris Johnson, charter city, classic study, Edward Glaeser, experimental economics, first-past-the-post, full employment, game design, George Akerlof, global village, guest worker program, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, language acquisition, mass immigration, mirror neurons, moral hazard, open borders, radical decentralization, risk/return, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, white flight, zero-sum game

The space left by the mainstream political parties rapidly came to be occupied by a gallery of grotesques: racists, xenophobes, and psychopaths found themselves with an audience of decent, ordinary citizens who were increasingly alarmed by the silence of the mainstream parties. To date, the only thing that has kept extremist parties at bay has been first-past-the-post voting systems. In the United States and Britain, where such voting systems make it hard for third parties to survive, extremist parties have not gained traction. But in virtually all societies with more inclusive voting systems, single-issue anti-immigrant parties now attract a remarkably high share of the vote.

The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy by Katherine M. Gehl, Michael E. Porter

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, business cycle, capital controls, carbon footprint, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Brooks, deindustrialization, disintermediation, Donald Trump, first-past-the-post, future of work, guest worker program, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Multics, new economy, obamacare, pension reform, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Upton Sinclair, zero-sum game

The reality of American elections becomes clear: staying in the race might well mean handing a victory to the greater of two evils—the very candidate you were working so hard to defeat in the first place. You ran for office because you spotted an opportunity to act in the public interest—to deliver solutions ignored by the current players. Your startup campaign was poised to fill a gap in the marketplace. But in American elections, plurality voting—the dominant, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all voting system—creates the spoiler phenomenon and dissuades would-be elected officials like you from running altogether. Frustrated and amazed by this truly un-American abuse of the free market, you do what any good, civic-minded citizen would do: you pursue legal action, believing you have a promising antitrust case.

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier

4chan, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Automated Insights, banking crisis, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Brian Krebs, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computerized trading, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark pattern, deepfake, defense in depth, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake news, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, first-past-the-post, Flash crash, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, late capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, payday loans, Peter Thiel, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Skype, smart cities, SoftBank, supply chain finance, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, union organizing, web application, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, WikiLeaks, zero day

In a 2014 parliamentary election, for example, five of the thirty-five candidates running for a particular seat were named Lakhan Sahu—and only one of those was an actual politician with a legislative record. The candidate from the major opposing party called it a “mere coincidence” that so many Lakhan Sahus were motivated to jump into the fray at exactly the same time. In the US, the general vulnerability is the two-party system, but vulnerability also lies in the first-past-the-post winner-take-all system of elections. Because we don’t require that candidates get a majority of the vote, but merely a plurality, political candidates are less likely to win if another candidate has a similar policy profile (or even a similar name) and splits the votes of would-be supporters.

The Lost Decade: 2010–2020, and What Lies Ahead for Britain by Polly Toynbee, David Walker

banking crisis, battle of ideas, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, call centre, car-free, centre right, collective bargaining, congestion charging, corporate governance, crony capitalism, Crossrail, David Attenborough, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, energy transition, Etonian, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, G4S, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global village, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, Large Hadron Collider, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, moral panic, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, payday loans, pension reform, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, quantitative easing, Right to Buy, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, smart meter, Uber for X, ultra-processed food, urban renewal, working-age population

The government and constitution of the UK are decrepit, in need of thorough spring-cleaning. The decanting of MPs and peers when the decaying Palace of Westminster is renewed could be a prompt. It’s time to correct the corruptions of lobbying and peerages, but most pressing is electoral reform for the House of Commons, now that first-past-the-post is so demonstrably incapable of representing a fragmenting country. Brexit exposed the unfitness of electoral law in the age of social media, hostile foreign intervention and unwarranted use of private data. Some Reasons to Be Cheerful In the bowels of the Tate is Richard Caton Woodville’s watercolour of General Wolfe heroically scaling the Heights of Abraham to take Quebec City; it was much viewed when the Brexiter generation was at school and world maps on classroom walls still showed great daubs of empire red.

Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Want (And Why They Were Never Going To) by Chris Grey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, game design, global pandemic, imperial preference, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, lockdown, non-tariff barriers, open borders, post-truth, reserve currency, Robert Mercer

The only way that would be good for both would be a wholehearted recommitment (or, one might say, for the first time a wholehearted commitment) by the UK to the EU. How could that possibly be achieved on the back of a revocation which even if undertaken by a majority government would, very likely, only have had the backing of a minority of voters given the first past the post system? Especially in the toxic politics and culture that obtained, it would have been a recipe for disaster for both the UK and the EU. It was no good saying, as some revoke advocates did, that since the 2016 referendum was deeply flawed in its set-up, conduct and interpretation there was no need to be finicky about how to annul it.

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It by Daniel Knowles

active transport: walking or cycling, autonomous vehicles, Bandra-Worli Sea Link, bank run, big-box store, bike sharing, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, business cycle, car-free, carbon footprint, congestion charging, congestion pricing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Detroit bankruptcy, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elaine Herzberg, Elon Musk, first-past-the-post, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, garden city movement, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, ghettoisation, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyperloop, Induced demand, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Lyft, megacity, megastructure, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, parking minimums, Piers Corbyn, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, safety bicycle, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Southern State Parkway, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, walkable city, white flight, white picket fence, Yom Kippur War, young professional

As the experience of Paris or New York shows, in Europe and America at least, it is mostly city governments that are trying to do something about the sheer number of cars on our streets. That should not be surprising. After all, it is in cities where the costs of carmageddon are most visible. Cities are the places where congestion and traffic pollution are the most destructive. But nationally, the voters in cities tend not to be that important, especially in first-past-the-post systems like that of the UK and America. Suburban voters are generally the swing voters—the people who politicians want to reach out to. And they use cars. That is why national politicians are so keen to keep down the cost of gasoline and to build enormous amounts of new road. It is cities that suffer the costs.

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, British Empire, centre right, classic study, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, crony capitalism, Day of the Dead, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, household responsibility system, income inequality, information asymmetry, invention of the printing press, iterative process, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labour management system, land reform, land tenure, life extension, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, means of production, Menlo Park, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, open economy, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, Port of Oakland, post-industrial society, post-materialism, price discrimination, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, stem cell, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce, work culture , World Values Survey, zero-sum game

As anyone who has chaired a meeting of a club or committee knows, decision costs rise exponentially if one needs consensus in large groups. Decisions taken under a majority voting rule (50 percent plus one) often used in democratic countries thus deviate very far from an ideal democratic procedure, since they can disenfranchise nearly half the population. Indeed, under plurality (or what is sometimes known as first-past-the-post) voting, decisions can be taken on behalf of the whole community by a minority of voters. (The United States and the United Kingdom, both of which have such voting systems, elected Bill Clinton in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote, and Tony Blair with 42 percent in 2001.)5 FIGURE 22. Political Participation vs.

…

In all other respects, however, the system concentrates rather than diffuses power. A pure Westminster system has only a single all-powerful legislative chamber, no separate presidency, no written constitution and therefore no judicial review, and no federalism or constitutionally mandated devolution of powers to localities. It has a plurality, or first-past-the-post, voting system, which tends to produce a two-party system and strong parliamentary majorities even when the majority party wins only a plurality of the vote.8 Critical to the functioning of this system is party discipline; the leadership of the Conservative or Labour Party can force its members of Parliament to vote according to their wishes because they can deny recalcitrant MPs the ability to run for office in the next election.

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe by Denis MacShane

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Corn Laws, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, fixed income, Gini coefficient, greed is good, illegal immigration, information security, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low cost airline, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, post-truth, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reshoring, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Thales and the olive presses, trade liberalization, transaction costs, women in the workforce

AFTERWORD 24 HOW THE UK STAYS IN EUROPE In 1992 there was a narrow majority in a Danish referendum to reject the Maastricht Treaty. The Danes, like the British, are a proud, longstanding European democracy. Their election system is based on proportional representation, unlike Britain’s first-past-the post system. There has been no majority one-party government in Denmark since 1909. The government insisted that while it accepted the clear expression of the will of the Danish people in the plebiscite, it invited the nation to reflect on whether that was the final and only word, following which Denmark’s future lay in being isolated from its European partners.

The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics by David Goodhart

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, assortative mating, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, central bank independence, centre right, coherent worldview, corporate governance, credit crunch, Crossrail, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, gender pay gap, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global village, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, low skilled workers, market friction, mass immigration, meritocracy, mittelstand, Neil Kinnock, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, obamacare, old-boy network, open borders, open immigration, Peter Singer: altruism, post-industrial society, post-materialism, postnationalism / post nation state, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, shareholder value, Skype, Sloane Ranger, stem cell, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, World Values Survey

What it has not done is change the social composition of the party—about three quarters of Labour party members are middle class, about 60 per cent are graduates, and almost 40 per cent live in London and the South East.15 The decline of corporatism has also had a narrowing effect on politics. Corporatism, for all its faults, provided many millions of people with a second way to influence public policy through their union branches or business or professional associations. Moreover, in Britain, thanks to the first past the post system, most constituencies never change hands. This means a limited sense of political agency in national politics for the people stuck in the rotten boroughs, while local government politics, at least outside big cities, is often barely visible to most people (thanks in part to the sad decline of good local newspapers).

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Firefox, first-past-the-post, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, information retrieval, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, investor state dispute settlement, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, megaproject, mini-job, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Kinnock, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge unit, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, openstreetmap, patent troll, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, quantitative easing, remote working, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, structural adjustment programs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Be that as it may, it is the thinning of the democratic crust of society that should be of primary concern, epitomised above all by the commodification of party politics. THE GAME OF PLUTOCRATS Democracy is usually understood as a competition of political values and ideas, with informed debate preceding voting. Whatever the electoral system – ‘first-past-the-post’, as in Britain or the USA, or some form of proportional representation related to share of the vote – the health of democracy depends on the scope for debate based on truthful information. Yet political campaigns are increasingly narrowing that scope, using the power of modern communications technology to manipulate public opinion with simplistic, emotive and often untruthful messages and images.

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

Asperger Syndrome, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, deindustrialization, Etonian, facts on the ground, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mass immigration, meritocracy, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, pension reform, place-making, plutocrats, post-war consensus, race to the bottom, Right to Buy, rising living standards, social distancing, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, We are the 99%, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

'So,' says Taylor, I think Labour's strategy was; 'How do we appeal to the aspirational working classi" Does that mean that they took for granted whatever it is we mean by the 'non-aspirational working class'? Well, maybe partly took for granted, maybe partly those people are in constituencies that Labour are going to win anyway. So, whether you might consider that to be callous, but in a first-past-the-post [electoral] system you don't focus your energies on people who are in constituencies where they don't make a huge difference. And partly those people are also less likely, or least likely, to turn out. But what did New Labour mean by aspiration? 'If you look at the disCOursearound aspiration, it's a very restricted notion of what it is,' says influential Labour backbencher and former advisor to Tony Blair, Jon Cruddas.

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America by Christopher Wylie

4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, availability heuristic, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, chief data officer, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, computer vision, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, deep learning, desegregation, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Etonian, fake news, first-past-the-post, gamification, gentleman farmer, Google Earth, growth hacking, housing crisis, income inequality, indoor plumbing, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Julian Assange, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Sand Hill Road, Scientific racism, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Stephen Fry, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech bro, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Valery Gerasimov, web application, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

The Lib Dems wanted to talk to me because they were unsure whether they could translate this new school of campaigning into the British political system. What was so interesting for them about the project I had worked on with the LPC—setting up the same kind of voter-targeting system used by the Obama campaign—was that it was the first of its kind and scale outside the United States. And Canada, like Britain, uses the same first-past-the-post “Westminster model” electoral system and has a diverse array of political parties. In this conversation, the staffers realized that half of the localization work would have already been done if they imported the Canadian version of the technology. At the end of the meeting, they were almost giddy after learning about what the system could do.

The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain? by Polly Toynbee, David Walker

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, call centre, central bank independence, congestion charging, Corn Laws, Credit Default Swap, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Etonian, failed state, first-past-the-post, Frank Gehry, gender pay gap, Gini coefficient, high net worth, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, market bubble, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, moral panic, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pension reform, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, Right to Buy, shareholder value, Skype, smart meter, social distancing, stem cell, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, working-age population, Y2K

In May 2011 there was a sharp reminder of Labour’s reactionary tendency, when many frontbenchers of 1997–2010 showed their true colours. John Reid joined David Blunkett and others unashamedly on a Tory platform, to inveigh against the reform of voting to the House of Commons – although they had been members of the Cabinet when Labour, to its credit, abolished first-past-the-post elections in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and contests for the Greater London Authority. In spring 2010 we witnessed Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon touting their services as lobbyists and gobbling up corporate positions, former defence secretary Hoon joining AgustaWestland, the helicopter manufacturer, blatantly exposing the revolving door between the Ministry of Defence and the firms from which it procures equipment.

The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics by Jonathan Aldred

airport security, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, carbon credits, carbon footprint, citizen journalism, clean water, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, Diane Coyle, endogenous growth, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, framing effect, Goodhart's law, GPS: selective availability, greed is good, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, new economy, Paradox of Choice, Pareto efficiency, pension reform, positional goods, precautionary principle, price elasticity of demand, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, school choice, social discount rate, spectrum auction, Thomas Bayes, trade liberalization, ultimatum game, When a measure becomes a target

Auction design that overemphasizes auction theory at the expense of messy political realities has gone badly wrong in practice. See Klemperer (2006). 4 Although some economists seem dismissive, I would propose social choice theory. This shows, among other things, the desirable ethical principles that different voting rules (first-past-the-post, proportional representation etc.) satisfy; and the combinations of desirable ethical principles that no voting rule satisfies (including rules we may not yet have invented). But again, social choice theory inhabits a kind of closed system. For a relatively accessible introduction to the beautiful world of social choice theory, see Sen (1999). 5 Mackenzie et al (2007).

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century by Rodrigo Aguilera

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer age, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, long peace, loss aversion, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Slavoj Žižek, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, tail risk, tech bro, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, unbiased observer, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

This has occurred despite the fact that there have been numerous innovative alternatives, such as the use of computer algorithms to define ideal district boundaries (mark my words: politics will be the last job to be replaced by robots, even though it probably should be among the first). Another relic is the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, the practice of elections being essentially a winner-take-all system that tends to heavily favor large, established parties and preclude smaller parties from offering legitimate challenges to the establishment. The US’s obscenely dysfunctional Electoral College is a prime example as is the UK’s voting system to a lesser degree.

How Will Capitalism End? by Wolfgang Streeck

"there is no alternative" (TINA), accounting loophole / creative accounting, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, basic income, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, billion-dollar mistake, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Brooks, David Graeber, debt deflation, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, failed state, financial deregulation, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, full employment, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Google Glasses, haute cuisine, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, market bubble, means of production, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, open borders, pension reform, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, post-industrial society, private sector deleveraging, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, sovereign wealth fund, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, The Future of Employment, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transaction costs, Uber for X, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck

What is more, it is beginning to make its leading representatives to leave behind institutionalism pure and simple and move forward (or in fact back?) to a political economy perspective on democracy that deserves its name. Democracy and capitalism is now the subject, if not of choice then of necessity. Gone are the good times, or so it seems, when Glasperlen issues as harmless and comfortable as first-past-the-post vs. proportional representation, Westminster vs. veto point, consociational vs. majoritarian democracy, parliamentary vs. presidential rule, unitary vs. federal government, mono-cameralism vs. bicameralism etc., etc. could rule supreme in the discipline’s official journals. Back to the basics!

Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation by Brendan Simms

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Corn Laws, credit crunch, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, guns versus butter model, imperial preference, Jeremy Corbyn, land reform, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, oil shock, open economy, plutocrats, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, sceptred isle, South Sea Bubble, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, éminence grise

A ‘Brexit’ in 2016 is therefore perfectly possible.10 At the same time, the British Question is being posed in a different way by the campaign for Scottish independence.11 The long period of Tory government under Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s opened a divide between the more conservative English and the supposedly more socialist Scots (much magnified by the first-past-the-post electoral system). It was papered over but never closed by the Blair government’s devolution of powers to the Scottish Assembly in the late 1990s. In October 2012 the ruling Scottish National Party in Edinburgh under Alex Salmond secured a highly advantageous deal for a referendum on independence two years later.

Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States by Francis Fukuyama

Andrei Shleifer, Atahualpa, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business climate, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, creative destruction, crony capitalism, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, land reform, land tenure, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, New Urbanism, oil shock, open economy, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

See Javier Corrales, Presidents without Parties: The Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). 31. Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: Norton, 1995). 32. New Zealand ceased to have a pure Westminster system when its electoral system was changed from single member first-past-the-post to mixed member proportional in 1994. 33. Though even in those instances, judiciaries that are too independent of public opinion have become highly controversial in the United States and other developed democracies that take basic judicial independence for granted. 34. Stein et al., The Politics of Policies. 220 Institutional Factors in Latin America’s Development 35.

Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism Through a Turbulent Century by Torben Iversen, David Soskice

Andrei Shleifer, assortative mating, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, centre right, clean tech, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, confounding variable, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, first-past-the-post, full employment, general purpose technology, gentrification, Gini coefficient, hiring and firing, implied volatility, income inequality, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, invisible hand, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, means of production, middle-income trap, mirror neurons, mittelstand, Network effects, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, passive investing, precariat, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, rent-seeking, RFID, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Silicon Valley, smart cities, speech recognition, tacit knowledge, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the strength of weak ties, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban decay, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, World Values Survey, young professional, zero-sum game

Within these subnational communities—rural Gemeinde, as well as small and larger towns with their formal or informal guild structures, sometimes defined confessionally, linguistically, and/or ethnically—local decision-making involved consensus-based negotiation and bargaining so that different group interests (except those without possessions) could be effectively represented. This allowed the solution of collective action problems and the safe creation of cospecific assets within local and regional economic networks. In these countries a nominally majoritarian first-past-the-post electoral system worked adequately as a representative system at the national level through much of the nineteenth century. Constituencies were represented in national politics by local notables elected by plurality and often unopposed. With economic interests generally geographically defined, these provided for their more or less proportional representation.

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles by Fintan O'Toole

airport security, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, deindustrialization, deliberate practice, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Downton Abbey, Etonian, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, full employment, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, l'esprit de l'escalier, labour mobility, late capitalism, open borders, rewilding, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, technoutopianism, zero-sum game

Painting the EU as a failed project is grossly simplistic, but there is enough truth in this crude portrait for people to recognise the likeness. It helped, finally and most ironically of all, that the same Conservative Party whose internal disputes created this historic moment, is governing with the very limited legitimacy that 35 per cent of the vote confers. Britain’s unreformed first-past-the-post electoral system has left huge parts of the population feeling democratically irrelevant and unrepresented. However much one might be repelled by UKIP, it is obvious that when four million people vote for a party and it gets just a single MP, Westminster itself becomes Them for many voters.

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization by Michael O’sullivan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, classic study, cloud computing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, credit crunch, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, knowledge economy, liberal world order, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, performance metric, Phillips curve, private military company, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Sinatra Doctrine, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, Suez canal 1869, supply-chain management, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, tulip mania, Valery Gerasimov, Washington Consensus

In some countries, such as Germany, small parties need to get above a threshold vote in order to be allowed to take up seats in the Bundestag, and this can dissuade voters from voting for new, smaller parties. This is referred to as “Duverger’s Law,” named after the French sociologist Maurice Duverger, who observed that “first-past-the-post” electoral systems tend to foster two-party systems, whereas double-ballot-majority systems and proportional-representation systems tend to foster multiparty landscapes. Much of the evidence on the formation of new parties comes from Western democratic countries. Parties are less consequential in one-party systems or in nations where individuals and their families and close supporters rule.

The Myth of the Blitz by Angus Calder

anti-communist, Arthur Marwick, British Empire, collective bargaining, Etonian, first-past-the-post, full employment, Monroe Doctrine, post-war consensus, Red Clydeside

Her image as Elizabeth I Redivivus, or Female Churchill, following her dispatch of the task force to oust the Argies from ‘our soil’, because it was inherently ridiculous, probably contributed to the intense dislike of her felt by a very large proportion of the electorate, whose views could not be adequately represented because of the antiquated ‘first past the post’ system by which the Mother of Parliaments was elected to serve under the inscrutable British Constitution. Anthony Barnett, however, promptly showed, in a very lively analysis, that the Falklands affair was deeply revealing in regard to British political history since the war. The invasion should clearly have been anticipated and prevented.

This Land: The Struggle for the Left by Owen Jones

Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Boycotts of Israel, Brexit referendum, call centre, capitalist realism, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, European colonialism, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Floyd, gig economy, green new deal, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, lockdown, market fundamentalism, Naomi Klein, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, open borders, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent control, short selling, The Spirit Level, War on Poverty

Meanwhile, in forty-one out of the fifty-four Tory-held target seats Labour needed to win if it wished to form a government, a majority had voted to Leave23 – and the nature of Britain’s non-proportional electoral system meant that the party had to prioritize voters in marginal seats over safe seats. ‘It was fucking mad to go in a Remain direction given where the votes are,’ says Andrew Murray. ‘You have to win under a first-past-the-post system, and we could see from 2017 where we were vulnerable.’ It’s at this moment, however, that Labour made a fatal mistake. In the aftermath of the 2017 election, Corbyn had immense political capital. Labour MPs who had very recently been plotting to overthrow their leader were now serenading him with ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!’

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb, Kingfisher Editors

British Empire, discovery of penicillin, first-past-the-post, glass ceiling, Great Leap Forward, two and twenty

A few days before the Daily Mirror columnist, Tom Phillips, had compared Bannister to a great racehorse trainer who “rarely bothered about picking minor honors here and there. If he wished to win a classic race, he got his horse perfectly fit for that day and nearly every time his horse was first past the post.” Phillips concluded: “I believe Bannister will win and teach some of our other athletes, and the officials and coaches, a lesson in strategy and tactics.” If confidence could be drawn from the amount of column space guaranteeing his victory, Bannister was a sure thing. Most sportswriters considered him their favorite.

The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918-1990 by Mary Fulbrook

Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, centre right, classic study, coherent worldview, collective bargaining, death from overwork, deindustrialization, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, fixed income, full employment, it's over 9,000, joint-stock company, land reform, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, open borders, Peace of Westphalia, Sinatra Doctrine, union organizing, unorthodox policies

The traditional penumbra of SPD youth, sporting and special interest groups was forbidden, depriving the SPD of one of its main organizational means of gaining and sustaining support. 6 Other studies, such as that by Rainer Schulze of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, have shown how British support of these employers' organizations allowed them to secure advantages in influencing the policies of, and placing individuals within, emerging right-wing political parties.7 Page 140 There were also more politically neutral difficulties: the British, for example, set great store by the attempt to separate 'politics' from 'administration', politicians from civil servants, which in German traditions of local government had been conflated (as in the office which combined the functions of chief executive and mayor). There were also attempts in the British zone to replace the proportional representation voting system with the British system of 'first past the post', resulting in the hybrid compromise found in the later voting system of the Federal Republic (which combines both, as discussed further in Chapter Seven). Unforeseen problems were encountered with some of the aspects of democracy in post-Nazi Germany in practice. The Americans were somewhat taken aback when in one town a former Nazi mayor was re-elected, by democratic majority vote, as the new mayor.

India's Long Road by Vijay Joshi

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, blue-collar work, book value, Bretton Woods, business climate, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, congestion charging, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, financial intermediation, financial repression, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Induced demand, inflation targeting, invisible hand, land reform, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, moral hazard, obamacare, Pareto efficiency, price elasticity of demand, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, school choice, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, special drawing rights, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, universal basic income, urban sprawl, vertical integration, working-age population

From independence until 1989, the national government was formed by the Congress Party (with the exception of the Janata Coalition from 1977 to 1979). It regularly got around 40 per cent of the votes and 60 per cent or more of seats, giving it an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. (This discrepancy between votes and seats is made possible by India’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system.) Significantly, the Congress also controlled the Rajya Sabha. Moreover, from 1971 to 1989, and particularly for much of the time that Indira Gandhi was prime minister, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) acquired great power over other institutions. From 1989, these centralizing forces have been reversed.

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right by Philippe Legrain

3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Crossrail, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, debt deflation, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, eurozone crisis, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, Ford Model T, forward guidance, full employment, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Irish property bubble, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land bank, liquidity trap, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mittelstand, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, peer-to-peer rental, price stability, private sector deleveraging, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Richard Florida, rising living standards, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Gordon, savings glut, school vouchers, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, software patent, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, working-age population, Zipcar

An elaboration of this approach is to set up citizens’ assemblies made up of a representative sample of the population that come together to deliberate on important issues. Canada is a pioneer. In 2004, the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform convened a policy jury to look at alternatives to the first-past-the-post electoral system.773 In 2007, a similar grouping considered alternative electoral systems in Ontario. Three of that province’s Local Health Integration Networks have also referred their budget priorities to a policy jury for advice and refinement. At the very least, both European countries and the EU should explore greater use of deliberative democracy on a consultative basis.

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch

agricultural Revolution, Albert Michelson, anthropic principle, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Bonfire of the Vanities, Charles Babbage, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cosmological principle, dark matter, David Attenborough, discovery of DNA, Douglas Hofstadter, Easter island, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, first-past-the-post, Georg Cantor, global pandemic, Gödel, Escher, Bach, illegal immigration, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Jacquard loom, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kenneth Arrow, Loebner Prize, Louis Pasteur, mirror neurons, Nick Bostrom, pattern recognition, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, Richard Feynman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, seminal paper, Stephen Hawking, supervolcano, technological singularity, Thales of Miletus, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Review, William of Occam, zero-sum game

The system used to elect members of the legislatures of most countries in the British political tradition is that each district (or ‘constituency’) in the country is entitled to one seat in the legislature, and that seat goes to the candidate with the largest number of votes in that district. This is called the plurality voting system (‘plurality’ meaning ‘largest number of votes’) – often called the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, because there is no prize for any runner-up, and no second round of voting (both of which feature in other electoral systems for the sake of increasing the proportionality of the outcomes). Plurality voting typically ‘over-represents’ the two largest parties, compared with the proportion of votes they receive.

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business climate, call centre, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, first-past-the-post, food desert, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, meme stock, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, Paris climate accords, pension reform, QAnon, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, statistical model, Steve Bannon, The Chicago School, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, young professional

He gambled that he could use the referendum to improve his negotiating leverage with the EU hierarchy in Brussels. Prior to 2016, the United Kingdom had held only two national referenda. The first, in 1975, was to confirm the country’s 1973 membership in the European Union in the first place. The second referendum focused on changing the British electoral system from “first-past-the-post” to an alternative voting system. This proposal was roundly rejected. The stakes were high for the third, given the daunting prospects of withdrawing from forty years of deeply entrenched formal economic and political relationships and trade networks. The Brexit, or “Leave,” referendum campaign followed a pattern similar to that of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Bali & Lombok Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, car-free, carbon footprint, clean water, first-past-the-post, Kickstarter, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, off-the-grid, retail therapy, Skype, spice trade, sustainable-tourism

BULL RACES The Negara region is famous for bull races, known as mekepung, which culminate in the Bupati Cup in Negara on the Sunday before 17 August, Indonesia's Independence Day. The racing animals are actually the normally docile water buffalo, which charge down a 2km stretch of road or beach pulling tiny chariots. Gaily clad riders stand or kneel on top of the chariots forcing the bullocks on. The winner is not necessarily first past the post – style also plays a part and points are awarded for the most elegant runner. There is much wagering on the results. Important races take place during the dry season on some Sundays from July to October. Races and practices are held at several sites around Perancak on the coast and elsewhere on Sunday mornings, including Delod Berawan and Mertasari.

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann

4chan, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-communist, anti-globalists, augmented reality, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Chelsea Manning, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Brooks, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, immigration reform, imperial preference, income inequality, it's over 9,000, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberal capitalism, longitudinal study, Lyft, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microaggression, moral panic, Nate Silver, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, open borders, open immigration, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, phenotype, postnationalism / post nation state, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Social Justice Warrior, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, the built environment, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transcontinental railway, twin studies, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, white flight, working-age population, World Values Survey, young professional

This despite the fact that the more moderate UK Independence Party (UKIP), also sceptical of immigration, secured 16.1 per cent. This was an early political bellwether of the rise in anti-immigration sentiment that had been building since 1997. Many scoffed that European elections were protest votes with low turnouts, hence poor indicators of what might happen in a high-participation, first-past-the-post national election. It’s certainly true that supply factors – campaign resources and a local infrastructure of volunteers – are critical for winning national elections. While campaigning is also important in elections to the European Parliament, the electoral units aren’t local while seats in the European Parliament are allocated on the basis of the popular vote.

Lonely Planet London City Guide by Tom Masters, Steve Fallon, Vesna Maric

Boris Johnson, British Empire, centre right, Charles Babbage, Clapham omnibus, congestion charging, Crossrail, dark matter, death from overwork, discovery of the americas, double helix, East Village, Edward Jenner, financial independence, first-past-the-post, Ford Model T, gentrification, ghettoisation, haute cuisine, Isaac Newton, James Bridle, John Snow's cholera map, Mahatma Gandhi, market design, Nelson Mandela, place-making, Russell Brand, South of Market, San Francisco, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, transatlantic slave trade, urban planning, urban renewal, Winter of Discontent, young professional

Critics point out, though, that despite the veneer of ecofriendly, liberal policies, the party remains utterly that of the establishment, with Cameron and much of his cabinet a product of Eton and Oxbridge. The only other major political party in the UK is the Liberal Democrats, who currently hold just 63 seats. Led by the young Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems are the established third party that always loses out to the first-past-the-post electoral system. While many see them as a credible alternative to the Tory–Labour double act (who have held power between them since 1922!), the reality of British electoral number crunching means that it’s extremely difficult for a third party to make a national impact. Despite this the Lib Dems wield much power in local government throughout the country.

The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 by Adam Tooze

anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, British Empire, centre right, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, credit crunch, failed state, fear of failure, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, Ford Model T, German hyperinflation, imperial preference, labour mobility, liberal world order, low interest rates, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, price stability, reserve currency, Right to Buy, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, the payments system, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, zero-sum game

Faced with the ‘degradation of this Parliament’ Ramsay MacDonald, who had lost his seat, despaired altogether of human nature.34 Lloyd George and his Tory partners had, it seemed, found a way to turn democracy into a vehicle for reaction. Lloyd George, the staunch opponent of the Boer War, stood accused of pandering to the basest instincts of nationalism. The sense of having been cheated was only amplified by the arbitrariness of Westminster’s first-past-the-post constituency system. Although Asquithians, Liberals and Labour gained more than one-third of the electorate, they won only one-eighth of the seats.35 But though this rankled, the vagaries of the Westminster system were predictable and they did not make the system inherently conservative. In 1906 it had given the Lib-Lab coalition a landslide.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

It also removes any incentive for a nation to obtain nuclear weapons to protect itself against an enemy’s nuclear weapons. But getting to zero will not be easy, even with a carefully phased sequence of negotiation, reduction, and verification.111 Some strategists warn that we shouldn’t even try to get to zero, because in a crisis the former nuclear powers might rush to rearm, and the first past the post might launch a pre-emptive strike out of fear that its enemy would do so first.112 According to this argument, the world would be better off if the nuclear grandfathers kept a few around as a deterrent. In either case, the world is very far from zero, or even “a few.” Until that blessed day comes, there are incremental steps that could bring the day closer while making the world safer.

State of Emergency: The Way We Were by Dominic Sandbrook

anti-communist, Apollo 13, Arthur Marwick, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, Bretton Woods, British Empire, centre right, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, Doomsday Book, edge city, estate planning, Etonian, falling living standards, fear of failure, Fellow of the Royal Society, feminist movement, financial thriller, first-past-the-post, fixed income, full employment, gentrification, German hyperinflation, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, mass immigration, meritocracy, moral panic, Neil Kinnock, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, North Sea oil, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, post-war consensus, sexual politics, traveling salesman, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Winter of Discontent, young professional

While the moderate parties – the Faulkner Unionists, the Alliance, the SDLP and Northern Ireland’s Labour Party – competed against one another for votes, the loyalist UUUC parties agreed to pool their resources and run one candidate in each constituency on the simple slogan ‘Dublin is Just a Sunningdale Away’. In some constituencies, the power-sharing candidates won more votes combined than their rejectionist opponent, but in a first-past-the-post system, that was no consolation. For when the votes were counted, the UUUC had swept the board, winning all but one of Northern Ireland’s twelve Westminster seats. Only in West Belfast, where the SDLP’s Gerry Fitt won a narow victory on the back of the heavy nationalist vote, was there a glimmer of light for the moderates.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, bread and circuses, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, California gold rush, Cass Sunstein, citation needed, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, Columbine, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, crack epidemic, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, delayed gratification, demographic transition, desegregation, Doomsday Clock, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, experimental subject, facts on the ground, failed state, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fudge factor, full employment, Garrett Hardin, George Santayana, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, global village, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, impulse control, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, McMansion, means of production, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mirror neurons, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Republic of Letters, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, security theater, Skinner box, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, technological determinism, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Turing machine, twin studies, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

A rogue state might support nuclear terrorists once it was sure that it would never be a target of retaliation. And in a world that lacked nuclear weapons but retained the knowledge of how to build them—and that genie certainly can’t be put back in the bottle—a crisis could set off a scramble to rearm, in which the first past the post might be tempted to strike preemptively before its adversary got the upper hand. Some experts on nuclear strategy, including Schelling, John Deutch, and Harold Brown, are skeptical that a nuclear-free world is attainable or even desirable, though others are working out timetables and safeguards designed to answer their objections.217 With all these uncertainties, no one should predict that nuclear weapons will go the way of poison gas anytime soon.