Commentators suggest that the UK is entering a period in which general election results are unlikely to produce a clear winner. In such a situation, how and where the constituency boundaries are drawn is crucial, as different configurations of seats in particular places could have a significant impact on an election outcome. Although those configurations are recommended to Parliament by non-partisan Boundary Commissions, research has shown that Labour has been significantly advantaged by their recent proposals because they incorporated the equivalents of two well-known American electoral abuses – malapportionment and gerrymandering. This article illustrates how and why they have operated and discusses how the Conservatives’ failed attempt to remove one of them (malapportionment) and influence the other (gerrymandering) might have impacted on its position prior to the 2015 general election.

Memories of wrongdoings are often viewed as an obstacle to reconciliation in divided societies. Is it due to the past or the present politics of the past? To examine the dilemma of essentialism versus presentism, this article investigates the impact of transitional justice on memories of wrongdoing. It theorizes that using different transitional justice strategies to deal with the same wrongdoing shapes memories in different ways. The theory is tested via vignette-based surveys in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which adopted distinct lustration laws. The results show that wrongdoing is viewed through lustration laws, reflecting present power constellations, not history.

The focus on female MPs and leftist and feminist issues in traditional studies of women's substantive representation has supported the overall conclusion that women, feminists and left-wing parties promote women's interests in parliament. But our analysis of the ‘critical actors’ in women's substantive representation in 10 European countries confirms this finding only to a certain extent. Our inductive research design reveals an important group of less obvious actors: non-left, non-feminist and male MPs. That they speak out on behalf of women points to the necessity of revisiting our theories on women's substantive representation.

In this article, we examine the structure of party competition in Italy in the February 2013 elections. We rely on the spatial approach to party competition to analyse the most salient dimensions of the policy space in the Italian context. Our analysis is based on quantitative estimates from expert survey data. These data highlight the salience of the socioeconomic policy dimension and capture the change in the importance of the EU dimension. Finally, this study provides an analysis of potential coalition governments in the aftermath of the 2013 general election that is grounded on the spatial approach to coalition formation.

The current research examines the ability of legislators to be re-elected through fulfilling their three roles: legislation, oversight and representation. This study also re-examines Mayhew's claim (1974) that most legislators are motivated by a desire to be re-elected, and that this desire drives their legislative activity through its utility in advertising, credit claiming and position taking. We argue that the skills required for selection and re-election are different from those required for enacting legislation. Thus, we distinguish between two types of legislators – those who are electable and those who are successful in the legislature.

In the past few years, a number of civil society coalitions have emerged in the illiberal city-state of Singapore. They are the unintended result of a controlled process of liberalization which was initiated by the government in the 1990s in response to growing demands for participation. In particular, the internet has contributed to a more assertive, independent and better organized civil society, which can be seen as a significant step in the process of political change in the city-state.