UCL Uncovering Politics
112 episodes - English - Latest episode: 30 days ago - ★★★★★ - 6 ratingsThe podcast of the School of Public Policy and the Department of Political Science at University College London. Through this podcast we plan to explore key themes of contemporary politics and spotlight some of the fantastic research that takes place within our department.
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Episodes
The UK Healthcare Crisis
March 21, 2024 08:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBThe NHS is currently in crisis: record numbers of people are on waiting lists, there are serious staff shortages, buildings and equipment are outdated, and research indicates that patient satisfaction is at rock bottom. There does not seem to be much optimism about the UK’s current health system and the NHS’s public support may be waning. Beyond clinical shortcomings, we face a string of public health challenges in the UK, including persistent health inequalities and a slowing or even halted...
Responding to Civilian Harm in Millitary Conflicts
March 14, 2024 08:00 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBArmed conflict is all too common around the world today. One of the consequences of conflict is that civilians are harmed. Military forces – if they respect basic moral and legal standards – seek to avoid those harms so far as they can. But sometimes they will fail in that. So how should armed forces and governments respond when they cause unintended harm to civilians? Well that is a question that the United States and its allies are thinking about very carefully at the moment. One of the ...
Responding to civilian harm in millitary conflicts
March 14, 2024 08:00 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBArmed conflict is all too common around the world today. One of the consequences of conflict is that civilians are harmed. Military forces – if they respect basic moral and legal standards – seek to avoid those harms so far as they can. But sometimes they will fail in that. So how should armed forces and governments respond when they cause unintended harm to civilians? Well that is a question that the United States and its allies are thinking about very carefully at the moment. One of the ...
Do Protests Affect What Politicians Say?
March 07, 2024 08:00 - 32 minutes - 30.2 MBProtest is a fundamental part of democracy. From thousands attending pro-Palestine marches in London, to farmers driving their tractors into Paris, Berlin, and Cardiff, to Just Stop Oil spraying UCL’s famous portico orange – protests are rarely out of the spotlight. But what do protests actually achieve? Do they affect political debate and policy outcomes? A new study sheds light on that, focusing on the impact of climate protests here in the UK on what MPs talk about – both in parliament ...
Do protests affect what politicians say?
March 07, 2024 08:00 - 32 minutes - 30.2 MBProtest is a fundamental part of democracy. From thousands attending pro-Palestine marches in London, to farmers driving their tractors into Paris, Berlin, and Cardiff, to Just Stop Oil spraying UCL’s famous portico orange – protests are rarely out of the spotlight. But what do protests actually achieve? Do they affect political debate and policy outcomes? A new study sheds light on that, focusing on the impact of climate protests here in the UK on what MPs talk about – both in parliament ...
Settling Disputes Between Governments and Investors
February 29, 2024 08:00 - 38 minutes - 35 MBIn the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the new Bolshevik regime, keen to destroy the power of global capital, expropriated the commanding heights of the Russian economy and repudiated a mountain of foreign debt incurred by the Tsar. That action left thousands of international investors out of pocket. But addressing their claims proved exceptionally hard. Only in 1986, in the era of Thatcher and Gorbachev, did the British and Soviet governments finally reach a settlement. Other Western p...
Death Threats and Online Content Moderation
February 22, 2024 08:00 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MBDeath threats, on the face it, appear to be exactly the sort of content that an online platform ought to censor – or ‘moderate’, as the preferred and obscuring term has it. Surely it is impermissible to threaten someone’s life and surely it is appropriate for online spaces like Facebook – or now Meta – to remove such speech. But what if the statement isn’t really an urge towards violence, nor a declaration of one’s intent to kill? Sometimes, when people make death threats, say to dictators...
Death threats and online content moderation
February 22, 2024 08:00 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MBDeath threats, on the face it, appear to be exactly the sort of content that an online platform ought to censor – or ‘moderate’, as the preferred and obscuring term has it. Surely it is impermissible to threaten someone’s life and surely it is appropriate for online spaces like Facebook – or now Meta – to remove such speech. But what if the statement isn’t really an urge towards violence, nor a declaration of one’s intent to kill? Sometimes, when people make death threats, say to dictators...
Managing Diversity Amongst the EU Member States
February 15, 2024 08:00 - 39 minutes - 35.8 MBFor around a decade, the EU – which was founded by the principles of freedom, democracy and the rule of law – has been struggling to contain anti-democratic developments in some member states. More broadly, the European Union faces a challenge of how to create unity, and yet accommodate the significant political, social, and economic diversity of its member states. Can it accommodate this diversity? And can it do so without risking being unfair or undermining its own legitimacy? Addressi...
The Battle for LGBT+ Rights
February 08, 2024 08:00 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBOne of the most remarkable transformations over recent decades has been the growing acceptance and celebration of LGBT+ rights. Here in the UK, for example, the proportion of respondents to the British Social Attitudes survey saying that same-sex relationships are not wrong at all has risen from just 11 per cent in 1987 to 67 per cent a generation later in 2022. Yet recent years have seen a backlash against such advances. Self-styled ‘family values’ movements have campaigned against the so-...
How Parliaments Question Prime Ministers
January 25, 2024 08:00 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBHow parliaments hold ministers (particularly prime ministers) to account is a fundamental part of parliamentary democracy. And one of those mechanisms of accountability involves asking questions. We take a good hard look at how – and how effectively – parliaments question prime ministers. We are joined by Dr Ruxandra Serban, Associate Lecturer in Democratic and Authoritarian Politics here in the UCL Department of Political Science. Her research focusess directly on parliamentary questioni...
The Future of Power-Sharing in Northern Ireland
January 11, 2024 16:30 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBPeace in Northern Ireland is widely recognised as one of the leading achievements of politics in recent decades. The Good Friday, or Belfast Agreement, reached in 1998 by the British and Irish governments and most of the main Northern Ireland political parties brought an end to thirty years of violent conflict in which over three and a half thousand people were killed. It did so in part by establishing a system of power-sharing government. A new Northern Ireland Assembly would be elected ...
Improving Public Services
December 14, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBThe quality of public services – whether health, education, water supply, or sewage disposal – has a big impact on all of our lives. How to enhance that quality is therefore one of the big questions for political studies. Professor Marc Esteve is one of the leading experts on exactly that issue. We have recorded this special episode of our podcast to coincide with his inaugural lecture as Professor of Public Management here in the UCL Department of Political Science. Mentioned in this ...
Russian Discourses of Sovereignty
December 07, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBAnalysts of Russia’s war in Ukraine have often – since its inception in 2014 – highlighted a seeming contradiction. On the one hand, Russia is violating the sovereignty of a neighbouring state in pursuit of its own interests. On the other, Russia simultaneously condemns Western interventions in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya, as well as Serbia back in 1999, on the basis that they breach the principle of non-interference in other states. So are Russian leaders just being inconsistent?...
Historical Research in Political Science
November 30, 2023 15:46 - 33 minutes - 31.1 MBPolitical science is centrally concerned with understanding how politics works. It’s a discipline of the present tense, and the bulk of our research focuses on gathering evidence in the here and now. But sometimes political scientists also dig into the past. From time to time, you’ll even find one of us trawling through the records in a dusty archive. We are discussing one particular ongoing example of historical research in political science - at prisoner-of-war camps in the UK in the imm...
Climate Change Loss and Damage
November 23, 2023 08:00 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBOur guest today is Professor Lisa Vanhala. A Professor in Political Science here at UCL and an expert on the politics of climate change. Lisa recently gave her inaugural lecture: Governing the End: The Making of Climate Change Loss and Damage, offering a fascinating insight into the way that UN meetings and negotiations over climate change get framed, and how they proceed, informed by the ideas of Goffman and Bourdieu. She also examines the ways that civil society organisations engage with...
'Acts of speech' and how people recieve them
November 16, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MBToday we are examining speech acts and uptake. A central contribution from J. L. Austin has been the idea that our speech sometimes doesn’t only say things – sometimes it does things. When we speak, we don’t only convey content or information. We sometimes also - for instance - promise, name, refuse, or order: in short, our speech sometimes acts. And that has prompted a great deal of philosophical debate over when speech acts are successfully performed, and whether that depends on the effec...
The Domestic Politics of IMF Lending
November 02, 2023 13:47 - 34 minutes - 31.7 MBThe book that we’re discussing in this episode suggests that IMF funding becomes a resource held by local leaders, which those leaders can use to benefit their own supporters to the detriment of the rest of the population. The book – called IMF Lending: Partisanship, Punishment, and Protest – has two authors, and we are joined by both of them. - Dr Rod Abouharb is Associate Professor in International Relations here in the UCL Department of Political Science. - Dr Bernhard Reinsberg is Rea...
The Politics of Migration
October 26, 2023 07:00 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MBImmigration is a hot political issue in many countries. Its economic and social costs and benefits are widely debated. The people who are most directly involved in it or affected by it are often highly vulnerable, meaning that policy debate ought to proceed with care and caution. Yet it’s often used as a political tool by one or other side, as campaigners fuel fears or animosities for their own ends. Our Migration Research Cluster is seeking to coordinate and promote evidence based work on ...
Fiscal Transparency And The Public Purse
October 19, 2023 07:00 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBDuring the recent pandemic, unprecedented public spending was required to help tackle the deadly disease and minimise its economic fallout. But faced with heightened uncertainty, rapidly changing conditions, and imperfect information, fiscal transparency was perhaps not at the forefront of politicians’ minds when making important public investment and spending decisions. Post-pandemic, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and on the edges of a recession, there is a greater desire to ...
Backyard Housing And The Dynamics Of Collective Action
October 12, 2023 07:00 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBMany people in South Africa live in very unsatisfactory so-called ‘backyard dwellings’. But few take part in collective action to improve their lot. Why not? This puzzle centres on the broader idea known to social scientists as the ‘collective action problem’, that people often struggle to work together to achieve a common goal, leading to suboptimal outcomes. This has long been explored by scholars and is ever-present in our lives: in explanations, for example, of low voter turnout, deplet...
Taking Offence
October 05, 2023 07:00 - 45 minutes - 42 MBThis week we welcome Dr Emily McTernan, co-host of this podcast, into the guest seat. Emily is talking about her new book, On Taking Offence. In it, she argues that taking offence is an important and often valuable response to affronts against our social standing, and that it deserves to be taken more seriously by scholars than it has been (and perhaps less seriously than it might be seen by some sections of society). Mentioned in this episode: On Taking Offence. Emily McTernan. UCL’s ...
The State of US Politics
June 29, 2023 07:00 - 34 minutes - 31.4 MBThe soap opera of US politics rolls on. Joe Biden – the first octogenarian president – plans to run again in 2024. So too does Donald Trump, despite a series of ongoing legal cases against him Beneath this surface, serious issues are at stake, around economic and climate policies, relations between the United States and China, the future stance of the US towards the war in Ukraine, and women’s rights and abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And there are major questions to ask about t...
Resisting Colonialism
June 22, 2023 07:00 - 36 minutes - 33.7 MBA common idea in academic theory and activism, as we start to move towards less unjust institutions, is that we need to decolonise things, from university curricula to museum collections. Following on from a brilliant event which took place last week at UCL, the UCL-Penn State Joint Conference on ‘Resisting Colonialism’, we are discussing these ideas with the three organisers. The conference ranged from discussions what to do about unpaid reparations, museum collections, and the monuments of...
Honouring the Career of Professor Albert Weale
June 15, 2023 07:00 - 36 minutes - 33 MBOur guest this week is Professor Albert Weale, Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Public Policy at UCL. Following an event honouring his career on his retirement, in this episode, we’re exploring Albert’s life and work as an academic. Over his career, Albert has published 20 books and more than 150 articles and book chapters on a diverse and impressive array of topics, from the politics of pollution, political legitimacy in the European Union and healthcare, to social contract theor...
The Impact of Banning Protests
June 08, 2023 10:36 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBGovernments in many countries have powers to authorize – or not authorize – planned demonstrations. So what are the effects of such decisions? We might think the main effects are going to be on whether the demonstrations happen or not, but new research suggests that the impacts can be much subtler than that: they influence whether the demonstrators gain public support, with knock-on consequences further down the line. The research, which will shortly be published in an article in the journa...
How Can We Fix Our Democracy?
June 01, 2023 07:00 - 39 minutes - 36.4 MBIn this episode we’re discussing elections, referenda, and how to fix our democracy, with none other than our long-time podcast host, Alan Renwick. In his inaugural lecture, Alan described democracy as rule for, and by, all, and suggested that the UK’s democratic system is falling short of that ideal. We discuss three suggested "fixes": electoral reform, improving citizen's access to reliable information, and the use of citizen's assemblies. One of the central commitments in Prof Alan Renwi...
Political Constitutionalism and Referendums: The Case of Brexit
May 25, 2023 07:00 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBThis week we welcome Professor Richard Bellamy back to the podcast. Richard has appeared twice before on the following topics: ‘Does the UK Still Have a Political Constitution’ (May 2021) and ‘Checks and Balances in Democracy’ (Oct 2020) Richard is Professor of Political Science at UCL. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and, this academic year, is also Visiting Professor of Ethics and Public Policy at the Hertie School, Berlin. Richard recently released a new paper, ‘Political Constitu...
Democracies and LGBTQ Rights
May 18, 2023 12:30 - 36 minutes - 33.5 MBA special episode coinciding with this week’s International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. It’s easy to assume that LGBTQ rights are more likely to advance in democracies than in non-democracies. Democracies are generally more open to diversity, and the countries with the strongest LGBTQ rights protection are democracies. But new work by Dr Samer Anabtawi, Lecturer in Comparative Politics here in the UCL Department of Political Science, suggests that we shouldn’t be so s...
Military Technology and Intelligent Warfare
May 11, 2023 07:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBDespite Putin’s expectation of a swift victory, over one year on from his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that country’s defenders are still fighting – and, indeed fighting back. One important area in which Ukraine has managed to stay ahead of Russia is in military technology. A new report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change examines the role of military technology in the Russia–Ukraine war, and considers the lessons that can be learnt from it. One of the authors, Dr Melanie...
What Can Democracies Learn From Dictatorships?
May 04, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBThis week we welcome a special guest who has direct experience at the sharp end of politics. Charles Dunst is a former foreign correspondent who has reported from many countries around the world, who is now deputy director of research & analytics at The Asia Group – a business advisory firm based in Washington, D.C. – and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an independent and bipartisan DC-based think tank. Charles has just published a new book, Defeati...
The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit
April 27, 2023 07:00 - 36 minutes - 33.3 MBThe last seven years in British politics have been tempestuous. The turmoil has had multiple causes: Covid, Putin’s attack on Ukraine, and Trussonomics among them. But the politics of much of the period has been dominated by Brexit: by a referendum on an ever so simple question, followed by years of wrangling over what the question meant and how the answer that voters gave to it should be interpreted and implemented. Much of that contest took place in parliament. Meaningful voters, indicativ...
Brexit and Northern Ireland
March 23, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutes - 34.7 MBIn 1998, after three decades of conflict, lasting peace was achieved in Northern Ireland through an accord variously known as the Good Friday Agreement or the Belfast Agreement. The 25th anniversary of that Agreement comes next month. Though there are problems – the institutions of power-sharing government established through the Agreement are currently suspended, and pockets of paramilitary violence remain – the settlement reached a quarter of a century ago has been strikingly successful ...
Do Higher Benefits Encourage Immigration?
March 16, 2023 12:04 - 30 minutes - 27.6 MBImmigration is back near the top of the political agenda, here in the UK and elsewhere. The UK government’s so-called ‘Stop the Boats Bill’, which targets those who cross the Channel in search of asylum, is one rather extreme manifestation of the idea that you can stop unwanted migration by making it unattractive. A wider expression of the same view is the concept of ‘benefit tourism’: the idea that migrants are more likely to come if welfare benefits are higher, and that and that you can th...
Do higher benefits encourage immigration?
March 16, 2023 12:04 - 30 minutes - 27.6 MBImmigration is back near the top of the political agenda, here in the UK and elsewhere. The UK government’s so-called ‘Stop the Boats Bill’, which targets those who cross the Channel in search of asylum, is one rather extreme manifestation of the idea that you can stop unwanted migration by making it unattractive. A wider expression of the same view is the concept of ‘benefit tourism’: the idea that migrants are more likely to come if welfare benefits are higher, and that and that you can th...
The Politics of Ordinary Hope
March 09, 2023 08:00 - 29 minutes - 26.6 MBThis week, we have a slightly different kind of episode to normal. Rather than discussing an academic publication, we’ll be looking at the ideas and career of Professor Marc Stears. Marc is currently the inaugural director of the UCL policy lab, set up to break down the barriers between academic researchers and broader society. His career to date has included stints in academia at Cambridge, Oxford and Macquaire, being the Chief Speechwriter of the Labour Party, writing major speeches for ...
The Politics of the European Court of Human Rights
March 02, 2023 08:00 - 29 minutes - 27.1 MBIf you managed to catch our episode last week, you’ll know that we were talking about the European Court of Justice. This week we are looking at another international court – the European Court of Human Rights. This court has long been contentious in some circles in the UK. The Conservative Party’s election manifesto in 2015 pledged to ‘break the formal link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights, and make our own Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights m...
The Politics of the European Court of Justice
February 23, 2023 08:00 - 31 minutes - 28.9 MBOne of the chief stumbling blocks in negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol has concerned the role of the EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice, and parts of the Conservative Party are ever agitated by the quite separate European Court of Human Rights and its role in adjudicating on human rights disputes. So we have made two episodes looking at these institutions, starting with this one. We’re focusing this week on the European Court of Justice. Joining us is Dr Michal Ová...
The Role of Praise
February 08, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutes - 30.3 MBAt first blush, it might seem obvious that praise is a good thing. It involves complimenting others on what they have done; it tends to make them feel good; and it’s a way for us to communicate insights about virtuous behaviour. But dig a little deeper and things are not always as they seem. Take an example from almost three years ago. A bright moment for many people in the first Covid lockdown was the weekly ‘clap for carers’, instigated to praise and give thanks to NHS workers and others ...
Twitter, the Online Safety Bill, and Free Speech
February 02, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutes - 29.4 MBTwo current news stories raise important questions about online speech, and how it should be regulated. First, twitter has been taken over by Elon Musk, who has slashed staff numbers, allowed previously barred users – not least, Donald Trump – to return, and pledged a new era of free speech and less regulation. Some claim that as a result, Twitter has seen a deluge of disinformation and hate speech. In the UK, meanwhile, the Online Safety Bill is making its way through parliament. This wa...
Democracy in the UK – with Gina Miller
January 26, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutes - 33.9 MBRegular listeners know that normally on this podcast we have conversations with our academic colleagues here at UCL. But this week we’re doing something a little bit different. In the first of what we hope will be an occasional series of episodes with real-world political actors, we’re discussing the state of democracy in the UK today – and what can be done about it – with the leader of a UK political party. That party is the True and Fair Party. And its leader is Gina Miller. UCL’s Depa...
The Precautionary State
January 20, 2023 17:14 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBAt a time of breakdown in our public health service, unaffordable childcare bills, and a cost of living crisis, questions over how our society should be governed, and what the state should provide, are pressing. Meanwhile, the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the vulnerabilities in the energy and food supply chains exposed by the war in Ukraine reveal, some think, state failure to plan ahead and make provision, just in case. One person who has thought long and hard about what funct...
War and Infant Mortality
January 12, 2023 08:00 - 30 minutes - 27.8 MBIt seems obvious that war harms civilian populations, not least children. But research can reveal much more about the nature and scale of those harms and perhaps also about what can be done about them. This week we’re focusing on a new study of the impact of war upon rates of infant mortality. The study is by Rod Abouharb, Associate Professor of International Relations here in the UCL Department of Political Science. Mentioned in this episode: Abouharb, M.R. 'War and infant mortality rate...
A Primer on House of Lords Reform
December 22, 2022 08:00 - 34 minutes - 31.9 MBProposals for reform of the UK’s House of Lords are in the news. In the wake of a report by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Labour leader and – if the polls are to be believed – likely future Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that he would abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a so-called Assembly of the Nations and Regions. This week Alan Renwick is joined by Meg Russell, Director of the UCL Constitution Unit and Professor of British and Comparative Politics in the UCL Dep...
LGBT+ Politics
December 15, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBThe transformation of LGBT+ lives in many societies has been one of the greatest advances of the last half century. Where previously there was criminalization and ostracism, today – often – there is inclusion and celebration. But this has not happened equally everywhere, or for all LGBT+ people. And in some places, and on some issues, there are strong counter-movements. This week we are joined by one of our newest colleagues at the UCL Department of Political Science: Phillip Ayoub, Profess...
Hypocrisy and Human Rights Around the World
December 08, 2022 08:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBHuman rights atrocities make headlines around the world and are usually followed by a national and international debate over how the perpetrators should be punished, and how these events might be prevented in the future. The government of the country where such human rights violations take place often comes under intense criticism and is pressured into creating processes of enquiry or passing legislation. And yet, often, little seems to change on the ground, and victims of human rights vi...
Hypocrisy and human rights around the world
December 08, 2022 08:00 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBHuman rights atrocities make headlines around the world and are usually followed by a national and international debate over how the perpetrators should be punished, and how these events might be prevented in the future. The government of the country where such human rights violations take place often comes under intense criticism and is pressured into creating processes of enquiry or passing legislation. And yet, often, little seems to change on the ground, and victims of human rights vi...
How Should Politicians’ Behaviour be Regulated?
November 24, 2022 11:26 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBQuestions about politicians’ behaviour have been high on the political agenda here in the UK in recent months and years. Boris Johnson’s premiership was dogged – and ultimately ended – by allegations that he was serially dishonest and tolerated bullying and other misconduct from his inner circle. Liz Truss sidelined independent sources of expertise and presided over catastrophic policy failure. And Rishi Sunak – though he entered Downing Street promising integrity, professionalism, and acc...
How should politicians’ behaviour be regulated?
November 24, 2022 11:26 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBQuestions about politicians’ behaviour have been high on the political agenda here in the UK in recent months and years. Boris Johnson’s premiership was dogged – and ultimately ended – by allegations that he was serially dishonest and tolerated bullying and other misconduct from his inner circle. Liz Truss sidelined independent sources of expertise and presided over catastrophic policy failure. And Rishi Sunak – though he entered Downing Street promising integrity, professionalism, and acc...
Global Tech Companies and the War in Ukraine
November 10, 2022 15:00 - 31 minutes - 28.6 MBRussia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year has created Europe’s largest refugee crisis in a generation and caused major disruption to the world’s economy and energy systems. In Ukraine itself, civilian life has been transformed and, in many cases, destroyed by the conflict. One notable dimension of the war has been the intervention of major tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and SpaceX. Through multiple rapid responses they have successfully inhibited Russia’s information warfa...