Patrick Cowley
Biographic Data
| ID | 984859 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patrick Cowley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patrick |
| FAMILY NAME | Cowley |
| SIGNATURE | COWLEY P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hull |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7202-7550 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 64 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 887 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 64 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1936 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Different Process, Same Outcome? The Problems of Within‐Party Sortition
A recent article in Political Quarterly argues for a ‘sortition of candidature’. We show that because political parties are not themselves socially representative, such a scheme would not result in a socially representative Parliament. Drawing on data from the Party Members Project, we show that while some demographic groups would be better represented than at present under within‐party sortition, in other ways, things would become less represent…
Long‐Term Time Horizons and Support for Public Investment
Generating public support for long‐term public investment may require understanding what citizens perceive as the “long term” in politics and how these perceptions shape their preferences. Across two studies, we find that UK citizens generally understand “long term” as 5–10 years. These perceptions appear to shape support for a real, salient, recent case of large‐scale public investment: the October 2024 UK budget. Study 1 shows that stating the …
An inexperienced parliament
Professor David Denver
Professor David Denver, who died in August 2024, made an outstanding contribution to the study of elections, public opinion and parties. \nThe legacy of his scholarly work is considerable, most obviously in his pioneering work on election campaigning. Experiments are now de rigueur in the discipline, but in 1970, Denver (along with John Bochel) conducted the first field experiment in British political science, demonstrating the electoral impact o…
Increasingly local: The regional roots of British Members of Parliament, 2010–2019
Drawing on data from four general elections between 2010 and 2019 this note shows that British MPs are increasingly likely to represent constituencies in the region of their birth. By 2019, more than half of British MPs were born in the region in which their constituency sat. We find clear partisan differences, but no overall gender divide. There is also a clear centre-periphery divide. The less local nature of current older cohort in the Commons…
Legislator Dissent Does Not Affect Electoral Outcomes
Are there electoral consequences or benefits for legislators who deviate from the party line? We answer this question with data from individual-level vote choice and constituency-level electoral results in the UK for the last two decades. Exploring the variations in voting patterns over time with a panel-regression approach, we find results that are most compatible with the null hypothesis, that is, that dissent by legislators is neither rewarded…
How to Get Information Out of Members of Parliament (Without Being Told Off by the Speaker)
Based on experience of over 1000 interviews with British members of parliament, this article explains why members of parliament are difficult to get access to; offers tips to gain access to them, as well as ideas for how to get the most of out of them once they have agreed. It sets out one Golden Rule of dealing with political elites and also discusses the problems of attempting surveys
The Death of May’s Law: Intra- and Inter-Party Value Differences in Britain’s Labour and Conservative Parties
Party competition in Great Britain increasingly revolves around social or ‘cultural’ issues as much as it does around the economic issues that took centre stage when class was assumed to be dominant. We use data from surveys of members of parliament, party members and voters to explore how this shift has affected the internal coalitions of the Labour and Conservative Parties – and to provide a fresh test of ‘May’s Law’. We find a considerable dis…
What's in a Name? The Length of Westminster Constituency Titles, 1950–2024
Parliamentary constituencies in the UK are named after the areas they cover. Over the last seventy years, the titles given to these constituencies have been getting longer and more cumbersome. They are now less likely to consist of single words and are more likely to be compounds of multiple places. The article demonstrates these changes, including the differences across the constituent nations of the UK, and discusses the possible reasons for th…
Getting Better, Slowly. Ethnicity, Gender and Party in London's Local Government
This article reports black and Asian descriptive representation in London's elected local government. In both absolute and relative terms, the levels of descriptive representation are higher than previously, and London's Asian population is now represented proportionately, although black Londoners remain under‐represented. Such aggregate levels of representation, however, mask considerable disparities between the two groups in many instances. The…
Why Friends and Neighbors? Explaining the Electoral Appeal of Local Roots
Why do politicians with strong local roots receive more electoral support? The mechanisms underlying this well-documented “friends and neighbors” effect remain largely untested. Drawing on two population-based survey experiments fielded in Britain, we provide the first experimental test of a commonly posited cue-based explanation, which argues that voters use politicians’ local roots (descriptive localism) to make inferences about politicians’ li…
Legislator Dissent as a Valence Signal
Existing research suggests that voters tend to respond positively to legislator independence due to two types of mechanism. First, dissent has an indirect effect, increasing a legislator’s media coverage and personal recognition among constituents (profile effects). Secondly, constituents react positively to dissent when this signals that the legislator has matching political or representational preferences (conditional evaluation). This article …
The impact of parental status on the visibility and evaluations of politicians
In increasingly personalised electoral contests, voters use evaluations of candidates’ personal characteristics in their vote decisions, and candidates deploy personal information about themselves which they believe convey a positive message in their communications with voters. We expand the study of candidate characteristics to include parental status, examining the public’s view of politicians with and without children and the behaviour of poli…
Modes of UK Executive–Legislative Relations Revisited
Anthony King's 1976 article ‘Modes of executive–legislative relations: Great Britain, France and West Germany’ is a classic in legislative studies. It argued that it is simplistic to analyse relations between ‘the executive’ and ‘the legislature’ in parliamentary systems, because parliaments are complex organisations comprised of competing actors. Instead, we must consider the various ‘modes’ through which these actors can interact to challenge t…
Candidate localness and voter choice in the 2015 General Election in England
Attitudes to Moonlighting Politicians: Evidence from the United Kingdom
Research has explored the impact of politicians holding second jobs, or moonlighting, on their performance and recruitment, but less is known about how citizens respond to such behavior. Citizens may react negatively to Members of Parliament (MPs) moonlighting, viewing outside earnings as a conflict of interest or a distraction, or instead they might view MPs with second incomes positively, seeing them as a connection with the “real world” beyond…
British General Election Of 2015
This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137366115. It has been reproduced with with permission of Palgrave Macmillan
The Effect of Teaching Parliamentary Studies on Students' Knowledge and Attitudes: A Pilot Study
The Westminster Parliament has recently invested considerable resource in developing a series of ‘Parliamentary Studies’ modules throughout British universities. But what difference does the teaching of Parliament make to students' understanding of the institution? In this pilot study, the results of a series of questions about the institution (both factual and attitudinal) which are asked at the beginning of the module are compared with the resu…
The Policy Power of the Westminster Parliament: The "Parliamentary State" and the Empirical Evidence
Drawing on several large research projects, and using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, this article assesses the policy influence of the W estminster parliament. Frequently dismissed as powerless in both academic and more popular accounts, we instead show evidence of an institution with significant policy influence, at successive stages of the policy process. Conventional accounts have focused too much on the decision-making stage, to …
The representation of women in politics, addressing the supply side: Public attitudes to job-sharing parliamentarians
In the Brown Stuff: Labour Backbench Dissent Under Gordon Brown, 2007–10
Based on examination of the division records and elite-level interviewing, this article examines the nature of backbench dissent in the House of Commons during the government of Gordon Brown, covering its range and scope, the composition of those defying their whip, as well as placing it in its political context. It reveals a high level of rebellion by Labour MPs—higher than that seen in any previous post-war Parliament—along with showing the deg…
Rebellion Versus Loyalty, Shirking Versus Working: A Note on Framing Parliamentary Behaviour
In this research note we utilise online survey experiments to test framing effects on evaluations of elected politicians’ behaviour. We find that responses to descriptions of hypothetical British Members of Parliaments' behaviour are influenced by negativity bias; logically equivalent behaviours have variable impacts on evaluations depending on their presentation. In an era of open data, where institutions are increasingly packaging up informatio…
What Voters Want: Reactions to Candidate Characteristics in a Survey Experiment
There has been extensive research into the extent to which voters utilise short cuts based on gender and race stereotypes when evaluating candidates, but relatively little is known about how they respond to other background characteristics. We compare the impact of candidates' sex, religion, age, education, occupation and location/residence through a survey experiment in which respondents rate two candidates based on short biographies. We find sm…
Descriptive Representation and Political Trust: A Quasi-natural Experiment Utilising Ignorance
This note investigates the claim that descriptive representation can have symbolic benefits. Using data from Great Britain, it uses the opportunity provided by the ignorance of voters about their legislative institutions to examine the effect of different perceptions of the scale of group representation. It tests whether there is a relationship between estimates of the scale of women's political representation and political trust/satisfaction. It…
Why not ask the audience? Understanding the public's representational priorities
What Voters Want: Reactions to Candidate Characteristics in a Survey Experiment
There has been extensive research into the extent to which voters utilise short cuts based on gender and race stereotypes when evaluating candidates, but relatively little is known about how they respond to other background characteristics. We compare the impact of candidates' sex, religion, age, education, occupation and location/residence through a survey experiment in which respondents rate two candidates based on short biographies. We find sm…
Too Spineless to Rebel? New Labour's Women MPs
The 1997 British general election saw a record 120 women returned to the House of Commons, 101 of them Labour. Yet if the most striking feature of the 1997 intake into the House of Commons was the number of newly elected women, then the most striking feature of the backbench rebellions in that parliament was the lack of these women amongst the ranks of the rebels. They were less than half as likely to rebel against the party whip as the rest of t…
The Politics of Local Presence: Is there a Case for Descriptive Representation
The case for greater descriptive representation of groups such as women and ethnic minorities has become widely, though not wholly, accepted in much of the academic literature and in the ‘real world’ of politics in most advanced democracies. In the UK the goal of greater descriptive representation of women has often become framed as a zero-sum game against men, especially local men, with consequences for the descriptive representation of women. T…
Legislator Dissent as a Valence Signal
Existing research suggests that voters tend to respond positively to legislator independence due to two types of mechanism. First, dissent has an indirect effect, increasing a legislator’s media coverage and personal recognition among constituents (profile effects). Secondly, constituents react positively to dissent when this signals that the legislator has matching political or representational preferences (conditional evaluation). This article …
Why Friends and Neighbors? Explaining the Electoral Appeal of Local Roots
Why do politicians with strong local roots receive more electoral support? The mechanisms underlying this well-documented “friends and neighbors” effect remain largely untested. Drawing on two population-based survey experiments fielded in Britain, we provide the first experimental test of a commonly posited cue-based explanation, which argues that voters use politicians’ local roots (descriptive localism) to make inferences about politicians’ li…
The Policy Power of the Westminster Parliament: The "Parliamentary State" and the Empirical Evidence
Drawing on several large research projects, and using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, this article assesses the policy influence of the W estminster parliament. Frequently dismissed as powerless in both academic and more popular accounts, we instead show evidence of an institution with significant policy influence, at successive stages of the policy process. Conventional accounts have focused too much on the decision-making stage, to …
Candidate localness and voter choice in the 2015 General Election in England
Why not ask the audience? Understanding the public's representational priorities
Sodomy, Slaughter, Sunday Shopping and Seatbelts: Free Votes in the House of Commons, 1979 to 1996
This report analyses the cohesion of British parliamentary parties over a range of `free' votes - votes on which the party managers gave no instructions - between 1979 and 1996. British parties are usually highly cohesive, and this is often attributed to strict party management by the party `whips', who are said to bully MPs into line. But this report shows that high levels of party discipline exist even when the whips are `off'. Even on moral is…
The British Conservative Party and Europe: The Choosing of John Major
This article provides an empirical analysis of voting behaviour in the second ballot of the 1990 Conservative leadership contest that resulted in John Major becoming party leader and prime minister. Seven hypotheses of voting behaviour are generated from the extant literature relating voting to socio-economic variables (occupational and educational background), political variables (parliamentary experience, career status, age and electoral margin…
Rebels and Rebellions: Conservative MPs in the 1992 Parliament
During the 1992 Parliament the Conservative Party lost its reputation for unity. The parliamentary party, said by some to be unusually rebellious, got the blame. This article places the levels of dissent in the division lobbies of the House of Commons in historical perspective, comparing the 1992 Parliament with those before. Contrary to received wisdom, Conservative MPs were not noticeably more rebellious after 1992. The article also considers t…
Rich Man, Poor Man, Politician Man: Wealth Effects in a Candidate Biography Survey Experiment
Research Highlights and Abstract We show that voters are sensitive to the relative wealth of election candidates. As candidates' earnings increase, so their popularity declines. Wealth is an especial negative for women, for working class respondents and for Labour and Lib Dem respondents. Conservative respondents are less put off by wealthy candidates, although they draw a sharper distinction between the source of income than others. This article…
Arise, Novice Leader! The Continuing Rise of the Career Politician in Britain
In late 2010 the leaders of the major British political parties were the most inexperienced of the post-war era. This short article discusses this development. It shows how unusual this is, comparing the leaders of 2010 to their post-war predecessors. It demonstrates that this development is unlikely to be some fluke, before considering the causes of the transformation, which it suggests can be attributed to two things: the changes in the electio…
Peasants' Uprising or Religious War? Re-examining the 1975 Conservative Leadership Contest
This article analyses the nature of the support given to the candidates in the 1975 Conservative leadership contest, in which Margaret Thatcher replaced Edward Heath. In contrast to the orthodox account of the contest – which interprets it as largely non-ideological – the article argues that there were clear ideological forces at work. The right strongly supported Thatcher in both rounds; the left strongly backed Heath and then Whitelaw. Region, …
The Death of May’s Law: Intra- and Inter-Party Value Differences in Britain’s Labour and Conservative Parties
Party competition in Great Britain increasingly revolves around social or ‘cultural’ issues as much as it does around the economic issues that took centre stage when class was assumed to be dominant. We use data from surveys of members of parliament, party members and voters to explore how this shift has affected the internal coalitions of the Labour and Conservative Parties – and to provide a fresh test of ‘May’s Law’. We find a considerable dis…
Modes of UK Executive–Legislative Relations Revisited
Anthony King's 1976 article ‘Modes of executive–legislative relations: Great Britain, France and West Germany’ is a classic in legislative studies. It argued that it is simplistic to analyse relations between ‘the executive’ and ‘the legislature’ in parliamentary systems, because parliaments are complex organisations comprised of competing actors. Instead, we must consider the various ‘modes’ through which these actors can interact to challenge t…
The Cambusters: The Conservative European Union Referendum Rebellion of October 2011
The backbench rebellion that hit the Coalition government in October 2011 was one of the largest Commons revolts of the postwar era, on any issue. But it was not just its size that was noteworthy. This article outlines ten points about the origins of the vote, its timing, its composition, and the nature of the divisions it revealed. Facilitated by recent procedural innovations in the Commons, the rebellion was both evidence of a longer‐term rise …
Votes at 16? The case against
Descriptive Representation and Political Trust: A Quasi-natural Experiment Utilising Ignorance
This note investigates the claim that descriptive representation can have symbolic benefits. Using data from Great Britain, it uses the opportunity provided by the ignorance of voters about their legislative institutions to examine the effect of different perceptions of the scale of group representation. It tests whether there is a relationship between estimates of the scale of women's political representation and political trust/satisfaction. It…
Unbridled passions? Free votes, issues of conscience and the accountability of British members of parliament
Certain issues in British politics are known as issues of 'conscience'. It is usual for such issues to be dealt with by a free vote in the House of Commons. Such votes used to occur mainly on private members' bills, although it is now more common for the Commons to resolve issues of conscience by using legislation brought forward by the government (with private members' bills being used either in the earlier stages of campaigning or to enact unco…
Attitudes to Moonlighting Politicians: Evidence from the United Kingdom
Research has explored the impact of politicians holding second jobs, or moonlighting, on their performance and recruitment, but less is known about how citizens respond to such behavior. Citizens may react negatively to Members of Parliament (MPs) moonlighting, viewing outside earnings as a conflict of interest or a distraction, or instead they might view MPs with second incomes positively, seeing them as a connection with the “real world” beyond…
In the Brown Stuff: Labour Backbench Dissent Under Gordon Brown, 2007–10
Based on examination of the division records and elite-level interviewing, this article examines the nature of backbench dissent in the House of Commons during the government of Gordon Brown, covering its range and scope, the composition of those defying their whip, as well as placing it in its political context. It reveals a high level of rebellion by Labour MPs—higher than that seen in any previous post-war Parliament—along with showing the deg…
How to Get Information Out of Members of Parliament (Without Being Told Off by the Speaker)
Based on experience of over 1000 interviews with British members of parliament, this article explains why members of parliament are difficult to get access to; offers tips to gain access to them, as well as ideas for how to get the most of out of them once they have agreed. It sets out one Golden Rule of dealing with political elites and also discusses the problems of attempting surveys
The impact of parental status on the visibility and evaluations of politicians
In increasingly personalised electoral contests, voters use evaluations of candidates’ personal characteristics in their vote decisions, and candidates deploy personal information about themselves which they believe convey a positive message in their communications with voters. We expand the study of candidate characteristics to include parental status, examining the public’s view of politicians with and without children and the behaviour of poli…
In Place of Strife? The PLP in Government, 1997–2001
After entering government in 1997, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) acquired a reputation for acquiescence. This article attempts to answer two related questions. Was this an accurate picture of the PLP under Blair? And if so, what explained it? The number of back-bench revolts was certainly low. Excluding the short parliaments of 1964 and February 1974, we have to go back to 1955 to find a parliament with fewer rebellions by government back …
Manuductio ad Cœlum”—A Forgotten Classic
"Are We "Harmless
Marginality, Mortality and Majority: The Effect of by-Elections on Government Majorities
The possible effect of by-elections on this Government, and future governments with small majorities, is considered, concentrating on by-elections forced on governments through the death of their MPs. Based on the current age structure of the Conservative party in parliament and previous mortality rates among MPs, it is speculated that the Government will have had seven by-elections forced on it by the next election. More serious problems exist f…
Parliament and the poll tax: A case study in parliamentary pressure
Using interviews with Conservative MPs, three aspects of the Poll Tax not covered by the extant literature are examined. Conservative backbenchers are shown to be more supportive of the tax than in previous accounts. The nature and effect of both the legal and non‐legal protests against the Poll Tax are discussed. The effect of petitioning is found to be minor, but the amount and (especially) the nature of post which MPs received had more impact.…
Whither the ‘new role’ in policy making? Conservative MPs in standing committees, 1979 to 1992
Examining the behaviour of Conservative MPs in 5,306 standing committee divisions between 1979 and 1992, this article determines whether the Commons' 'new role' in policy making, identified by Schwarz in 1980, survived the Thatcher years and Major months. One hundred and forty five Conservative MPs cast 684 dissenting votes in 103 bills, inflicting 56 defeats spread over 29 bills. (A further 11 defeats occurred without Conservative dissent.) The …
The Mystery of the Third Hurdle: Re-Electing the Conservative Leader
This article examines one aspect of the contests for the leadership of the British Conservative Party: the ‘third’ hurdle. Since the introduction of formal elections no Conservative leader has been tripped up by the third hurdle (a need to win ‘convincingly’) but this has not prevented its existence as being taken as fact. This article considers whether it exists at all, and if so, attempts to consider its height. It concludes that if the third h…
The wild mammals (protection) bill: A parliamentary white elephant
Examining one unsuccessful private members’ bill (PMB) ‐ Kevin McNamara's Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill which would have prohibited hunting ‐ this case study examines many of the non‐legislative functions of the British Parliament. Even unsuccessful PMBs ‐ and this was a PMB whose failure was preordained ‐ have many consequences for both parliament and the wider political system of which it is an integral part. PMBs can perform an important ‘exi…
Peers' Careers: Ministers in the House of Lords, 1964–95
Ministers in the Lords are an important and overlooked part of the British executive. This article examines who they are, what careers they have, and speculates about careers in a reformed upper chamber. It finds intra-party differences in the type of peer employed as ministers and in previous education but not (greatly) in previous occupation, concluding that ministers in the Lords remain part of a social élite. The effect of gender is also exam…
Sodomy, Slaughter, Sunday Shopping and Seatbelts: Free Votes in the House of Commons, 1979 to 1996
This report analyses the cohesion of British parliamentary parties over a range of `free' votes - votes on which the party managers gave no instructions - between 1979 and 1996. British parties are usually highly cohesive, and this is often attributed to strict party management by the party `whips', who are said to bully MPs into line. But this report shows that high levels of party discipline exist even when the whips are `off'. Even on moral is…
Introduction: The British general election of 1997
(1998). Introduction: The British general election of 1997. British Elections & Parties Review: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1-8
Reference Section
Unbridled passions? Free votes, issues of conscience and the accountability of British members of parliament
Certain issues in British politics are known as issues of 'conscience'. It is usual for such issues to be dealt with by a free vote in the House of Commons. Such votes used to occur mainly on private members' bills, although it is now more common for the Commons to resolve issues of conscience by using legislation brought forward by the government (with private members' bills being used either in the earlier stages of campaigning or to enact unco…
Rebels and Rebellions: Conservative MPs in the 1992 Parliament
During the 1992 Parliament the Conservative Party lost its reputation for unity. The parliamentary party, said by some to be unusually rebellious, got the blame. This article places the levels of dissent in the division lobbies of the House of Commons in historical perspective, comparing the 1992 Parliament with those before. Contrary to received wisdom, Conservative MPs were not noticeably more rebellious after 1992. The article also considers t…
The absence of war? New Labour in parliament
Reference Section
Ambassadors in the Community? Labour Party Members in Society
A political party's members are its ambassadors in the wider community. Based on a survey of Labour party members in Nuneaton, this article investigates the extent to which party members qua party members are visible amongst their friends and colleagues. It finds that there are few closet Labour party members. Most are known to friends and (slightly less commonly) colleagues. Party members also articulate a political message, discussing politics …
Reference Section
Mr Blair's loyal opposition? The liberal democrats in parliament
(2000). Mr Blair's loyal opposition? The liberal democrats in parliament. British Elections & Parties Review: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 100-116
British Parliamentarians and European Integration: A Re-Examination of the MPP Data
This note re-examines the survey data gathered by the Members of Parliament Project (MPP) on the attitudes of British parliamentarians towards European integration. Central to the analysis of the MPP is the idea that within the parties there is at work a dramatic cohort effect: long-serving Labour MPs are Eurosceptic, but the more recently elected Labour MPs are pro-European; whilst long-serving Conservative MPs are pro-European, but the more rec…
The British Conservative Party and Europe: The Choosing of John Major
This article provides an empirical analysis of voting behaviour in the second ballot of the 1990 Conservative leadership contest that resulted in John Major becoming party leader and prime minister. Seven hypotheses of voting behaviour are generated from the extant literature relating voting to socio-economic variables (occupational and educational background), political variables (parliamentary experience, career status, age and electoral margin…
AMS in a cold climate: The scottish parliament in practice
The process of devolution in the UK has already provided an abundance of riches for psephologists. A range of new elections to examine ‐ all with different electoral systems ‐ was almost too good to be true. Now that the legislatures are up and running, attention can turn to how the institutions function in practice ‐ and what this can tell us about the way PR works in practice in the UK. Based on roll call data and a survey of Members of the Sco…
Peasants' Uprising or Religious War? Re-examining the 1975 Conservative Leadership Contest
This article analyses the nature of the support given to the candidates in the 1975 Conservative leadership contest, in which Margaret Thatcher replaced Edward Heath. In contrast to the orthodox account of the contest – which interprets it as largely non-ideological – the article argues that there were clear ideological forces at work. The right strongly supported Thatcher in both rounds; the left strongly backed Heath and then Whitelaw. Region, …
Voting in the Scottish parliament: The first year
The Observer: Good at Observing, Less Good at Influencing
The 1997 British General Election appeared to show a clear-cut case of the media influencing electoral behaviour. In an attempt to facilitate anti-Conservative tactical voting The Observer published the results of 16 constituency-level opinion polls. The newspaper is frequently seen as influential in determining the outcome in certain seats, where several high-profile members of the then Conservative government were defeated. In fact The Observer…
What a Ridiculous Thing to Say! (Which is Why We didn't Csay it): A Response to Timothy Heppell
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