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Toby Samuel James (born 1979), is a professor of political science and public policy at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. James is known for his work on the fairness and integrity of elections, but also on political leadership and the policy process. [1] He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Policy Studies.
James was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of York, and worked at the Library of Congress, University of Swansea, and University of Sydney, before joining the University of East Anglia.
James wrote his first book, Elite Statecraft and Election Administration, on the politics of how elections are run. Writing about the history of reform in the UK, Ireland and the US, he argued that politicians often try to reform how elections are run to maximise political interest, but this would depend on whether nature of the political system. [2]
James' second main work focused on electoral management - how elections are organised and delivered. In Comparative Electoral Management electoral management was defined as the study of: 'the organisations, networks, resources, micro anthropological working practices and instruments involved in implementing elections'. The book then provided a method for assessing the delivery of elections, a new method for identifying who was responsible for running elections and the ways in which running elections could be improved. [3]
James has commonly drawn from and re-developed statecraft theory. He published books with former Labour minister Charles Clarke about former UK party leaders using the approach. His work involved interviewing leaders such as Tony Blair, Nick Clegg and William Hague to assess the theory, which were serialised in British newspapers [4] before the analysis was published in an academic journal.
Toby James has been proactive in using research to influence policy to try to improve the integrity of elections. He was the founding adviser to the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation, which he worked to establish with Bite the Ballot. [5] James was co-author of the Missing Millions report in 2016 on voter registration which was influential in shaping government policy and debate about voter registration. The Minister of State at the time, Chris Skidmore, said that the report would 'go down in history as helping to evolve the UK's electoral registration system.' [5] A second edition of the report was published in 2019 making the case for further voter registration reform.
He was a prominent critic of the UK government’s plans to introduce voter identification requirements in Britain. [6]
At the international level he was the co-founding co-convenor of the Electoral Management Network in 2016 which has brought together practitioners and academics from around the world in several high-profile conferences. He later became co-Director of the Electoral Integrity Project in 2021.
New Labour is a period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid to late 1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto which was published in 1996 and titled New Labour, New Life for Britain. It was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. The branding was extensively used while the party was in government between 1997 and 2010. New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland and the leadership of Blair and Brown as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' Third Way which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. Mark Bevir argues that another motivation for the creation of New Labour was as a response to the emergence of the New Right in the preceding decades. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equality of opportunity and believed in the use of markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice.
Hilary Jane Armstrong, Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top, is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for North West Durham from 1987 to 2010.
In a first-past-the-post electoral system ; formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts, or (informally) choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting or score voting), voters cast their vote for a candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. FPTP is a plurality voting method, and is primarily used in systems that use single-member electoral divisions. FPTP is used as the primary form of allocating seats for legislative elections in about a third of the world's countries, mostly in the English-speaking world. The phrase is a metaphor from British horse racing, where there is a post at the finish line.
Charles Rodway Clarke is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Norwich South from 1997 until 2010, and served as Home Secretary from December 2004 until May 2006.
Anthony John Colman is a British politician and businessman who served as the Labour Member of Parliament for Putney from 1997 to 2005.
Michael Dunlop Young, Baron Young of Dartington, was a British sociologist, social activist and politician who coined the term "meritocracy". He was an urbanist of different dimensions such as academic researcher, polemicist and institution-builder.
Giles Heneage Radice, Baron Radice, PC is a Labour member of the House of Lords. He was previously a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1973 to 2001.
The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) is an independent campaigning organisation based in the United Kingdom which promotes electoral reform. It seeks to replace the first-past-the-post voting system with one of proportional representation, advocating the single transferable vote. It is the world's oldest operating organisation concerned with political and electoral reform.
Labour Students was a student organisation within the Labour Party of the United Kingdom. It was a network of affiliated college and university clubs, known as Labour Clubs, who campaigned in their campuses and communities for Labour's values of equality and social justice.
In the United Kingdom, the Electoral Commission is the national election commission, created in 2001 as a result of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. It is an independent agency that regulates party and election finance and sets standards for how elections should be run.
The Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform (LCER) is an organisation formed of members and supporters of the British Labour Party, seeking to persuade the party to adopt in its manifesto a commitment to proportional representation in all UK elections.
Local government elections took place in England (only) on Thursday 4 May 2006. Polling stations were open between 7:00 and 22:00.
Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Politics consists of "social relations involving authority or power. The definition of "politics" from "The Free Dictionary" is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power. Politics study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behavior, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance.
Roger John Liddle, Baron Liddle is a British political adviser and consultant who is principally known for being Special Adviser on European matters to the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. He also worked together with Peter Mandelson on books outlining the political philosophy of the Labour Party under Blair's leadership. He is the co-chair of the international think tank Policy Network and was Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lancaster until 2020.
There are five types of elections in the United Kingdom: elections to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elections to devolved parliaments and assemblies, local elections, mayoral elections and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. Within each of those categories, there may also be by-elections. Elections are held on Election Day, which is conventionally a Thursday and under the provisions of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 the timing of general elections can be held at the discretion of the Prime Minister during any five year period. All other types of elections are held after fixed periods, though early elections to the devolved assemblies and parliaments can occur in certain situations. The five electoral systems used are: the single member plurality system (first-past-the-post), the multi-member plurality system, the single transferable vote, the additional member system and the supplementary vote.
The United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum, also known as the UK-wide referendum on the Parliamentary voting system was held on Thursday 5 May 2011 in the United Kingdom (UK) to choose the method of electing MPs at subsequent general elections. It occurred as a provision of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement drawn up in 2010 and also indirectly in the aftermath of the 2009 expenses scandal. It operated under the provisions of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and was the first national referendum to be held under provisions laid out in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
The Southern Discomfort pamphlets were a series of studies by Labour MP Giles Radice, published by the Labour-affiliated think tank the Fabian Society that examined attitudes towards the party in the south of England after the 1992 general election defeat. The studies found that voters in marginal constituencies were concerned about Labour's lack of economic credibility and feared that their taxes would increase if party leader Neil Kinnock had won the election. The pamphlets were influential in underscoring the need for Labour to appeal to "C1" and "C2" (skilled) voters. The title is a reference to Southern Comfort, a well-known American liqueur. It had been widely expected that Labour would form a government as a result of the 1992 election. However, John Major unexpectedly led the Conservative Party to a fourth successive majority. At the next election in 1997, new Labour leader Tony Blair won a landslide victory, including in the southern areas identified by the pamphlets.
The Electoral Integrity Project is an academic project based at Royal Military College of Canada and the University of East Anglia which seeks to quantify the integrity of elections worldwide. The project freely publishes its Perceptions of Electoral Integrity dataset for scholarly use. The most recent data release covers 285 elections in 164 countries from mid 2012 to the end of 2017. It is directed by Holly Ann Garnett and Toby S. James. It was founded by Pippa Norris.
Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded as the Brexit Party in November 2018, endorsing hard Euroscepticism, and was renamed on 6 January 2021 after Brexit, becoming primarily an anti-lockdown party. The party was founded by Nigel Farage and Catherine Blaiklock with the stated purpose of advocating for Brexit. Before the UK's withdrawal from the European Union (EU), the party had 23 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Its largest electoral success was winning 29 seats and the largest share of the national vote in the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky is a Hungarian-born British scholar, political consultant and writer. He is a senior consultant on constitutional affairs for the think-tank Policy Exchange.
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