Suchergebnisse

The authors describe an investigation into the regional dimension to the process of small-firm growth and development in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. Recent trends in the growth performance of small manufacturing and service-sector firms are presented for the UK regions and an attempt is made to establish if there are regional variations in the set of factors which may determine faster growth. In particular, a detailed examination of the impact of public policy assistance to small firms in Northern Ireland, as delivered by the Local Enterprise Development Unit—the small-business agency for the region—is undertaken in an attempt to measure more precisely the contribution of the policy environment to small-firm growth within one region of the United Kingdom.

This paper describes an empirical procedure for analysing the difference between the proportion of votes a major party attracts and the proportion of seats it subsequently wins in a plurality election. This difference will be referred to as theelectoral biaswith respect to that particular party at the election being analysed:B = S — V, (1)whereSis the seat proportion andVthe vote proportion gained by the party. This bias is the basic concept underlying much of the debate about electoral reform but curiously it has been an under-researched topic in political science literature. Apart from a small continuing debate over the cubic law of seat proportions and some analyses of Australian and New Zealand elections most attention in election studies has been concerned with determining the proportion of votes rather than the subsequent proportion of seats.

This paper is concerned with procedures for dividing electorates into constituencies or electoral districts. Two traditions for drawing boundaries are identified, the British procedure of using neutral decisionmakers (Boundary Commissioners), and the American procedure which allows politicians to draw boundaries and thus leads to gerrymandering. If a statistical approach which focuses on the very large number of alternative ways of dividing up an electorate is employed, these two types of decisionmaking can be seen in statistical and political perspective. The most surprising finding of this approach is that in terms of political effects American gerrymanderers and British Boundary Commissioners produce similar types of districting solutions.