'Ladies are often very good scaffoldings': Women and Politics in the Age of Anne

The age of Anne saw unprecedented politicisation of society, the expansion of patronage and the election of ten parliaments between 1695 and 1715. If, as has been argued for the second half of the 18th century, such factors facilitated women's political participation, then the prerequisites for women's political involvement, at least at the level of the political elite, existed in the age of Anne. Yet we still know surprisingly little about the shape and extent of women's political participation beyond the dynamics of the Augustan court. This article encourages historians of women and politics to return to the age of Anne and consider women's political participation writ large. Was this period, which has often been seen as a political watershed, also a watershed for women's political involvement? Through an examination of Elizabeth Coke's involvement in the Derbyshire election of 1710, where she served as her brother's political agent, this article calls historians' attention to the activities of one group of politically-active Augustan women – those who served as intermediaries and agents. It argues that politics could be one aspect of a broader familial agency, one which saw women step in and out of family, household, estate and political management, as necessary. Nor, it argues, should these women be seen as mere Swiftian 'scaffoldings'– as means to an end for politically-ambitious men. As agents and intermediaries, women as well as men played recognized political roles, in similar ways, in campaigns across the country; their involvement requires closer examination.     

THE FUTURE'S PAST: POLITICS OF TIME AND TERRITORY AMONG DAKELH FIRST NATIONS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

ABSTRACT. This article examines contemporary political movements among Dakelh First Nations in British Columbia that have challenged Western modernity's fixation with a future achieved through industrial progress. Aboriginal people have been especially assertive in politicizing the connections between time and place through the display and performance of memory in forms as diverse as life history narratives, the cultural landscape, media and grass-roots development projects. Such constructions suggest that future developments in traditional lands must come through an engagement with the past - its meanings, practices, and significance in the particular places of cultural and economic production. I explore how Dakelh territories serve as sites for imagining and enacting alternative political and development agendas. I argue that these territories have increasingly become spaces forged in the margins of modernity's binary oppositions of self-other, nature-culture and future-past. This finding is not meant to marginalize indigenous territories conceptually or politically, but rather to recognize their centrality to contemporary provincial politics where margins - both geographic and discursive - have become central locations for pursuing sovereignty over land and nation.     

By‐Elections and Political Change in a Local Context: The Case of the 1973 Dundee East By‐Election and the SNP

With their unpredictability and occurrence in between nationwide elections, by‐elections have attracted a degree of scholarly interest. However, this has focused almost exclusively on how the contests have affected, or failed to affect, the direction of national politics. This article seeks to, instead, explore their influence upon the locality in which they are fought. It will achieve this through an analysis of the 1973 Dundee East by‐election and its consequences for the development of the local Scottish National Party (SNP). Prior to the by‐election, the party had not been particularly strong in Dundee. Yet the contest provided a setting in which it was able to transform itself into one of the most effective Nationalist organisations in Scotland, capable of cementing an SNP MP in the constituency from 1974 until 1987, holding firm against the collapse in the party's support across the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The article will examine the extent to which this resistance to the national swing was facilitated by the legacies of the by‐election and the extent to which its wider footprint contributed towards the development of an enduring party tradition that has persisted for decades.     

“Reckless,cavalier, dismissive,petty and vengeful”?: The impact of municipal constituency change on candidate diversity

The demographic composition of electoral districts has an important influence on the identities of candidates because they affect the political opportunity structures of ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups. The 2018 municipal election in Toronto, Canada provides a unique opportunity to examine how changes to electoral districts impacted the participation of visible minority candidates. At the end of the initial nomination period, the right-wing populist provincial government of Doug Ford reduced the number of city council wards from 47 to 25, which also affected the boundaries of school board districts. Candidates and aspirants then had the opportunity to re-register in the new constituencies. This change constitutes a natural experiment that allows us to isolate the impact of district structure on the relationship between demographics and candidate ethnicity. Using logistic and Poisson regression modeling, we compare the proportion and number of Visible Minority and White candidates before and after consolidation. Contra expectations, we did not find any effect on minority candidates, but show some evidence that consolidation reduced opportunities for Whites. We trace this unexpected finding to the geographic patterns of ethnic settlement.     

An Irish Party and the British Parliament: Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party

This essay reassesses the importance of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party, 1880–90, originally published in 1957, with particular reference to its significance in the history of the British parliament. While establishing the book's continuing relevance, both as a study of a specific political phenomenon and as a model for analysing political movements, the essay questions aspects which do not hold up in the light of subsequent research. In particular, O'Brien's account and interpretation of Parnell's behaviour in 1890–1 in the aftermath of the O'Shea divorce case is shown to be inadequate in the light of more recent research and writing.     

Parody and Satire in the 2008 Canadian Federal Election: Reading the Rick Mercer Report

Political satire and parody continue to influence young adult viewers to a greater degree than traditional political or hard news shows. Soft news has become increasingly important in the category of political entertainment television shows. These shows discursively integrate political information, humor, entertainment and the news. Soft news programs often emphasize public policy issues in their programming while sensationalized, tabloid-style reporting has come to define many segments of Canadian hard news programming. Using Stuart Hall's three main categories of reading televisual cultural texts, this article critically analyzes the Rick Mercer Report. I argue that despite some significant shortcomings and limitations, the Rick Mercer Report does make an important and unique contribution to political entertainment television in Canada.