Abstract
General elections are the most significant and perhaps most exciting elections which take place in Britain, but they are of course by no means the only ones. Every year there are elections to local authorities, every four years to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and every five years to the European Parliament. Parliamentary by-elections, and indeed local government by-elections, occur haphazardly throughout the year. Occasionally, too, there is the extra diversion of a referendum.
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Notes and References
See Pippa Norris, British By Elections: The Volatile Electorate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990),
and Chris Cook and John Ramsden (eds), By-elections in British Politics (London: University College London Press, 1997), which both include accounts of many of the most significant by-elections of the twentieth century.
The standard work on local elections in Britain, by the accepted experts on the subject, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, is Local Elections in Britain (London: Routledge, 1997). Results in detail for England and Wales are collected in the annual Local Elections Handbook, compiled by the same authors and published by Local Government Chronicle Communications; summary results are published in the annual British Elections and Parties Review (London: Frank Cass). For local elections in Scotland, results are collected by H. M. Bochel and D. T. Denver and published annually as The Scottish Council Elections: Results and Statistics (Newport on Tay: Election Studies). The House of Commons library now usually produces a research paper summarising each year’s results which is available on the Internet.
For a more general study of the structure and functions of local government, see J. A. Chandler, Local Government Today, 3rd edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
Detailed accounts of the first two Euro-election campaigns in Britain are given in David Butler and David Marquand, European Elections and British Politics (London: Macmillan, 1981)
and David Butler and Paul Jowett, Party Strategies in Britain: A Study of the 1984 European Elections (London: Macmillan, 1985).
More recent Euro-elections are described and analysed in David Butler and Martin Westlake, British Politics and European Elections 1994 (London: Macmillan, 1995)
and David Butler and Martin Westlake, British Politics and European Elections 1999 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000). A volume on the 2004 elections by Butler and Westlake is forthcoming. Each election since 1984 has also been the subject of a special issue of the journal Electoral Studies.
On the history, principles and structure of devolved government in Britain, see Vernon Bogdanor, Devolution in the United Kingdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
On referendums in general, see Austin Ranney (ed.), The Referendum Device (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1981)
and David Butler and Austin Ranney (eds), Referendums around the World: The Growing Use of Direct Democracy (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1994).
For the constitutional context, see Vernon Bogdanor, Politics and the Constitution (Aldershot: Dartmouth Press, 1996), chapter 12. The Report of the Committee on the Conduct of Referendums (London: Constitution Unit, 1996) discusses the principles in a modern context.
For studies of specific referendums: on the EEC referendum, see David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum (London: Macmillan, 1976),
Anthony King, Britain Says Yes (Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1977)
and Philip Goodhart, Full-Hearted Consent (London: Davis-Poynter, 1976);
on the 1979 Scottish referendum, see The Referendum Experience, Scotland 1979, edited by Jean Bochel, David Denver and Alan MacCartney (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1981).
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© 2005 Dick Leonard and Roger Mortimore
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Leonard, D., Mortimore, R. (2005). By-Elections, Local Elections, Euro-Elections and Referendums. In: Elections in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230629639_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230629639_11
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