Publications
All Policy Exchange publications are free to download in .pdf format. You can also purchase hard copies of the majority of our reports – check each individual report page for details.
Government & Politics Publications
Judging the Public Interest: The rule of law vs. the rule of courts
Judging the Public Interest examines the Supreme Court’s quashing of the Attorney General’s decision to block disclosure of the Prince of Wales’ correspondence with ministers. The report argues that, in doing so, the judiciary confused the rule of law with the rule of courts and overstepped its constitutional limits. It recommends that Parliament act swiftly to overturn this wayward judgment, reaffirming the rule of law and Parliamentary authority.
Overlooked But Decisive: Connecting with England’s Just about Managing classes
Despite their overwhelming importance, “squeezed middle” voters – those in the C1/C2 socio-economic classes – across England’s most marginal seats feel overlooked and unrepresented. Overlooked but Decisive examines the values and political attitudes of this group and develops a detailed profile of this groups values and beliefs.
Electoral Omission
Electoral Omission highlights how the administration of elections in the UK remains dangerously inefficient and open to fraud and predicts that there will be up to 15.5 million errors on the UK’s electoral registers at the time of next year’s General Election. The report recommends the introduction of targets for the maximum number of omissions and errors in the electoral register and annual checks to measure accuracy, along with small council tax rebates to encourage people to complete and return their voter registration forms.
Northern Lights: Public policy and the geography of political attitudes in Britain today
Is there a north-south divide political divide? A major study into public attitudes – Northern Lights – examines the new political and social geography of England. The research finds that the way people vote is less and less determined by their social class, and more by how they think the government is performing and their attitudes to controversial issues like migration and crime.
Reforming Public Appointments
Reforming Public Appointments shows that equality policies set up under the last government are failing to promote people from working class communities to public office. It calls for an extension of the entire equalities policy to increase representation of people from routine and manual occupational backgrounds, and for greater transparency about the membership of interviewing panels for public appointments.
The Politics of Optimism
Traditional thinking aligns economic growth with happiness. Conclusion: we’re in for a long dose of unhappiness. But the outlook for Britain need not be depressing. If governments, organisations and individuals responded with a new way of thinking, it would boost happiness and well-being.
A Potential Political Revolution: Academic analysis of the Alternative Vote
This new research note surveys existing work on the subject to show that the Alternative Vote system would create far more problems than it has a hope of solving.
The Alternative Vote – the system no-one wants
This report tests the Alternative Vote in six key areas: proportionality; safe seats; decisive results; wasted votes; tactical voting and MPs being elected on less than 50% of the vote and finds that in only one (the latter) does it constitute an improvement over First Past the Post.
Local Seats For Local People? Reviewing the Boundary Review
Local Seats for Local People? finds that the Boundary Review process in the UK is inefficient and produces undemocratic results. The report sets out proposals which will drastically reduce the time taken to conduct a review, depoliticise the process and ultimately improve representation.
What do we want our MPs to be?
Paul Goodman writes for Policy Exchange on what it is that we want from our MPs, at a time when the whole political class has rarely been held in lower esteem.