Sures Projects 2019

This PhD project examines the relationship between education and social mobility in Wales and cuts across Politics, Sociology and Education. In particular, it seeks to address the following paradox –although the argument that individual’s education improves social mobility is well-established, the rising aggregate levels of education do not necessarily improve aggregate levels of social mobility. The case of Wales as a country with high levels of deprivation and low levels of social mobility is both interesting and relevant, as better understanding of the role of education in fostering social mobility has a strong potential to reduce structural inequalities in Wales.

The PhD project has a strong interdisciplinary strand, and a successful applicant will be encouraged to combine a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. This includes longitudinal survey data analysis and biographical narrative interviews to enable exploration of the relationship between education and social mobility and of adults’ experiences of social (im)mobility across their lifetimes, respectively. 

A successful applicant will be a part of the Politics and Governance WISERD Research Network and the Political Analysis and Governance research group and strongly encouraged to undertake additional research methods training through the WISERD, the Doctoral Training Programme and the National Centre for Research Methods.

Supervisors:

Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya (Department of Political and Cultural Studies)

Dr Ceryn Evans (School of Education)

Within the area of comparative federalism, scholarship is turning to questions of territorial organisation of power and democratic accountability of parliaments and governments. On the one hand, decentralisation is claimed to improve democratic government by bringing decisions closer to the people, by opening another arena for political participation and by allowing for decisions that reflect the preferences of the local population. On the other hand, an increase in decentralisation makes coordination between governments of different regions and the centre necessary to avoid duplication of services, for example of health care provision in bordering areas, to prevent negative externalities for bordering areas but also to maximise the benefits from policy experimentation in the regions. While the need for intergovernmental relations is largely acknowledge, it poses challenges to democratic accountability and the relations between parliaments and executives. Since intergovernmental agreements are often negotiated behind closed doors; they lack the transparency of ordinary legislation processes and affect how parliamentarians can perform their role as ‘government watchdog’ and hold the executive to account. The two-level setting opens the opportunity for parliamentarians to use scrutiny instruments to highlight territorial preferences of a region.

We invite a PhD candidate to study the impact of intergovernmental relations on parliamentary scrutiny and accountability from a comparative perspective, addressing key questions that may include the following:

• When do regional parliaments activate which instruments of oversight and scrutiny at their disposal in processes of intergovernmental coordination?
• Are there differences between parties (government / opposition; left-right positioning) in the way parliamentarians use scrutiny instruments?
• Under which conditions do regional parliaments act as government watchdog? Under which conditions do we witness less scrutiny and more support for the regional executive?
• What role does transparency and information-sharing play for the exercise of scrutiny?

We envision that these questions are studied in the UK context in a comparative way between the devolved administrations, however, we are fully prepared to consider strong candidates who have a different comparative case study of scrutiny behaviour of regional parliamentarians in mind.

The results of the comparative study will help us understand the conditions that affect which roles regional parliaments perform in a two-level game and on a theoretical level it sheds light on how assumptions developed for international negotiations compare with negotiations between governments within the same state. The study also has potential to improve our understanding of parliamentary behaviour in a multi-level context where parliamentarians at the regional share party affiliations with government officials of the centre. Finally, in a context of limited trust in elected politicians, studies of parliamentary scrutiny help us understand challenges to democratic accountability and trust in individual representatives in an interdependent world.

Supervisors:

Dr Bettina Petersohn (Department of Political and Cultural Studies)

Dr Matt Wall (Department of Political and Cultural Studies)

A number of scholars have highlighted a crisis in public communication whereby journalism and politics were falling short of their democratic responsibilities. Two decades later, this conclusion is bolstered by widespread distrust in traditional media increasing political populism and journalism’s apparent failure to sufficiently address prevailing issues. Simultaneously, the internet has facilitated a seismic digital transition in public communication. This has dismantled the linear schedule of journalistic communication, fragmented news audiences and established a more accessible platform for public discourse and information.  This transition has enabled alternative media platforms to develop their own editorial positions, often unhindered by traditional imperatives of political economy and the usual operational norms of journalism. Accordingly, they can challenge traditional political news reporting.  We invite a PhD candidate to study these alternative platforms, and how they might reach beyond fourth estate journalism, addressing key questions that might include the following: 

• How are contemporary alternative communication platforms positioned within the wider mediated public sphere?
• What communicative strategies do these platforms use to engage their audiences? (These strategies might include satire, opinion, emotion, official discourse, multimodal content and so on)
• How do these strategies compare with those used by mainstream media, bearing in mind the prevailing regulatory framework within which they operate? (For example, how do they compare in terms of partisanship/impartiality and objectivity?)
• How do these strategies relate to audience reception, and what reactions do they generate? (For example, do they promote civic agency, do they inform, do they generate cynicism, or do they simple contribute to political echo chambers?)

It is envisaged that the successful candidate will address such questions within a UK context, however, we are fully prepared to consider strong candidates who have a different case study in mind. Furthermore, we are happy to consider candidates that wish to take the holistic approach we indicate above, but equally, we will also consider those candidates who wish to embark on a more specific audience-based or textual investigation. Since these alternative platforms are continually developing, proliferating and becoming an established part of the contemporary public sphere, existing scholarship is underdeveloped. Accordingly, we expect that this project will make a seminal contribution to this emerging academic realm.

This project will straddle the academic disciplines of journalism, political communication, audience studies, and digital literacy, and we anticipate that a strong contribution is possible to one or more these fields and the departments within Swansea University that attend to them.

The supervisors are both active researchers within the field of political communications, and anticipate that the candidate will be able to participate in a variety of associated research projects throughout the period of study.

Supervisors: 

Dr Richard Thomas (Department of Media and Communication)

Dr Allaina Kilby (Department of Media and Communication)