Tag Archives: Federal Agency for Civic Education

If there is a snap election, what can we do to improve the campaign?

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JennyH.picture.jpgA snap election looks highly likely in the coming months. The UK’s rules for election campaigns have widely been branded as ‘not fit for purpose’, yet they will not be changed in time for an early poll. The Constitution Unit therefore convened a seminar to examine what else can be done. Jenny Holloway summarises the discussion.

The Constitution Unit held a seminar on 12 September asking ‘If there is a snap election, what can we do to improve the campaign?’ Focusing on ways both to tackle misinformation and to promote greater availability of good information, the event brought together four leading authorities in their respective fields: Dorothy Byrne, Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4; Ed Humpherson, Director General for Regulation at the UK Statistics Authority; Joe Mitchell, director of Democracy Club; and Will Moy, Chief Executive of Full Fact. It drew on many of the themes addressed in the Unit’s March 2019 report Doing Democracy Better, co-authored by Alan Renwick and Michela Palese. Given that changes to the legislative framework for election campaigns will not happen before a snap election, it focused particularly on strategies for improving the campaign within existing rules.

Dorothy Byrne

Building on her recent McTaggart Lecture, Dorothy Byrne argued that politicians and journalists both have crucial roles to play in improving the state of democracy and increasing public trust in politics. Politicians must be willing to submit themselves to scrutiny through the media. Broadcasters have a responsibility to actively call out lies and untruthful statements made by politicians. Continue reading →

How online quizzes could improve information during election campaigns: lessons from Germany

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m.paleseOngoing Constitution Unit research is exploring how quality of information and public discussion during election and referendum campaigns can be improved. In recent years, voting advice applications have been promoted as a way of providing impartial, good-quality information on salient issues and parties’ positions thereon. Michela Palese outlines the debate on this topic and relates early thoughts from a research trip to Germany, where the state-sponsored Wahl-O-Mat was used 15.7 million times during the 2017 federal election campaign.

Since last May, Dr Alan Renwick and I have been working on a project to understand how the quality of information and public discussion during election and referendum campaigns could be improved. In this context, I have been examining ‘voting advice applications’ (VAAs): online tools that aim to assist users in their voting decision.

In this post, I briefly contextualise the emergence of VAAs and consider the debate on the role of such tools in the UK. I then report initial findings from a research trip to Germany, where the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung; hereafter BPB) develops and promotes a voting advice application – the Wahl-O-Mat – for all federal and most state elections.

The origins of voting advice applications

The first VAA, the Stemwijzer, was developed in the Netherlands in 1989. Available on paper or on a diskette, it aimed to increase secondary school students’ knowledge of the differences and similarities among parties, and to aid the formation of party political choices. VAAs became available online in the mid-1990s in Finland and the Netherlands.

VAAs have spread particularly since the early 2000s, and almost all European countries now have at least one. While they take varied forms, all VAAs present users with statements to agree or disagree with and then match these responses to the positions of political parties. Developers generally use party manifestos or prior statements as a starting point, and often engage parties directly in the development process. Continue reading →