Using official statistics, this book explores how the SNP managed to confound expectations and win a parliamentary majority in the 2011 Scottish General Election. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not constitutional politics or the return of the Conservatives to power in Westminster but domestic issues that decided the vote in the SNP's favour.

Governing Scotland explores the origins and development of the Scottish Office in an attempt to understand Scotland's position within the UK union state in the twentieth century. Two competing views were encapsulated in debates on how Scotland should be governed in the early twentieth century: a Whitehall view that emphasised a professional bureaucracy with power centred on London and a Scottish view that emphasised the importance of Scottish national sentiment. These views were ultimately reconciled in 'administrative devolution'.

Authoritarianism and Democracy in Europe, 1919-39 offers a comprehensive analysis of the survival or breakdown of democracy in interwar Europe. The contributors explore factors such as the historical, social-structural and political-cultural backgrounds of the policies that European countries attempted to implement to counter the world economic crisis of 1929. The analysis serves as an important backdrop for the assessment of current democratic developments in former communist Europe and highlights some of the problems and risks involved in the transition process.

A new account of voting between the First and Second Reform Bills, outlining a new interpretation of electoral behaviour, and emphasizing the links between individual electors and their social context. It also explores the consequences of these ideas for local political organization, suffragism, and the development of the party system.