Leighton Andrews

Cardiff University | CU · Cardiff Business School

Over the last fifteen years, the word Spin has come to define both the process of political communication, and the practice of public relations itself. The history of the term requires some examination. Arguably, until around 1992, Spin did not have such a widespread meaning—it was simply one tactic in an election campaigner's armoury.Now it seems...

This chapter offers a qualitative and interpretive analysis of United Kingdom (UK) Government communications and imaginaries since the emergence of the Covid-19 virus as a public issue in the UK in January 2020 as the state seeks an exit strategy and heads towards a likely public inquiry. The UK Government did not want to go into lockdown, delayed...

Despite more than 20 years of Welsh democratic devolution, the Welsh Government, and Welsh Ministers particularly, have not generally been an object of academic study. There has been little systematic historical analysis of the new institution of the Welsh Government, its structures, operations and practices. In recent years, a variety of insider a...

National imaginaries routinely build on two foundational myths: one of uniqueness and exceptionalism, and the other of solidarity and community. Britishness, in the modern era, has frequently been reinforced by an appeal to the constructed collective myth of war- time unity, in which ‘Britain’ stood alone against its enemy. The first phase of the U...

The philosophy underlying the creation of the devolved institutions in Wales and Scotland was expansive, leading to a growth in powers over twenty years. That approach is now under challenge following recent Brexit legislation, which marks a sharp contrast with the unionist approaches of the past. The Covid‐19 pandemic provided a visibility boost f...

There has been increasing attention in the study of executive politics to the necessary administrative capacities of government to ensure a ‘capable’ or ‘protective’ state. The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of trust and competence in government messaging for social adherence to unprecedented restrictions on personal freedoms. At...

This is a personal reflection on a period of significant educational reform in Wales, undertaken by the devolved Welsh Government. Following a referendum in 1997, which narrowly endorsed the UK Labour Government’s proposals for an elected Assembly in Wales, the first National Assembly for Wales was elected in 1999 and the first Cabinet took executi...

The BBC is often seen as an institution that represents and helps define ‘Britishness’. It has also been taken as a model for public service reform in the UK. In the early 1990s, the BBC shifted strategically to become more engaged in the making of European Union media policy as it sought to expand its international and commercial services. This ar...

Facebook, the Media and Democracy examines Facebook Inc. and the impact that it has had and continues to have on media and democracy around the world. Drawing on interviews with Facebook users of different kinds and dialogue with politicians, regulators, civil society and media commentators, as well as detailed documentary scrutiny of legislative...

Discussions of platform governance frequently focus on issues of platform liability and online harm to the exclusion of other issues perpetuate the myth that the internet is unregulated reinforce the same internet exceptionalism as the Silicon Valley companies themselves; and, by adopting the language of governance rather than regulation, diminish...

The Nolan Report will celebrate its twenty‐fifth anniversary in 2020, and for most of this last quarter‐century, it has provided the underlying ethical basis for public life in the United Kingdom. However, its principles are now being called into question in a number of areas, following the Conservative government’s loss of its parliamentary majori...

Taking the UK as its subject of analysis, this chapter asks how prepared public administrators and political leaders are for the challenges of algorithmic decision-making and artificial intelligence: in other words, what is the state of governance readiness? It begins by examining the literature on governance readiness and administrative capacity....

Public administration scholarship has to a significant degree neglected technological change. The age of the algorithm and ‘big data’ is throwing up new challenges for public leadership, which are already being confronted by public leaders in different jurisdictions. Algorithms may be perceived as presenting new kinds of ‘wicked problems’ for publi...

The regulation of internet intermediaries such as Facebook and Google has drawn increasing academic, journalistic and political attention since the ‘fake news’ controversies following UK’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016. This article examines the pressure for a new regulatory framework for the information intermediaries bot...

If ‘institutions matter’, twenty years after the devolution referendum, and almost twenty years after the formation of an elected National Assembly for Wales and a Welsh Government accountable to it, what do we actually know about the Government of Wales? Drawing on Hennessy’s concept of ‘Hidden Wiring’, and Bevir and Rhodes’s concept of ‘the state...

Political leadership in public service innovation, including Ministerial leadership, has arguably been given less attention in academic literature than managerial leadership. To analyse the role of a Government Minister in driving innovation, it is necessary to consider the specific job of the minister as a leader of a public service system-for exa...

Telling Governance Stories: From Lecturer, to Minister, and Back! - Volume 51 Issue 1 - Leighton Andrews

Recent political campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic have led some to argue that we live in the age of ‘post-factual’ or ‘post-truth’ politics, suggesting evidence has a limited role in debate and public policy. How can we demonstrate the public value of evidence-informed debate under those circumstances? Survey evidence on public attitudes to...

Events during 2016 brought specific focus to the question of ‘fake news’ and the role of internet intermediaries such as Facebook and Google, which are now the principal beneficiaries of online and particularly mobile advertising and major platforms for news distribution. Facebook in particular has the characteristics of a ‘walled garden’ with algo...

The 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam contained the protocol on the system of public broadcasting in the Member States, providing some legal protection for public service broadcasters within the European Union. Academic attention to the protocol has focused largely on the institutional actors, including the European Parliament, which helped to construct the...

Autobiographical and analytical account of my time as Minister for Education and Skills in the Welsh Government, 2009-2013.

Since 1999, there have been devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales, as a result of the referendums that followed Labour’s election victory in 1997. Though communications policies remain the responsibility of central government, the link with cultural policies means that media issues are emerging at the devolved level. In Wales, an explicit...

The inside campaign story of how the BBC lobbied for its 1996 Charter Renewal.

The 2002 Office of Communications Act and the 2003 Communications Act were the first post-devolution Acts in the UK to deal with the media. The article examines the engagements from Wales on the Acts.

Insider account of the Yes campaign in the 1997 referendum on whether to have a National Assembly for Wales.

Insider account of the successful referendum campaign to win support for the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales

Notes that political marketing has become the subject of an increasing number of academic publications, but the subject of marketing a business proposition to a political audience such as government - political lobbying - has received less attention in this literature. Marketing business to government is generally evaluated more in the context of i...

Atgoffir staff a myfyrwyr Prifysgol Caerdydd bod hawlfraint ar y darn hwn ac ar y gwaith y cafodd ei gymryd ohono. Gwnaed y Copi Digidol hwn o dan delerau trwydded CLA sy'n caniatáu i chi: fynd at gopi a'i lwytho i lawr; argraffu copi; Sylwch bod y deunydd hwn yn UNIG at ddefnydd myfyrwyr sydd wedi cofrestru ar y cwrs astudio fel y nodir yn yr adra...