Party Politics vs. Grievance Politics: Competing Modes of Representative Democracy.

As a vast literature on political disaffection, populism, "pitchfork politics," and the emergence of an "age of anger" testifies, the nature of democratic politics and the socio-political context in which it operates appear to have shifted sharply during the last decade. This is reflected in the rise of challenger parties, the election of unorthodox politicians, and widespread concern regarding the "crisis," "death," or "end" of democracy. Existing analyses have, however, understandably adopted a conventional model of party-based representative politics as their main interpretive lens or reference point to make sense of these changes. This article adopts a far bolder position. It suggests that a new form of "grievance politics" has emerged that constitutes a distinct and novel species of representative democracy. Grievance politics is defined by the fuelling and funneling of negative emotions and various blame-based political strategies which explicitly challenge and confound many of the core principles and values that have traditionally underpinned conventional conceptions of party politics. It is the tension between party politics and grievance politics-and their contemporary co-existence as competing modes of political representation-which this article seeks to underline and through this, to develop a clearer understanding of possible futures for representative democracy.

Rising to Ostrom's challenge: an invitation to walk on the bright side of public governance and public service.

In this programmatic essay, we argue that public governance scholarship would benefit from developing a self-conscious and cohesive strand of "positive" scholarship, akin to social science subfields like positive psychology, positive organizational studies, and positive evaluation. We call for a program of research devoted to uncovering the factors and mechanisms that enable high performing public policies and public service delivery mechanisms; procedurally and distributively fair processes of tackling societal conflicts; and robust and resilient ways of coping with threats and risks. The core question driving positive public administration scholarship should be: Why is it that particular public policies, programs, organizations, networks, or partnerships manage do much better than others to produce widely valued societal outcomes, and how might knowledge of this be used to advance institutional learning from positives?

The privilege of public service and the dangers of populist technocracy: a response to Michael Gove and Dominic Cumming's 2020 Ditchley annual lecture.

On 27 June 2020, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, gave the Ditchley Annual Lecture on the theme of 'the privilege of public service'. Although the fact that it took place in the context of the broader Coronavirus crisis meant that it received relatively little publicity or attention, the central argument of this article is that the lecture provides great insight into the ideas shaping government policy, in general, and into the inner mind of Dominic Cummings, in particular. As such, we argue that although the lecture was given by Michael Gove, it was clearly floating ideas and themes that were taken, almost directly, from Dominic Cummings' website. We draw out and explore these themes and suggest that what they combine to offer is a dangerous blend of technocratic populism that is as intellectually splintered as it is politically naïve.