Abstract
In his poem ‘Concord Hymn’, Ralph Waldo Emerson describes the first clash of the American Revolutionary War as ‘the shot heard round the world’. That iconic phrase has since been used to refer to everything from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson's World Series winning home run in 1951.
There were no weapons fired in Berlin on 9 November 1989, but the sound of communist party boss Günter Schabowski's announcement that anyone wishing to travel to West Germany could do so through the East's border crossings reverberated around the world. The Berlin Wall had fallen, bringing an end to 40 years of division.
In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama confidently predicted the ‘end of history’ and the victory of liberal democracy. Twenty-five years on, the world remains a complex, fractured place. Competing ideologies have not disappeared.
But as Charles Lees writes in this issue's cover feature, the fall of the Berlin Wall had huge consequences, particularly for Germany. A unified Germany has emerged as the economic and political powerhouse of Europe. Fears of an over-dominant Germany, however, have not been realised.
The demise of the Soviet Union was held up as conclusive proof of the ‘end of history’ hypothesis. But as recent events in Ukraine have shown, Russia's role in the world remains at best ambiguous. In this issue, Timofey Agarin examines Vladimir Putin's Russia and argues that modernisation is needed to improve the country's medium-and long-term prospects.
Politics has changed a lot since 1989. As Wyn Grant reports, pressure groups have assumed ever more prominent roles in democratic societies. However, we must be wary of allowing unelected lobbyists and campaigners undue influence in the political process.
A big shift in the UK's political make-up has been the introduction of devolution. Axel Kaehne examines what impact devolution has had on the NHS, and finds that while distinctive approaches to healthcare provision have developed across the UK, there has not been enough learning between the different devolved systems. Meanwhile in the Last Word column, journalist David Torrance asks if the time has come for Britain to embrace fully-fledged federalism.
Another aspect of politics that has changed is the amount of evidence available to governments and policymakers. Yet, as Peter Riddell writes in an extensive survey of the UK policymaking landscape, research still does not always effectively feed into policy.
Unfortunately, one area that has seen only minimal change in the past two and a half decades is female representation in politics. Women remain significantly under-represented in governments and legislatures around the world. In this issue, PSA award winner Joni Lovenduski argues that female marginalisation is hardwired into the institutions of political life.
Elsewhere in this issue, Shane Singh looks at the economic, social and political consequences of compulsory voting, and Thorn Brooks asks whether the time has come to consider restorative justice as an alternative to traditional courtroom trials, Imran Awan reports on the impact of the so-called Trojan Horse plot on Muslim communities in Birmingham, and in the regular In Focus slot Benjamin D. Hennig, Dimitris Ballas and Danny Dorling map the results of May's European Parliament elections.
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