The concept of depoliticisation has become increasingly popular in recent years, but empirical studies into depoliticisation policies have been less prevalent. Absent from the literature, too, are any clearly delineated criteria by which the success or failure of such policies might be assessed. This article attempts to address these issues through an examination of Britain's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism from 1990Mechanism from to 1992. In contrast to the conventional view of this episode, in which it is seen as a policy disaster, it is argued that as a policy of depoliticisation ERM membership was a relative success.

The emergence of 'new atheism' during the course of the last decade helped fuel an upsurge of interest in issues around religion. But scholarly analysis of new atheism, particularly its political dimensions, remains embryonic. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining the politics of new atheism across a variety of themes related to politics. These include the causal factors underpinning its emergence and development, its organisational structure and composition, the political strategies pursued by its proponents, and the various internal tensions and conflicts that these dynamics have produced.

A common complaint from political scientists involved in the study of religion is that religious issues have been largely overlooked by political science. Through a content analysis of leading political science and sociology journals from 2000 to 2010, this article considers the extent of this claim. The results show that political science publications involving religious topics have been significantly fewer than those engaging with subjects typically regarded as being more central to the discipline, and markedly less numerous than religious articles in leading sociology publications. Where political science publications have engaged with religious issues, these articles have also focused on a limited number of subject areas and been concentrated in specific disciplinary subfields. The proportion of articles covering religion has shown no real increase since the turn of the century. These findings underpin calls for political scientists to take religious issues more seriously.S ince its international "resurgence" during the 1970s, the social, cultural, and political impact of religion has been difficult to miss. As the boundary between the religious and the secular has become increasingly contested in many parts of the world, tensions over the role of religion in the public sphere have become more apparent. These topics embrace a broad range of themes, including matters of life and death (such as abortion and euthanasia), scientific advances (for example, research involving stem cells and cloning technologies), civil and human rights (notably centering around questions of equality and discrimination), and welfare and public service provision (including controversies over religious schools and faith-based initiatives). The ability of religious beliefs and organizations to promote democratic, social, and political engagement has also been at the center of contemporary debates on matters of faith, as have questions about its role in national, cultural, and individual conceptions of identity, community, and tolerance. Themes of conflict and violence, too, remain close at hand; fueled, not least, by the impact of religiously motivated terrorism, but with intrafaith disputes, sectarianism, and fundamentalism all threatening to reap potentially noxious harvests. With global levels of religious belief are expected to rise in future years (Johnson 2004); it is no longer possible, if indeed it ever was, to regard religion as being an inevitably diminishing feature of human societies (Casanova 1994;Norris and Inglehart 2004).Academic analyses of religion are substantial and extensive and traverse a wide variety of disciplines. These include anthropology

The United States is one of the most religious countries in the Western world. Yet a notable feature of the past decade has been the growth of a self-conscious, politically active atheist movement. Academic analysis of this topic, however, remains limited. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining the political dimension of the U.S atheist movement across a number of themes, including its organisational structure and composition, as well as its goals, strategies and direction. Deploying insights drawn from Social Movement Theory, it shows that the development of the movement has been shaped by a number of factors that have facilitated growth, but which have also led to a series of internal tensions and schisms that could threaten its ability to exert political influence.

This article traces the emergence and development of claims that the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union delivered a mandate for a so-called 'no deal' Brexit. Utilising Lacanian ideas about group mobilisation combined with a detailed content analysis and evidence drawn from polling data, it shows that this no deal narrative should be viewed as a discursive project that was constructed by a section of Leave campaigners relatively late into the Brexit process amidst growing disillusionment with the direction that negotiations with the EU were taking. By emphasising the role of Brexit as an 'empty signifier' the article shows that Brexit was initially successful in mobilising and uniting a disparate, but often unconnected, range of discontent to its cause. However, over time the complexities of the Brexit process triggered a discursive 'war of position' as competing visions of Brexit attempted to vie for dominance amongst the Leave camp. It is within this context that the myth of no deal emerged as an attempt by an elite group of actors to re-mobilise support for their cause.