Welcome to the final issue of the ninth volume of British Politics. Our opening article, by the LSE GV314 Group (made up of academics and students from the London School of Economics) utilises a range of survey data to examine the engagement of academics with the mass media and the potential benefits they can expect from it. Their evidence points to the predominantly passive role of scholars (especially social scientists) as media commentators, and the limited opportunities that traditional broadcast media offer for research dissemination. Following this, our second main article, from Louise Thompson, examines the evidence-taking process of committees for scrutinising Bills in the House of Commons. Analysing developments between 2006 and 2010, the article explores the ways in which sessions of oral evidence have altered the scrutiny behaviour of MPs, providing a useful debating tool and a lever for legislative change.

Our third original article comes from Mark Low, and considers reforms in the process of parliamentary candidate selection for the Conservative Party. Here, the author examines the ways in which the process of reform has impacted upon central–local relations within the party, and highlights the utility of a network approach to party organisation. Our fourth contribution is from Rosie Campbell and Philip Cowley and analyses public opinion on the question of job-sharing for MPs in the House of Commons. The authors find no great support for the introduction of job-sharing candidates, but nor do they detect any overwhelming opposition.

Our fifth offering, by Tim Legrand and Lee Jarvis, assesses the use of proscription powers as a tool for countering terrorism in the United Kingdom. Situating the current proscription regime within a historical context, the authors note a significant increase in proscribed groups over recent years, present a strong critique of proscription and conclude that its place in contemporary security politics should be heavily safeguarded given the extensive challenges faced. On a similar theme, the sixth main article for this issue, from Paul Thomas, examines the relationship between Britain’s Prevent programme and wider multiculturalist policies of community cohesion. The article finds that Prevent has progressively ‘crowded out’ cohesion practice at both the local and national level to the detriment of both counter-terrorism and community relations.

The final article for this issue is a contribution to our Forward Thinking section and comes from Sheryl Buckley. It examines the controversial filming of a television documentary into the inner workings of the Communist Party during the late 1970s, and explores the way in which this process mirrored the historical decline of the Party as a political force.