In September 2016, I retired from my post as Associate Professor in DPIR and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford where I had been since 1975, when I took up the position of the first Fellow and Tutor in Politics there. My primary interests are in empirical politics and I have published in the fields of British, American and comparative politics. In addition to my more specialist research interests, I have enjoyed writing and editing books which make political developments available to a broader audience. Such books include two works in the Developments series (Developments in British Politics and Developments in American Politics 9 ) as well as a text on British Government (Governing the UK).
In 2021 I contributed to the Political Quarterly symposiums on conservatism inspired by Andrew Gamble's writings and to one on Women and the Politics of Incivility and Discrimination.
I am currently working on a study of changes in the American right with colleagues from the UK and the US, especially Stanford , as well as on a collaborative work with Dana Brown from the Carlton Business School in Canada on the governance and leadership lessons to be learned from the management of the Covid pandemic.
I have served on a number of public bodies (including the House of Lords Appointments Commission (2013-2019) and currently (2021-) the Committee on Standards in Public Life as well as on academic editorial boards.
Research
My broad interests are in the fields of comparative government, leadership, comparative conservatism and the relationship between legal and political institutions. I published in 2016 a book called The Regulation of Standards in British Public Life: Doing the Right Thing? Written with David Hine, it analysed the reform of the UK's machinery for regulating ethical standards across the range of the UK's political institutions. It builds on earlier work done on conflict of interest cross-nationally for a new centre for the study of corruption based in Mexico and for a comparative study of conflict of interest.
In 2016, I also published a collection edited with John Francis, David Cameron and Conservative Renewal: the Limits of Modernization?, which examined the recent history of the Conservative Party and was the subject of an earlier APSA panel. I also have been exploring aspects of contemporary Conservatism through articles on Enoch Powell (published in Political Quarterly 2018) and a chapter ("Heath, Powell and the Battle for the Soul of the Conservative Party" in Andrew Roe-Crines and Timothy Heppell, Policy and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath. (2021).
I also continue to publish on American politics and am especially interested in different dimensions of American conservatism. I was the lead editor of a new (9th) volume of Developments in American Politics, which was published in 2022. In it, I explore the legacy of Donald Trump for American politics and governance.
Research interests
Government, Constitutions, Institutions and Governments, Comparative Politics and Government, Political thought and ideologies, Media, public sphere and public life, Conservatism, Constitutions and Government, Institutions and organisations, Public Policy
