David Butler awarded PSA Best Book in British Political Studies, 1950-2010

As part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Political Studies Association, the 2010 Committee decided to make a special award despite some obvious difficulties for the best book on British political studies published during the lifetime of the Association. The winner was determined by a poll of PSA members. Despite the plethora of wonderful books in various sub-fields of the discipline, Political Change in Britain, by David Butler and Donald Stokes emerged as the clear winner.

Butler and Stokes undertook the first-ever nationwide survey of electoral behaviour in Britain, publishing Political Change in Britain in 1969. The impact of Political Change in Britain was both immediate and enduring. It won the American Political Science Associations Woodrow Wilson Prize and is one of only 16 books for which there is an individual entry in The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century British Politics. The entry includes the following: What became known as the Butler-Stokes model of voting emphasised the role of long-term forces in influencing the party choice of electors... Their work remains...the essential starting point for all subsequent survey-based electoral analysis in Britain.