Dr Ben Noble wins 2017 Sir Walter Bagehot Dissertation Prize

Congratulations to Ben Noble, who has been awarded the Political Studies Association's Sir Walter Bagehot prize for the best dissertation in the field of Government and Public Administration.

The award for his thesis, Rethinking ‘Rubber Stamps’: Legislative Subservience, Executive Factionalism, and Policy-making in the Russian State Duma was presented at the 2017 PSA Annual Conference in Glasgow. 

In awarding the prize, the judge – Professor Francesca Gains (University of Manchester) – noted that:

The thesis addresses the question of how legislative activity in non-democratic settings can be understood. A mixed methods approach drawing on causal process observations highlights that legislative activity in the Russian State Duma far from being a ‘rubber stamping’ exercise demonstrates executive development and points to executive factionalism as the key explanatory variable for legislative activity.  In so doing the thesis makes a significant contribution to the developing literature on executive development as well as contributing to empirical knowledge of legislative development in Russia. Further this contribution hold great possibilities for future comparative work.

This is a beautifully written thesis, extremely well situated in the literature on comparative legislative activity and the research question, research design and execution is exemplary. The thesis is a very worthy winner of the Bagehot prize and I will look forward to seeing the research in print very soon.

You can learn more about this year's PSA prizes by clicking here: https://www.psa.ac.uk/members/membership-benefits/prizes