Ignacio Jurado awarded PSA McDougall Fund Prize for best dissertation in Elections, Electoral Systems or Representation

Congratulations to Ignacio Jurado, a 2012 Politics DPhil graduate, who has just been awarded the Political Science Association 2012 Arthur McDougall Fund prize best dissertation in Elections, Electoral Systems or Representation. The thesis was entitled The Politics of Distribution.

More information on the Arthur McDougall Fund prize can be found on the PSA’s website here. This is the second year in a row in which an Oxford student has won the prize; last year James Dray was given the award.

I am very happy to recommend this PhD for the award of the Arthur McDougall Prize. It is an intellectually ambitious and empirically rich and sophisticated piece of work which pushes the subject forward in new directions. It sits at the interface between studies of government provision and of representation and voting, demonstrating the electoral strategy behind the allocation of government resources. The thesis shows, with some flair, that standard accounts of the politics of distribution are mistaken. Rather than targeting swing voters for the receipt of benefits, candidates and parties engaging in pork barrel politics target core supporters. The intention is to mobilise rather than to persuade, to encourage higher turnout among known supporters rather than (less certain) vote change among less committed voters. The analyses show the strategy's effectiveness in a variety of forums, adding considerably to confidence in the results' robustness. This conclusion builds from plausible theoretical arguments to clear and well-formulated empirical demonstrations. Throughout, the thesis is a model of clarity, and will no doubt form the basis for several important papers in the field.

Professor Charles Pattie