Recent decades have shown that political parties differ in their ability to change their strategies and structures in response to a changed environment. This variation in party adaptation is important because the decline of old parties has often made room for radical and populist parties to rise and recently caused widespread concern over the future of liberal democracy.

The following seminars will take place at 1pm unless otherwise stated. All welcome to join via Zoom, but registration required: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar.

As the size of conventional forces declines, and a new era of great power competition places a strategic value on the efficiency with which states can pursue their aims, there is likely to be an expanded scope for partnered operations and proxy warfare. This is explicitly acknowledged in the UK's Defence Integrated Operating Concept, which outlines how British forces will engage to enable partners to tackle threats at source, and deploy to constrain adversaries by deterrence and denial. Partner force capacity building has a long history, with very mixed results.

Why are some democratically elected incumbents able to use their democratic mandate to increase their powers at the expense of the legislature, the judiciary and of citizens’ rights to the point of taking over the regime? I argue that the organizational features of the ruling party play a critical role in facilitating incumbent’s aggrandizement and, as a result, contribute to democratic backsliding.

This paper uses evidence on long-gone historical district boundaries and capitals from the 16th to the late 18th centuries to trace the long-run impact of the colonial state on contemporary ethnic segregation in Mexico. Despite massive administrative reorganization and rural-urban migration since independence in 1821, results show that localities farther from colonial officials at the time hold a disproportionate share of indigenous population today relative to localities that were closer.

Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College. After completing research at KCL, he taught at Bristol Polytechnic,(now the University of West of England), the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich, and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and also Director of the Laughton Naval Unit KCL. In 2020 he was made a Fellow of Kings College London (FKC).

The following seminars will take place at 1pm unless otherwise stated. All welcome to join via Zoom, but registration required: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar.