Prior to taking up the full-time post of Director of the RAI in September 2011, Nigel Bowles was for more than twenty years Tutorial Fellow in Politics at St Anne’s College, Oxford. He was previously a staff member in the House of Commons before being appointed a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. His intellectual interests lie in American political history and, in particular, in the history of the US Presidency. Among his publications are The White House and Capitol Hill, an exploration of the politics of presidential lobbying; and Nixon’s Business: Authority and Power in Presidential Politics in which he examines the relationship between authority and power in five cases of President Nixon’s leadership of economic policy.
His outside interests include music (especially solo piano, and 18th and 19th-century chamber music), cricket, food, and charities working in the environmental, educational, and heritage sectors.
He finds the daily opportunity of working in a collegiate University surrounded by colleagues and students of exceptional talent, creativity, and commitment a priceless gift to have received. The pleasure and privilege of his post is, he says, that of leading a great institution in service to colleagues within and beyond Oxford.
Teaching
Undergraduate Papers: Prelims; British Politics and Government; Comparative Government; Government and Politics of the United States.
Research summary
Research interests
Political Theory, Authority, Constitutions and Government, History, Ideology, Institutions and organisations, Legislatures, Media, Public Policy
Publications
The White House and Capitol Hill, 1987.
The Government and Politics of the United States, 1993.
Government and Politics of the United States, 1997.
The Presidency and Congress:A Trifocal Approach, in Singh, Robert, American Politics and Society Today (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2002), pp. 118-145.
Comparing the Core Executive in Britain, France, and the United States, in Nelson, Michael, The Presidency and the Political System, CQ Press, 2003, pp. 29-47.
Economic Policy in Singh, (ed), Governing America, OUP, 2003, pp. 249-266.
Nixons Business: Authority and Power in Presidential Politics, 2005.
Political Centralization and Policy Constraint in British Executive Leadership: Lessons from American Presidential Studies in the Era of Sofa Politics, (with D S King and Fiona Ross)
British Politics (2007) vol 2 no 3.