Nilima Gulrajani has been awarded £6,640 from the British Academy
Nilima Gulrajani, Government and International Development, has been awarded £6,640 from the British Academy for the project: 'Improving Foreign Aid Administration to Enhance Aid Quality: a comparative study of donor governance'. [19/4/2011]
Torun Dewan awarded a midwest Political Science Association prize
Torun Dewan, of the Department of Government at the London School of Economics, has been awarded (jointly with David P. Myatt) the midwest Political Science Association prize at their annual meeting in Chicago, April 2010. He was awarded the prize for the best article published in the American Journal of Political Science in 2010 for his article 'The Declining Talent Pool of Government'.|
BNP down plays ‘race card’ to boost legitimacy says new LSE research
The British National Party (BNP) has attempted to boost its legitimacy by downplaying the issue of race according to new research from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
The research (1) published in the current issue of The Political Quarterly shows that the BNP, whilst maintaining its anti-immigration stance, has shifted its language from emphasising a nationalism based on race to one based on British values and institutions. The researchers argue that this is an attempt to replicate the success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and its more inclusive, non-racist, idea of British nationality with ‘common citizenship and shared values’.
Daphne Halikiopoulou from LSE’s Department of Government and Sofia Vasilopoulou, from LSE’s European Institute, analysed party manifestos from before and after 1999 – when Nick Griffin took over the party’s leadership and began a reform agenda.
Read the full article|.
[10/12/2010]
LSE professor inspires Parliamentary rethink on voting reform
The Government is being urged to revise its agenda for electoral reform by MPs and members of the Lords who seized on analysis of the topic by LSE professor Patrick Dunleavy.
Both Houses of Parliament have heard calls to adopt the 'London alternative vote system' recommended by Professor Dunleavy if the UK votes to abandon the existing first-past-the-post method when a national referendum is held in May.
Read the full article.|
Professor Christian List has been selected as a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, in the fall semester of 2011.
The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) is a national scientific institution, chartered by the Government of Sweden as an institute for advanced study mainly in the social and human sciences. It was a founding member of SIAS, a group of nine leading European and American institutes for advanced study, among them IAS Princeton and Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
A core component of an institute for advanced study is a highly selective programme for visiting fellows. Scholars can apply to become Fellows-in-residence and after an extensive review process thirty senior as well as early career scholars are invited to spend one academic semester or one year at SCAS. Fellows are entirely free to focus on their own research whether they choose to work individually or form part of a thematic group. As a scholarly community the Collegium provides an environment that is conducive to a lively intellectual dialogue across disciplinary boundaries.
The Collegium is located in Linneanum, a historic building in the Botanic Garden in Uppsala, near the Carolina Rediviva Library and other scientific facilities at Uppsala University.
Tommy Sowers, has interrupted his PhD studies within the Government Department, to mount a bid as a Democrat for a congressional seat.
The Washington Post wrote, ‘A combat veteran with a graduate degree from the London School of Economics, Sowers gave up a successful military career to mount a longshot bid as a Democrat for a congressional seat in a solidly Republican district. He was motivated by a sense that Congress and the public have lost interest in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq’.
Read the full article.|
PRINCES, BROKERS, AND BUREAUCRATS: OIL AND THE STATE IN SAUDI ARABIA
Friday, 12 November 2010
"PRINCES, BROKERS, AND BUREAUCRATS: OIL AND THE STATE IN SAUDI ARABIA" a lecture and book launch by Dr Steffen Hertog of the LSE. Sponsored by the Society for Arabian Studies and the LSE Kuwait Programme. 5:30pm in room G2 at SOAS. Drinks reception following the talk in room G3.
Abstract: SteffenHertog's recently-published Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats (Cornell University Press, 2010) is the most thorough treatment of the political economy of Saudi Arabia to date. It uncovers an untold history of how the elite rivalries and whims of half a century ago have shaped today's Saudi state and are reflected in its policies. Starting in the late 1990s, Saudi Arabia embarked on an ambitious reform campaign to remedy its long-term economic stagnation. The results have been puzzling for both area specialists and political economists: Saudi institutions have not failed across the board, as theorists of the 'rentier state' would predict, nor have they achieved the all-encompassing modernization the regime has touted. Instead, the kingdom has witnessed a bewildering mélange of thorough failures and surprising successes. Hertog argues that it is traits peculiar to the Saudi state that make sense of its uneven capacities. Oil rents since World War II have shaped Saudi state institutions in ways that are far from uniform. Oil money has given regime elites unusual leeway for various institutional experiments in different parts of the state: in some cases creating massive rent-seeking networks deeply interwoven with local society; in others large but passive bureaucracies; in yet others insulated islands of remarkable efficiency. This process has fragmented the Saudi state into an uncoordinated set of vertically divided fiefdoms. Case studies of foreign investment reform, labor market nationalization and WTO accession reveal how this oil-funded apparatus enables swift and successful policy-making in some policy areas, but produces coordination and regulation failures in others.
Biography: Dr SteffenHertog is a Lecturer in the Department of Government at the LSE. He was previously Kuwait Professor at Sciences Po Paris and a Lecturer in the School of Government and International Affairs at the University of Durham. Email: shertog@gmx.de|
Justin Gest, Interviewed about his new book 'Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West'.
For more information see Columbia University Press|.
[Posted 8/7/2010]
Professor Sumantra Bose awarded Leverhulme Fellowship
Sumantra Bose, professor of international and comparative politics in LSE's Department of Government, has been awarded a two year research fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust.
To run from 2010 through to 2012, the fellowship will support work on Professor Bose's book Transforming India: the world's largest democracy at home and in the world.
The book has two parts: 'India at Home', on the transformation of India's politics over the past two decades, and 'India in the World', on India's regional and international relations as a rising power of the early 21st century. Transforming India will be published by Harvard University Press.
[posted on 30/6/2010]
Northern Ireland General Election Survey 2010
Jon Tonge, Bernadette Hayes and Paul Mitchell have received ESRC funding (£100,000) to conduct an attitude survey in Northern Ireland at the time of the general election. The survey will be a stratified random sample of face-to-face interviews with an achieved sample size of 1000 respondents. The survey will aim to cover a wide range of subjects focusing on voting behaviour, coalition governance, and power-sharing in the context of on-going ethno-national conflict. Fieldwork begins immediately after May 6 and will be completed in a maximum of four weeks. [posted on 28/4/2010]
Paul Mitchell, Geoffrey Evans and Brendan O'Leary have been awarded the Harrison Prize.
Paul Mitchell, Geoffrey Evans and Brendan O'Leary were recently awarded the Harrison Prize by the PSA for the best article in Political Studies during 2009 for their paper "Extremist Outbidding in Ethnic Party Systems is Not Inevitable: Tribune Parties in Northern Ireland", Political Studies volume 57 issue 2 pp 397-421.
The Judges said: "This article offers fresh theoretical and empirical perspectives on the evolution of party systems in the face of ethnic division. Mitchell, Evans and O'Leary argue that, while ethnic division encourages centrifugal tendencies, in the form of ethnic outbidding, power-sharing institutions can encourage the development of pragmatic electoral strategies, what the authors label 'ethnic tribune' appeals. The authors evaluate the hypothesis focusing on attitudes and voting behaviour in Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2003. They show that, after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, there was substantial vote switching from moderate to traditionally 'extreme' parties during the period, but that this was accompanied by convergence in the attitudes of the nationalist and unionist communities. That is, voters increasingly supported peace, prosperity and power-sharing but preferred that this be led by advocates of ethnic interests. The results underscore the important roles parties play in the electoral process. Most importantly, they demonstrate how power-sharing incentives can structure party behaviour itself. The research thus has broad implications for our understanding of party systems and efforts to create cooperation from seemingly intractable political conflict." [posted on 28/4/2010]
Vesselin Dimitrov's book, Stalin's Cold War, has won the Nove Prize for the best book in Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet studies
Dr. Vesselin Dimitrov has been awarded the Alexander Nove Prize
for the best book in Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet studies published in 2008, for his book on Stalin's role in the origins of the Cold War. Dr. Dimitrov is Reader in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The book, drawing on rich new evidence from Soviet, East European and British archives, provides a path-breaking analysis of the evolution of Stalin's strategy from cooperation with the United States and Britain during the Second World War to ideological and geopolitical confrontation. The book reveals Stalin's efforts to grapple with the dynamic domestic politics of postwar Eastern Europe and his key role in the gradual but inexorable shift to a communist system. The Nove Prize has been awarded to some of the most distinguished scholars in this field, including Archie Brown, Geoffrey Hosking and Stephen White.
For more information on the Alexander Nove Prize, visit www.basees.org.uk/noveprize.shtml|
For more information on Stalin's Cold War, visit www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=278822|
[posted April 2010]