The Department has a strong commitment to research in UK politics, incorporating a wide range of methods and approaches. The department has four members of staff working on issues related to UK politics: Dr Judith Bara, Dr Anne Kershen, Dr Catherine Needham and Boucek, Françoise Dr Françoise Boucek.
Political Parties and Elections
Judith Bara’s research focuses on what political parties stand for, whether this changes over time and how parties (and governments) respond to popular perceptions of which issues are important. This work is set within a comparative framework, but much of Dr Bara’s contribution relates to British material or British-American comparisons. She is co-recipient of the American Political Science Association's 2003 Data Set Award, for research on programmatic profiles of political parties in 25 countries and its dissemination. A recent co-authored publication, Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments (Oxford University Press, 2001) was reprinted in 2004 and a companion volume which updates and extends both data and discussion on these subjects from OECD countries to CEE party systems will be published in the Autumn of 2006. A further book, Democratic Politics and Party Competition, (Routledge) co-edited with Professor Albert Weale of the University of Essex will also be published in the Autumn of 2006 and includes a report of her recent work on the interplay between public opinion and party policy in Britain. Dr Bara is also working on a new project with Professor Weale which investigates how debates in Parliament on issues of conscience represent examples of deliberative democracy at work, and is partly funded by an award from the Nuffield Foundation. An article which provides an interim report on results of this analysis, entitled “A Question of trust: Implementing party manifestos”appeared in Parliamentary Affairs, 58, 3, July 2005. She is also working on two additional projects which investigate how far British parties have prioritised issues which are regarded as being of specific interest to women on the one hand, and how far policies of the Labour and Conservative Parties have been influenced by parties in the United States. The latter forms the basis of a paper delivered to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2005-6.
Judith Bara’s research on British parties also extends to those operating in other countries. Since 1980 she has contributed material on Britain, the United States, Sri Lanka and Israel to three Manifesto Research Group projects, as well as developing the basis for computerised research of party documents across the English speaking world. All of this work is set within a strictly comparative framework which has been expanded to investigate further elements concerning representation in addition to policy or ideology, especially how far parties take account of voter priorities and indeed, whether or not parties keep promises made at election time. Her work on how far parties in different countries seek to emulate each other’s successes - both inside and outside the parameters of ‘party represents an extension of this comparative analysis.
Catherine Needham works on political marketing and communications in the UK, focusing on political parties and government. She has worked with the Hansard Society to coordinate a programme of seminars and publications around the theme ‘The Future of Party’. With Dr Declan McHugh of the Hansard Society, she co-edited a special issue of Parliamentary Affairs on ‘The Future of Party’, published in July 2005. She is currently working on a project on academy schools in the UK.
Françoise Boucek has done extensive research work on factionalism inside the British Conservative Party especially during its period of dominance from 1979-97. This case study is part of a comparative survey of factional politics in long-lived governments in which she uses game theory to analyse the Thatcher-Major factional wars over Europe.
Dominant Political Parties and Party Systems
Françoise Boucek has a specialist interest in dominant political parties and dominant party systems (including in Britain) on which she has published papers and co-edited a volume ‘Dominant Political Parties and Democracy: Concepts, Measures, Cases and Comparisons’ resulting from an international collaborative research project covering both mature and emerging democracies. The focus is on re-conceptualising and measuring party dominance; examining the conditions for the emergence, success and decline of dominant political parties; studying the internal life of dominant parties; and analysing the consequences of one-party dominance for the quality and durability of democracy. In Britain, her own empirical research (included in the edited book mentioned above) covers the dominance of the Conservative Party (1979-97) and to a lesser extent Labour (1997-2010) and the relationship between party longevity in office and factional conflict. She is also co-author of a frequently-cited journal article with Patrick Dunleavy (2003) ‘Constructing the Number of Parties’, Party Politics Vol. 9 (3) 291-315 in which they test, through a radical new spatial approach, the limits of a well-known index of party system fragmentation on a set of 102 post-war elections (including Britain) which identifies problems that previously escaped scholarly attention.
Factionalism and Intra-Party Politics
Françoise Boucek has done extensive research work on the comparative study of factionalism and factional politics, particularly in long-lived governments. Her book manuscript ‘Factional Politics in Long-Lived Governments: How Dominant Parties Implode or Stabilize’ focuses on factionalism inside the British Conservative Party, the federal Liberals in Canada, Italy’s Christian Democrats, and Japan’s Liberal Democrats. She uses institutional and behavioural modelling to explain how some political parties manage their internal conflicts to maintain their hold on power for long periods or why others lose office once they become too factionalised . She is also writing about the conceptualisation of factionalism in political science; the methodology of measuring factionalism; and the benefits and dangers of factionalism especially in dominant party systems.
Local Government
Catherine Needham also works on public services within local government, tracing the emergence of customer care models of service delivery. Based on interviews with officers and councillors and content analysis of Best Value Performance Plans she has used the concept of ‘consumerisation’ to explain patterns of change in local service delivery, consultation and communications. She is currently working with the National Consumer Council and Unison on a project on local target setting in public services.
Migration
Anne Kershen works on migration, focusing particularly on London. She is Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration here at Queen Mary. Her latest book Strangers, Aliens and Asians: Huguenots Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields 1660-2000, published by Routledge in 2005, is a thematic study of the settlement and integration of Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in London's East End. Whilst dealing with the past she is also engaged with the present and the future and current debates which centre around issues such as controls on immigrant entry, the granting of asylum, immigrant health and criminality.