Duverger’s Law is a dead parrot. European political scientists need to...
Political science has very few ‘laws’, perhaps explaining why the European discipline has so stubbornly clung onto its most famous product – Maurice Duverger’s claim that countries using ‘majoritarian’...
View ArticleOrganizing your personal research library and compiling bibliographies: I was...
A key aspect of scholarship is how you create a personal research library, find and access your sources when needed, and cite them accurately and comprehensively. Patrick Dunleavy explains how the...
View ArticleThe lasting achievement of Thatcherism as a political project is that Britain...
Throughout the twentieth century the Conservative party dominated British politics as an integrated party of the right. Yet since late 1992, the Tories have increasingly struggled to attract the...
View ArticlePolitical and constitutional turbulence in the UK looks set to continue to 2020
Scotland’s ‘No’ vote solves one acute existential threat to the UK, says Patrick Dunleavy, but only for now. The likely narrow results of the May 2015 general election, plus David Cameron’s promise of...
View ArticleWhy the 2015 UK election spells the bitter end for the biggest ‘law’ in...
The United Kingdom general election takes place next week, with current polling predicting no clear majority in the House of Commons for any party. One of the most well-known concepts in political...
View ArticleThree more years of Cameron – but it will be a rocky road ahead
Confounding the pollsters and the pundits, voters in England have given David Cameron another three years as Prime Minister, collapsed the Liberal Democrats to a shell and dashed the Labour elite’s...
View ArticleEpitaph for a political chancer: Cameron’s fate examplifies the inability of...
David Cameron’s announcement that he is stepping down as Prime Minister capped a night of unprecedented referendum triumph for the ‘Brexiteers’ on the Conservative right and in UKIP in overthrowing...
View ArticleUK general election preview: What to look out for as Britain goes to the polls
The UK’s snap election on 8 June initially looked like being a comfortable victory for Theresa May and the Conservatives, but with the polls tightening in the last few weeks, there is now far more...
View ArticleHow ‘groupthink’ in Theresa May’s Downing Street delivered another round of...
The UK’s political turmoil has continued with the Conservatives’ disastrous 2017 campaign. But what led to the multiple miscalculations involved? Patrick Dunleavy argues that it forms part of a wider...
View ArticleLosing the ‘Europeanisation’ meta-narrative for modernising British democracy
Contrary to claims of Britain’s enduring political and constitutional distinctiveness, in the period from 1997 to 2016 the UK in fact modernised its polity by following several strong ‘Europeanisation’...
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