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- Emeritus Professor of the Department of Political Science
- Dept of Political Science
- Faculty of S&HS
I was born in
After graduating in Theology in 1971, my original intention had been to write a thesis on the philosophical theology of Paul Tillich, a figure in whom I still retain an interest, but became absorbed by questions in political philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences. I was fortunate that my supervisor at the time, Dorothy Emmet, was an expert both in philosophy of religion and in the philosophy of the social sciences, and she was crucial in my being able to make the transition from one field to the other.
In 1974 I was awarded the Sir James Knott Fellowship in the
Department of Politics at the
My main intellectual influences have been the work of John Rawls and H.L.A. Hart in contemporary political theory, and John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick in the history of political thought.
My general areas of research span Modern Political Theory and Public Policy. Over my career I have linked the two through the analysis of political principles and public policy, which was evident in my first book Equality and Social Policy (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978) and subsequently in Political Theory and Social Policy (Macmillan, 1983).
Between 2009 and 2011 I held an ESCR Professorial Fellowship, working on modern (post-1950) social contract theory. The first book from that fellowship was Democratic Justice and the Social Contract (Oxford University Press, 2013). In 2020 Oxford University Press will publish my Modern Social Contract Theory.
In recent years, I have worked on democracy and democratic theory, the key text of which is Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), which is a much revised and expanded version of a book originally published in 1999. In 2018, I published The Will of the People: A Modern Myth (Polity Press), which exposed the misuse of a fictitious idea.
Alongside this strand of my work has gone an interest in understanding the democratic deficit of the European Union. Building upon two jointly edited volumes Citizenship, Democracy and Justice in the New Europe, with Percy Lehning (Routledge, 1997) and Political Theory and European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice and Citizenship, with Michael Nentwich (Routledge, 1998), I published Democratic Citizenship and the European Union (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
My
empirical public policy interests have focused on comparative environmental
policy in
Together with members of the KCL/UCL Social Values Group, I
have written extensively on priority-setting in health care.
I have taught Politics for more than forty years, and I still find it an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
At UCL in recent years my main teaching has been on two
courses. The first is Theories and
Actors of the Policy Process, which is one of the core courses for MSc Public
Policy students, covering the main theoretical and analytical approaches to the
study of public policy. The second is
Health Policy and Reform, which covers a range of topics in health policy. I have also taught Social Values and Public
Policy, which explicitly brings together normative reasoning and policy
analysis.
01-SEP-2015 | Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Public Policy | Political Science | UCL, United Kingdom |
01-JAN-2010 – 31-JUL-2015 | Professor of Political Theory and Public Policy | Political Science | UCL, United Kingdom |
01-APR-1992 – 31-DEC-2009 | Professor of Government | Government | University of Essex, United Kingdom |
01-OCT-1985 – 31-MAR-1992 | Professor of Politics | School of Economic and Social Studies | University of East Anglia, United Kingdom |
01-OCT-1976 – 30-SEP-1985 | Lecturer in Politics | Department of Politics | University of York, United Kingdom |
01-OCT-1974 – 30-AUG-1976 | Sir James Knott Fellow | Department of Politics | University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom |