Keith Dowding ANU Political Science Discipline RSSS)

POLITICAL SCIENCE PROGRAM
Research School of Social Sciences

Prof Keith Dowding



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Research Projects

The Careers of Cabinet Ministers

This project comes under the rubric of SEDEPE. My work so far has largely been concerned with ministers in the British governemtn and largely concerned with accountability issues concerned with their selection, promotion or demotion and removal. These career concerns provide the bedrock for ministerial accountability in all its forms. Through SEDEPE we are enlargely the scope of analysis to countries around the world with a network of scholars collecting a dedicated dataset for comparative analysis. Details are found on the SEDEPE website. I have received an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant for 2009-20011 to examine ministerial accountability in Australia which will replicate the British study of comparison and contrast.

Publication from my projects include:

On the UK

Samuel Berlinski, Keith Dowding, Torun Dewan and Gita Subrahmanyam‘Choosing, Moving and Resigning at Westminster, UK’ in Keith Dowding and Patrick Dumont (eds) The Selection of Ministers in Europe: Hiring and Firing, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 58-78

Samuel Berlinski, Torun Dewan and Keith Dowding‘The Length of Ministerial Tenure in the UK, 1945-1997’ British Journal of Political Science vol 37, no. 2, 2007, pp. 245-262

Torun Dewan and Keith Dowding ‘The Corrective Effect of Ministerial Resignations on Government Popularity’ (with), American Journal of Political Science, vol. 49, no. 1 (January) 2005, pp. 46-56

Keith Dowding and Won-Taek Kang ‘Ministerial Resignations 1945-97’, Public Administration, vol. 76, no. 3, 1998, pp. 411-29

With a fortcoming book to be published by Cambridge University Press Samuel Berlinski, Torun Dewan and Keith Dowding Accounting for Ministers.

And on Europe:

Keith Dowding and Patrick Dumont eds The Selection of Ministers in Europe: Hiring and Firing (London: Routledge), 2008.

Keith Dowding and Patrick Dumont ‘Structural and Strategic Factors Affecting the Hiring and Firing of Ministers’ in Keith Dowding and Patrick Dumont (eds) The Selection of Ministers in Europe: Hiring and Firing, London: Routledge, 2008, pp. 1-20

Plus working papers

I have two dataset available for researchers to use. The first, ‘Individual Ministerial Resignations’ is on UK ministerial resignations and non-resignations (1900-2007). The second, ‘Post-War Administrations’, has data on all ministerial movements (up, down, sideways and out) from 1945-97. It is currently being updated to the end of the Blair administration in June 2007. Both are available for researchers use on datasets which also provides information on coding and referencing.

This work has been supported in the past by the Nuffield Foundation, Leverhulme and STICERD; and is currently supported by STICERD.

Satisfaction with Public Services

I have long been engaged with examining urban service-delivery (mostly with Peter John but also with Thanos Mergoupis, more recently we have looked at services delivered at all levels of government. Our current funded research is:

Public Services: Exit and Voice and a Means of Enhancing Service Delivery

With Peter John: this project examines exit and voice mechanisms and their effects upon satisfaction with public services. The project involves a five-year panel survey run by YouGov, and has been supported by two awards from the UK Economic and Social Research Council. This work follows on from a long-time study of reactions to public services, especially in the local context. Publications from this project include:

Keith Dowding and Peter John ‘The Three Exit, Three Voice and Loyalty Framework: A Test with Survey Data on Local Services’ Political Studies 2008, 56(2), pp. 288-311.

‘Desafios à Administração Pública: Dar Poder aos Consumidores’ (‘Challenges to Public Administration: Empowering Consumers’ trans. André Azevedo Alves) in José Manuel Moreira, Carlos Jalali, André Azevedo Alves (eds) Estado, Sociedatde Civil E Administração Pública, Coimbra: Almedina, 2008, pp. 11-23

Keith Dowding Peter John, Thanos Mergoupis and Mark van Vugt ‘Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Analytic and Empirical Developments’ (with), European Journal of Political Research, vol. 37, no. 4, 2000, pp. 469-495.

And forthcoming:

Keith Dowding and Peter John ‘The Value of Choice in Public Policy’ (with Peter John) Public Administration 2009

See also working papers.

The Measurement of Rights and Freedoms

There are several strands to this research

Amartya Sen and Modern Political Theory
The research was supported by the British Academy who awarded me a Research Readership. Publications from this project include:

‘Defensa de la Preferencia Revelada’ (‘In Defence of Revealed Preference Theory’ trans. Fernando Aguiar) Revista Internacional de Sociología vol LXVI, no 49 (Enero-Abril) 2008, pp. 9-31

‘Can “Capabilities” Reconcile Freedom and Equality?’ Journal of Political Philosophy, vol.14, no.3, 2006, pp. 323-336

‘Revealed Preference and External Reference’, Rationality and Society, vol. 14, no. 3, (August) 2002, pp. 257-282.