Episodes
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Political Strategist, New European editor-at-large, mental health campaigner and co-host of the country’s Number 1 podcast, The Rest is Politics, Alastair Campbell came to UCL for a special opening event of the UCL Department of Political Science's Policy & Practice seminar series for 2023-24, in partnership with the UCL European Institute and UCL Policy Lab.
His new book "But What Can I Do?" went straight to the top of the Sunday Times best-seller lists. In it, Campbell argues that the next generation has to rescue politics from the populist, post-truth morass into which it has fallen in the era of Trump, Johnson, Brexit and Putin. This event explored the hopes and concerns of young people from across UCL and London about engaging in politics, and consider how our political system can become more open to their participation.
Facilitated by the brilliant Julia Macfarlane of ABC News and joined on stage by students from UCL Political Science, Alastair will seek to address the challenge laid out in the sub-title of his book: Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How YOU Can Help Fix It.
Watch the Julia Gillard speech:• Julia Gillard misogyny speech voted m...
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Our democratic system is not working as well as it should: on this, both the public and most experts agree. But what exactly are the problems? What are the pros and cons of the potential solutions? And are such changes feasible?
Drawing on recent Constitution Unit research into public attitudes to democracy, as well as his own work on electoral systems, referendums, citizens’ assemblies and other democratic institutions, Alan Renwick explores answers to each of these questions. Alan argues that there are no quick fixes, but that a series of changes in institutions, practices, and behaviours may lead to valuable improvements.
With an introduction by Prof Meg Russell and an appreciation by Prof Anand Menon.
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Missing episodes?
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Debates over standards in public life have a long history. Their evolution is partly cyclical, reflecting reactions to extended periods of one party in office. But there is also long-term growth in a belief that ministers cannot be trusted to behave well and that more formal structures are needed to check their power. Of late, the view that the abuses and challenges to institutional checks have been greater under some recent prime ministers – particularly Boris Johnson – has produced what amounts to a culture war between, on the one hand, defenders of the elected government – often citing an almost presidential mandate dismissing unelected regulators and judges – and, on the other hand, critics who would constrain or even eliminate ministers from some decisions. This debate is in danger of becoming very polarised. So where can a new balance be achieved? In this lecture, Peter Riddell will argue that the solution must recognise the legitimate rights of ministers as the elected government while also strengthening independent scrutiny where needed. Parliamentary committees should also play a more active role in holding both ministers and watchdogs/regulators to account.
Introduction by Prof Meg Russell. Response by Rt Hon Jack Straw.
Professor Sir Peter Riddell
Peter Riddell was appointed an Honorary Professor at UCL in March 2022. He has taken a long interest in constitutional issues, parliament and standards in public life, both as a journalist and subsequently in various other roles. He joined the Financial Times in 1970 after graduating from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, with a degree in History and Economics. He served as Political Editor for seven years before becoming the paper’s Washington Bureau Chief. He joined The Times in 1991 serving as its chief political commentator until he retired from journalism after the 2010 election. He has written ten books on politics, parliament and political careers. Towards the end of his journalistic career, he became involved in other activities, initially as a trustee and then chair of the Hansard Society from 2007 until 2012, and then as Senior Fellow and then Director/Chief Executive of the Institute for Government from 2012 until 2016. He served for 18 months as a member of the Gibson inquiry into the involvement of UK intelligence agencies into the alleged mistreatment of detainees and rendition. In spring 2016 he was appointed to the independent office holder post of Commissioner for Public Appointments where he served an extended term of five and a half years until September 2021. His other public roles have included conducting a review for the Cabinet Office into the future of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and serving on the Parliamentary and Political Service Honours Committee. He has had close contacts with the academic world in various forms, notably with the Constitution Unit over more than two decades. He chaired the advisory panel of the ESRC’s Constitutional Change research programme from 2001 to 2006, is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a recipient of the President’s Medal of the British Academy.
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Drawing on evidence from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, it shows that certain global best practices do exist, and that effective government institutions share a common set of foundational management practices. But different institutions inside governments vary in the extent to which such practices are in place – despite sharing the same governance laws. Prof Schuster therefore advocates for a data-informed approach to introducing management good practices in government institutions one-by-one, rather than pursuing government-wide best practice laws.
Mentioned in this lecture:
‘Merit, Tenure and Bureaucratic Behavior: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in the Dominican Republic’, Comparative Political Studies, 2018, Vol. 51(6), p. 759–792, 2018 (with Oliveros, V.)
‘The Causal Effect of Public Service Motivation on Ethical Behaviour in the Public Sector: Evidence from a Large-Scale Survey Experiment‘, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2019, Vol. 29(3) (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.)
‘Government Analytics: An Empirical Guide to Measuring Public Administration‘ Washington DC: World Bank, forthcoming (co-edited with Rogger, D.)
‘Getting the basics right: How to manage civil servants in developing countries‘ (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.) World Bank, Governance for Development Blog, May 2018
‘What the UK civil service can learn from developing countries on pay and acting on evidence‘ (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.) UK Civil Service World, May 2018
Find more of Christian's publications via https://www.christianschuster.net/
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The current conservative super-majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has a chance to reshape American law in a dramatic way. One such way is in the realm of administrative law, as members of this conservative majority have sought to restrain the powers of federal bureaucratic agencies, as in the 2022 case of West Virginia vs. EPA. Similar future decisions could profoundly affect federal policy implementation and law enforcement, possibly shifting powers to state and local governments.
Meet The Speakers
Ilaria Di Gioia is Senior Lecturer in American Law and Associate Director of the Centre for American Legal Studies at Birmingham City School of Law. Her research focuses on questions of law and policy within the U.S. federalist structure. She is the editor of the British Journal of American Legal Studies, as well as the Inaugural Philip Davies Fellow of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. Finally, she also serves as Honorary Vice Consul for Italy in Birmingham, representing the Italian government as well as over 10,000 Italians in the British Midlands.
James Tierney was the attorney general of Maine from 1980 to 1990. He currently is a lecturer at Harvard Law School where he teaches classes on state attorneys general and has directed the attorney general clinic. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Tierney was the Director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School. Since his time as Maine AG, Professor Tierney has also consulted with serving state attorneys general and the National Association of Attorneys General. In this role, he worked with then-AGs in negotiating the tobacco settlement of the 1990s. https://www.stateag.org
Rachel Augustine Potter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. She has published extensively on bureaucratic politics and she published her award-winning book, Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy, in 2019. Professor Potter also contributes to the Brookings Institution Centre on Regulation and Markets and has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States. Chaired by: Dr. Colin Provost, UCL Department of Political Science -
This panel explores these nuances and tackle pressing questions: What are the pros and cons of China's involvement in Africa? Does China's aid and FDI pressure Western donors to adjust and improve their delivery? What are the long-term impacts of Chinese involvement and what does the future of China-Africa cooperation look like?
Meet the speakers: Dr Sam Brazys (University College Dublin) Dr Huan Zou (SOAS) Chair: Dr Adam Harris Unfortunately Mr Solomzi Mhlana (1st Secretary Political, South African High Commission to the Great Britain and Northern Ireland) had to cancel and could not attend this seminar.
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LGBTIQ+ people continue to face persecution and discrimination in virtually every region of the world. Many of them are forced to migrate or seek asylum. Our panellists will discuss the unique challenges that LGBTIQ+ migrants and asylum seekers face, in their home countries, in the course of migration, and in receiving countries.
Dr Sarah Singer is Senior Lecturer in Refugee Law at the Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research interests are refugee law and policy, human rights and migration. She is a recognised expert on criminality and asylum, and has broader research expertise on humanitarian accountability, detention and protection of LGBT+ asylum seekers.
Dr Aydan Greatrick is a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Geography, University of Leeds and an expert in LGBTQ+ asylum support, protection and forced migration. He has over seven years experience researching the intersections between forced migration, humanitarianism, gender and sexuality, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ asylum and displacement in Europe and the Middle East.
Chair: Prof Phillip Ayoub, Professor of International Relations, UCL
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Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord, Paul Tucker lays out principles for how democracies can approach relations with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values or recklessly risking their safety.
Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions going back to Hobbes, Kant and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he argues, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least. Avoiding wishful thinking about the security of our way of life, and drawing on three decades as a domestic and international policy maker, Tucker applies the book’s principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the global financial system.
The event featured a discussion with the author, and a panel of three speakers: Richard Bellamy (Professor of Political Science at UCL), Jeff King (Professor of Law at UCL) and Juliet Samuel (Columnist at The Telegraph).
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Tony Stower is an experienced public servant and is currently Principal, Online Safety Policy at Ofcom.
Maeve Walsh is a policy and government relations consultant with expertise in digital and health policy. A former civil servant with 17 years' experience in Whitehall, she has been an Associate with Carnegie UK since 2018 and is an advocate for legislation to prevent online harms.
Ruth Smeeth (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) is a British Labour Party politician who was the MP for Stoke-on-Trent North from 2015 until 2019. Since 2022 she has been a member of the House of Lords. In June 2020, she became chief executive of Index on Censorship, an organisation which campaigns for freedom of speech.
Edina Harbinja is Reader in Media/Privacy Law at Aston University. Her principal areas of research and teaching are related to the legal issues surrounding the internet and emerging technologies. She is a member of the Advisory Council at Open Rights Group, which aims to protect the digital rights of people in the UK, including privacy and free speech online. -
Marc Stears is an internationally regarded academic, political strategist, speechwriter and executive educator, who specialises in creating dynamic collaborations between academic researchers and broader society. Currently the inaugural Director of the UCL Policy Lab, Marc has previously been Director of the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney, CEO of the New Economics Foundation, Professor of political theory at the University of Oxford and chief speechwriter to the UK Labour Party. He enjoy a worldwide reputation as a leadership coach and communications strategist, having supported Board and Executive Committee members for major organisations including for some of the world’s largest companies. He is the author of several books from the world’s leading presses, including Out of the Ordinary published by Harvard University Press in 2021. Along with his co-author Tom Baldwin, he is currently completing a new book entitled England, Whose England? due out from Bloomsbury next year
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Midterms typically serve as a referendum on the president and the party in office. But in an election year that has seen a roiling economy, the overturning of abortion rights, and the resurgence of Donald Trump, conventional wisdom may not apply. How is voter mobilization different this year, and what results should we expect? How would changes to the composition of Congress affect domestic and foreign policy? In this panel discussion, three leading experts - James Boys (Tufts University), Kyle Kondik (University of Virginia), and Lindsay Newman (S&P Global) - will examine the significance of the midterms and the state of democracy in America more broadly.
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About the speakers
Ignacio Garcia Bercero participated in the Uruguay Round negotiations that led to the establishment of the World Trade Organizations. Between 2001 and 2005, he headed the unit in the European Commission responsible for WTO dispute settlement. Since 2005, he has been Director in DG trade where, among other responsibilities, he was chief negotiator for the EU-Korea Free Trade agreement, the EU-India Free Trade agreement and the negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Ignacio is currently director for multilateral trade policy and strategy and is Visiting Professor at UCL’s School of Public Policy.
Stephen Adams is Senior Director in advisory firm Global Counsel. He has more than 15 years of experience in European and British public policy and regulation, chiefly in the field of international economic policy. He has also been an Executive Director of Goldman Sachs International, based in London. Stephen is Senior Research Associate at UCL’s School of Public Policy.
Chair: Professor Lauge Poulsen, Professor in International Relations and Law, UCL Department of Political Science
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About the speaker
Klaus Welle is the Secretary-General of the European Parliament, a position he has held since 2009.
Find out more.Chaired by Robert Hazell.
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In addition to celebrating her Jubilee, thought is turning to the future of the monarchy, and what changes might be expected after she is gone. Dr Bob Morris (expert on church and state at the Constitution Unit, UCL) will talk about the next Accession and Coronation; Dr Craig Prescott (constitutional lawyer at Bangor University) will explain the need to update the Regency Acts; Dr Carolyn Harris (royal historian at the University of Toronto) will discuss previous jubilees, the role of Consorts, and the upbringing of future monarchs; and Prof Helle Krunke (Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Copenhagen) will talk about the Golden Jubilee of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, also being celebrated this year, and the differences between the British and European monarchies.
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In this panel discussion, three leading experts—Sarah Isgur (The Dispatch), Megan McArdle (Washington Post), and Matthew Weil (Bipartisan Policy Center)—will examine the causes of distrust in American elections and investigate its broader impact on the resilience of U.S. democracy.
About the speakers:
Sarah Isgur is a staff writer and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions for The Dispatch, a professor at George Washington's School of Media and Public Affairs and George Mason Law School, a contributing editor at Politico, and an ABC News contributor. She most recently served in the Department of Justice as the Director of the Office of Public Affairs and Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General during the Russia investigation. She was backstage for more than a half dozen presidential debates as the Deputy Campaign Manager for Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign. Isgur clerked for the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Northwestern University.
Megan McArdle is a Washington Post columnist and the author of "The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success." Previously, she was a Bloomberg View columnist. McArdle wrote for the Daily Beast, Newsweek, the Atlantic and the Economist and founded the blog Asymmetrical Information.
Matthew Weil is director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project where he is responsible for all of the organization’s voting-related policy development efforts at the state and federal level, the Business Alliance for Effective Democracy, and collaborations with social media platforms to provide authoritative election information to voters. Prior to joining BPC in February 2013, he worked at the Department of the Treasury on domestic finance issues in the office of public affairs. He also previously served as a research and policy analyst at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute. Weil holds a Master of Science in Government Analytics degree from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Chair: Dr Thomas Gift
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n this talk about his new book, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, UCL associate professor of global politics Brian Klaas draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders – from the noblest to the dirtiest – including presidents, war criminals, cult leaders, terrorists, psychopaths, and dictators to reveal the most surprising workings of power: how children can predict who is going to win an election based just on the faces of politicians; why narcissists make more money; what makes a certain species of bee more corrupt than others; whether a thirst for power is a genetic condition; and why being the second in command is in fact the smartest choice.
From scans of psychopathic brains, to the effects of power on monkey drug use, Klaas weaves cutting-edge research with astonishing encounters (including a ski lesson with the former viceroy of Iraq, tea with a former UK prime minister, and breakfast with Madagascar’s yogurt kingpin president). Written by the creator of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, Corruptible challenges our basic assumptions about power, from the board room to the war room, and provides a roadmap for getting better leaders at every level.Brian Klaas grew up in Minnesota, earned his DPhil at Oxford, and is now an associate professor of global politics at University College London. He is also a weekly columnist for The Washington Post, host of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, and frequent guest on national television. Klaas has conducted field research across the globe, interviewing despots, CEOs, torture victims, dissidents, cult leaders, criminals, and everyday power abusers. He has also advised major politicians and organizations including NATO, the European Union, and Amnesty International. He is the author of four books, including the most recent: Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us.
Moderator: Ian Dunt
FIND THE BOOK: CORRUPTIBLE: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us
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The Profit Paradox describes how a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. The consequences are immense, from unnecessarily high prices, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages. Jan Eeckhout also offers concrete solutions about how to fix the problem and restore a healthy economy.
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Tensions have been mounting rapidly since Russia massed 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border in December. What does Putin hope to achieve? How should the West respond if the Russians do invade? Can the tensions be defused by the US-Russia talks in Geneva? Four distinguished experts join us to answer these questions: General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Sir Roderic Lyne, former British Ambassador to Russia, Orysia Lutsevych, Research Fellow and manager of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, and Steven Pifer, former US Ambassador to Ukraine.
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Speakers
Dina Ionesco is Manager in the Adaptation Division at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat, focusing on human mobility and climate change. Lena Dobrowolska and Teo Ormond-Skeaping are an artist collaboration from Poland and the UK whose work focuses on climate change. They won the 2019 Coalition for Art and Sustainable Development (COAL) Prize with their project ‘You never know, one day you too may become a refugee’.Chair: Dr Elisa Calliari, Senior Research Fellow, UCL Department of Political Science - Show more
