Professor Gerry Stoker
Position: Professor of Politics and Governance
Research group: governance; democracy; citizenship
Contact Gerry Stoker at: g.stoker@soton.ac.uk
Research interests
Gerry Stoker is Professor of Politics and Governance at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the director of the Centre for Citizenship and Democracy in Southampton. He has authored or edited over 20 books and published over 70 refereed articles or chapters in books. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hebrew, Portuguese and Chinese. His most recent book Why Politics Matters won the 2006 political book of the year award from the Political Studies Association of the UK. His current research deals with issues of governance in complex settings, political disenchantment in western democracies, citizen empowerment and strategies for encouraging civic behaviour among citizens. In his research work Professor Stoker is committed to the use of pioneering methods and in particular to approaches that enable evidenced-based policy and practice. In recent work he has promoted the use of randomized control trials, design experiments and Boolean techniques to draw out lessons from multiple case studies.
Professor Stoker was the founding Chair of the New Local Government Network (www.nlgn.org.uk) that was the think tank of the year in the UK in 2004. He has acted as an advisor to the UK government and the Council of Europe on local government issues over the last decade and more. You can follow Gerry Stoker’s blogging on local government and other matters on http://www.totalpolitics.com/blogs/localgovblog.php
Research projects
1. ESRC Professorial Fellowship (RES-051-27-0067-A) Jan 2004-June2008
The first major contribution of this research programme has been to bring together and specify our current understanding of governance. Governance seeks to understand the way we construct collective decision-making. In a book published in 2008 – Governance Theory and Practice: A Cross Disciplinary Approach ( Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) Vasudha Chhotray and Gerry Stoker offer the most comprehensive study of the governance literature that has so far been produced. The book examines governance work from political science, economics, development studies, international relations and socio- legal studies. It also reviews the application of governance debates in the fields of corporate, participatory and environmental governance. Crucially the book offers a new way forward for thinking about governance challenges. It argues for that we need to move beyond identifying generic governance principles to steer organisational practices and instead see governance as the product of a number trade-offs and a practice driven by a complex set of human practices. The implication of these findings is that appropriate governance practices need to be designed in response to the particular circumstances and challenges of different organisations and perceived governance issues at stake. Moreover the simple application of incentives and constraints to steer behaviour- premised on the idea that actors are driven by a straight-forward instrumental rationality - may lead to weak and ineffective governance solutions. We need to take on board the realities of politics and power at the heart of governance and give greater recognition to the complexity of human cognition, motivation and behaviour.
A paper presented at Ghent University provides a more developed account of key themes from our work on governance.
One of our key findings has been the inherently political nature of governance. This theme has been pursued in our work by an in-depth investigation of the failings of democratic governance in advanced industrial societies. Gerry Stoker’s book Why Politics Matters: Making Democracy Work (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) is the second major output of the research. It won the Political Study Association’s prize for the best politics book of 2006. The book explores the complex set of factors that lie behind our problems with politics. It is suggested that a substantial part of our discontent is because the discourse and practice of collective decision-makings sits very uncomfortably alongside our daily experience of individual choice, self-expression and market-based fulfilment of needs and wants. As a result, too many citizens fail to appreciate the inherent characteristics of the political process in democratic settings: its complexities and messiness. A cycle of disaffection with democracy ultimately runs the risk of undermining public support for it. But we can rethink the way that we do politics to address the challenges that we face. In our reassessment, we need to recognise that, for most people, politics is not their first choice of activity. There are trade-offs between the time spent on politics and the joys of private life. Moreover, advocates of engagement tend to over prescribe particular solutions as well as misjudge the extent and nature of the involvement that people want. Politics is therefore a place for amateurs and we need to design institutions, structure processes and develop support systems to make it easier for people to engage in it. Our solution to the problem of disenchantment with politics is deceptively simple. It is to expand the opportunities for citizens to have a say about the issues they care about.
A conference paper for an event organised for November 5/6 2008 with the Hansard Society and Sheffield University sets out my latest thinking on these issues.
The final core insight to emerge from the ESRC Fellowship research is a range of papers on how policy makers can meet the challenges of the new governance. We explore how a new concept of public value governance is central to delivering effective governance in a paper for the Work Foundation. Another paper shows how a wider appreciation of the complexity of the microfoundations of organisational behaviour would have, for example, produced a more effective reform programme of public service delivery rather than the heavy-handed top-down target driven approached favoured by New Labour from 1997 for a decade. A number of further studies remain to be completed including a paper on the role of policy advisors in new governance arrangements.
2. Evaluating Local Governance: New Constitutions and Ethics 2002-2007
The evaluation provides a 360 degree assessment of changes in the structure and practice of English local governance arrangements introduced by the 2000 Act. Key research papers can be accessed at http://www.ipeg.org.uk/research/elgnce/index.php.
3. Rediscovering the civic and achieving better outcomes in public policy (2007-2009)
This research project is jointly run between the University of Southampton and Manchester and is jointly funded by the ESRC, the Department of Communities and Local Government and NWIN.
See for a fuller description: http://www.ipeg.org.uk/civicbehaviour/
A key element in this research is to explore what makes civic behaviour and what drives it. An initial paper presented at the PSA 2008 exploring these issues can be accessed.
A key feature of this research is to explore issues using innovative methods. We are making use of randomized control trials and other experimental methods. A conference paper presented in Manchester in July 2008 outlines these methods.
4. Further projects and publications
(a) A study of community empowerment is under way with DeMontfort University. See http://www.soton.ac.uk/ccd/projects/empowerment.html
(b) A study of the governance arrangements relating to nuclear power in providing energy as part of a broader project on the sustainability of nuclear power http://www.springproject.co.uk/
(c) A third edition of Theories and Methods of Political Science (edited by David March and Gerry Stoker) is under production and should be available in late 2009 or early 2010
(d) A further book on governance is planned in joint work with Jacob Torfing, Eva Sorensen, Guy Peters and Jon Pierre.
5. Presentations
Professor Stoker makes numerous invited presentations to both academic and practitioner audiences. Since the summer of 2008 presentations have been made a visiting professor at the University of South Africa; Zhejiang University, China ; the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI); The University of West Indies; Roskilde University, Denmark; the Queensland Local Government Association as well as several locations in both the UK. The PowerPoints and papers used in these presentations are provided below.
Achieving Best Value; How does the ECM agenda fit into Public Service?; The Microfoundations of Governance: why psychology rather than economics could be the key to better intergovernmental relations; Election prospects; Politics and Participation ; The nature of governance; UK governance; Mayors standards in public life ; Understanding what works: stretching the experimental method; Politics and public value; The Microfoundations of Governance: implications for understanding intergovernmental relations; Anti-Politics in Britain
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