Keith Dowding

This project comes under the rubric of SEDEPE. Dowding’s work so far has largely been concerned with ministers in the British Cabinet and thus far largely concerned with their resignations. But now he is working to extend this work into the careers of ministers more broadly, and to extend its scope beyond the UK most notably into ministers in the Australian states and Commonwealth government. Publications from this project include the following:

Dowding also considered the theory of presidentialisation of British politics in his 2012 article, “The Prime Ministerialization of the British Prime Minister”. The article challenges Michael Foley’s theory that British politics is becoming increasingly similar to that of a presidential system. Dowding instead suggests that the British prime minister is gaining power, but only enhancing the responsibilities that he already possesses rather than adopting new powers that are more closely attributed to the United States’ President.

Dowding left LSE and joined the political science programme in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU) as a Research Professor of Political Science in July 2007 moving to the School of Politics and International Relations when the Arts Faculty coalesced with the Research School. He is the Chair of a network of scholars Selection and De-selection of Political Elites (SEDEPE) who are interested in the career paths of political elites http://sedepe.net/.

Downling obtained his BA in Philosophy and Politics from Keele University in 1982, and a DPhil from Nuffield College, Oxford University in 1987.

Keith Martin Dowding (born 6 May 1960), is Professor of Political Science in Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia arriving from the London School of Economics, UK in 2007. He has published widely in the fields of public choice, public administration, public policy, British politics, comparative politics, urban political economy, positive political theory and normative political philosophy. His work is informed by social and rational choice theories. He edited the Journal of Theoretical Politics (Sage) from 1996 to 2012.