Å·ÃÀ¸ßÇå

Publications

,

The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties (2023) (2023)

Ahmadov Anar, , Cho Min, Makszin Kristin

Frontiers in Political Science Vol 4 (2022)

American Political Science Association Annual Conference 2022, pp. 1-15 (2022)

, Aklin Michaël

American Political Science Association Annual Conference 2022 (2022)

, O'Malley Eoin

European Journal of Political Research Vol 61, pp. 783-806 (2022)

European Journal of Political Research Vol 61, pp. 326-350 (2022)

Teaching

I have taught a number of undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative politics, comparative political economy and public policy, comparative welfare states, and time-series cross section data analysis. At Å·ÃÀ¸ßÇå, I am teaching an entry level course on comparative politics (L2108: Politics: Decisionmaking and Outcomes) and a third year course on the theoretical foundations of economic policy in industrialised democracies (L2343: Philosophy of Economic Policy). 

Professional Activities

Visiting researcher

2025

Participant

6/2023

Participant

12/2022

Speaker

12/2022

Recipient

11/2022

Recipient

10/2022

Projects

Sylvester, Christine (Principal Investigator) Reher, Stefanie (Academic) Alexiadou, Despina (Academic)

In the UK, less than three percent of members of parliament (MPs), and none of those newly elected in the 2017 and 2019 elections, have a genuine working-class background, which unfavourably compares to the 34 percent of the British population with a working-class background. At the same time, while women are still underrepresented in politics their share of MPs has been constantly rising, constituting now 34% of all MPs compared to 3% in 1979. Nonetheless, the significant changes in the socio-economic profiles of elected politicians have mostly gone unnoticed. These changes have resulted in a fundamental shift in political representation. Though politicians never closely mirrored society, over time there is even less resemblance between political assemblies and society in socio-economic terms.

This project will explore gender and class inequalities within representative institutions in the UK and Scotland. To do this, the project will first, provide a new theory on the intersection of gender and social class. How should we best conceptualise and measure women candidates’ social class? Second, the project will analyse and code data on Westminster candidates from 1974 to 2015. These data, which include information on candidates’ education and profession, have been collected by professors Rosie Campbell and Jennifer Hudson and shared with Dr Alexiadou. This analysis will be the first time we will record temporal changes in the numbers of top candidates and British MPs in terms of both their gender and social class. To this day, there is no report of the socio-economic backgrounds over time of the men and women that run for office and/or have entered parliament. Finally, the project will be the first to collect data for the latest election in Scotland on the top candidates and MSPs in the latest Scottish elections, in terms of both their gender and social class.

03-Jan-2024

Alexiadou, Despina (Principal Investigator)

01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2027

Alexiadou, Despina (Principal Investigator)

Do politicians act in their voters’ or in their personal interests? Representative democracy rests on the assumption that voters elect members of parliament, who in turn elect the government to represent them. Yet, recent research indicates that the preferences of individual politicians can have important policy effects beyond and above the party agenda. In this project I investigate whether the rise in income inequality can be partly explained by the policy preferences and careers of finance ministers.

01-Jan-2020 - 30-Jan-2020

Alexiadou, Despina (Principal Investigator)

01-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2021