What Now for British Politics? Reflections on Gonzalez Ginocchio, Hindmoor and Stanley
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920986799 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Author | Peter Allen |
| Subject Matter | Pluralism and Political Studies in the UK |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920986799
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(1) 33 –35
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920986799
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What Now for British Politics?
Reflections on Gonzalez
Ginocchio, Hindmoor
and Stanley
Peter Allen
Abstract
A response to Pluralism and Political Studies in the UK: A Pilot Study into Who Gets What in the
Discipline by Brenda Gonzalez Ginocchio, Andrew Hindmoor and Liam Stanley.
Keywords
British politics, pluralism
Accepted: 18 December 2020
The data outlined by Gonzalez Ginocchio et al. (2021) present a picture of the status of
British Politics in the contemporary discipline that is, on the face of it, mixed but sober-
ing. Since 1998, the data show (a) a decline in the number of scholars in the selected
leading departments who identify as studying British Politics; (b) a decline in British
Politics papers in a prominent journal within the discipline and; and (c) a strong perfor-
mance in grant capture for British Politics projects.1 Existing analyses of the state of the
British Politics sub-discipline in recent years have identified a series of challenges: the
requirements of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and how these might deter
colleagues from working on single-country case studies (Beech, 2012); the increasing
emphasis placed by British universities on grant capture; and a supposed lack of ‘theoreti-
cal and empirical’ integration within British Politics scholarship (Kerr and Kettell, 2006).
Combined, these writings give a sense of British Politics under pressure to conform to
emergent markers of academic prestige that under- or de-value the singular study of the
politics of Britain. Building on these, and reflecting on the data so usefully provided in
Gonzalez Ginocchio et al. (2021), I offer three brief reflections.
I agree with the authors that we can view the data in light of a process of ‘comparativi-
sation’ that locates case studies of Britain among broader disciplinary concerns, the sub-
stance of which are not conditional on taking place within the boundaries of a given
geographical area. On this reading, British Politics is doing just fine, hidden in plain sight.
Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies, University of Bath, Bath, UK
Corresponding author:
Peter Allen, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
Email: p.a.allen@bath.ac.uk
986799PSW0010.1177/1478929920986799Political Studies ReviewAllen
research-article2021
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