How can we fix our democracy?

Meet the speakersSir Rob Behrens was the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman between 2017 and 2024. Prior to this, he held roles including Complaints Commissioner at the Bar Standards Board, Secretary to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (Office of the Independent Adjudicator) in England and Wales. Greg Clark is the Executive Chair of Warwick University’s Warwick Innovation District and a former politician. During his time as an MP, he held various ministerial portfolios, most notably having been the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy under Theresa May’s premiership. After returning to the backbenches, he served as the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee between 2020 and 2024. Kitty Donaldson is the Chief Political Commentator at the i newspaper. Prior to this, she covered politics and the House of Commons for Bloomberg nearly two decades, first as a Political Correspondent, then as UK Political Editor. Chair: Prof. Robert Hazell is Professor of Government and the Constitution in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy. 

- Meet the speakers - Dr. James D. Boys is a Boston-based analyst focused on US political history. He was most recently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. An expert on US politics and grand strategy, he frequently shares his insights as an on-air commentator on CNN, BBC News, Sky News, Al Jazeera, CNBC, etc. Dr. Boys has appeared before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and was quoted extensively in its 2013 report on US-UK relations. He has also authored several books, mainly centred around the Clinton administration. Alexandra Cirone is an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy (SPP) at the London School of Economics, and has a joint appointment in the Department of Government. She also holds a research appointment at the BI Norwegian Business School, and she is a non-resident fellow in the Democratic Innovations Program at Yale University ISPS. She is one of the editors and co-founders of Broadstreet.blog, a blog on historical political economy. Her research interests center on political selection and institutional design in democracies, lottocratic governance and policy, and historical political economy. Dr. Julie Norman is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations and the Foreign Policy Lead of the Centre on US Politics (CUSP) at UCL. She has published widely on security, conflict, and foreign policy, including five books on nonviolent resistance and multiple articles on political violence, divided societies, and polarization. Norman also works as a policy consultant, providing research-based recommendations to the UN, US State Department, FCDO, US Institute of Peace (USIP), British Council, and other governmental bodies and NGOs. She is also a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI and a frequent political analyst on the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, and other media outlets. Chair: Dr Thomas Gift is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre on US Politics (CUSP) in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy.

Recorded 24 October 2024. A new government has been in power in Westminster since July. In our Policy & Practice mini-series, Priorities for the new UK Government, we will explore key issues on which the government is—or ought to be—focusing its attention. In the first event in this miniseries, we discuss the Government's central focus: economic growth. - Meet the speakers- Emily Fry is a Senior Economist at the Resolution Foundation. Her research primarily covers productivity, trade, energy and how they intersect with living standards in the UK. Previously, she spent several years in finance and academia primarily focused on sustainability and net zero. Shanker Singham is an international trade expert and CEO of Competere Ltd, a company that provides law and policy advice to governments and companies, and that promotes international trade and competition policy throughout the world. He also serves as Co-Chairman of The Growth Commission and Co-Vice-Chairman of the Trade Facilitation Commission. He has advised parliamentarians and government ministers on the overall approach to UK trade policy, including the Brexit negotiations. Luke Raikes is a research director and Deputy General Secretary at the Fabian Society. His expertise covers a range of economic issues, including regional economies and inequalities, devolution, productivity, and industrial strategy. Prior to his current role, he led IPPR North’s research on regional economies and devolution. Chair: Prof. Lucy Barnes is Professor of Political Economy in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/political-science

For our first Policy & Practice seminar of academic year 2024-2025 we were joined by ex-Ambassador Simona Leskovar. The ex-Ambassador talked about her own experience both in trying to get Slovenia elected to the UN Security Council, but also more broadly about her experience in the UK and within the UN. The talk included a discussion as to why small states matter in international security. We are delighted that Sir Mark Lyall Grant  GCMG  joined us to give a response. Meet the speakersex-Ambassador Simona Leskovar Simona Leskovar is Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the Court of St James's until August 2024. Prior to this appointment, she was State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. Ambassador Leskovar is a career diplomat for 28 years of service in Slovenian diplomacy. She served as Slovenian Ambassador to Japan and Republic of Korea, was Deputy Permanent Representative of Slovenia at Permanent Mission of Slovenia to the United Nations in New York and member or head of several Slovenian delegations and missions to various conferences and events within the UN. Her first post as a diplomat was Washington DC.   Ambassador Leskovar holds a position of the EU adviser to Slovenian Foreign Minister during the first Slovenian EU presidency in 2008. She was later Director of Young Bled Strategic Forum and the national Focal Point for Responsibility-to-Protect. Simona Leskovar studied international relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, and at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael in The Hague. Ambassador Leskovar initiated the MFA programme 'Young Ambassadors', a mentoring project that was organized together with foreign female Ambassadors in Slovenia, and aimed at encouraging young women to consider a career in diplomacy and international relations. Ambassador Leskovar was appointed Program Director of Bled Strategic Forum at the end of August 2024. Sir Mark Lyall Grant  GCMG Sir Mark Lyall Grant served as the United Kingdom’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN from 2009 to 2015. During this tenure, he served as President of the Security Council four times. He subsequently served as a National Security Adviser during David Cameron and Theresa May’s premierships. Following his retirement from the civil service, he is now a Visiting Professor at King's College London and a strategic advisor. Chair: Prof. Veronika Fikfakis Professor of Human Rights and International Law in the UCL Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy. 

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...   

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.

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.

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/

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.