Academic Staff: Andrew Hindmoor

Dr. Andrew Hindmoor, BSc (econ) (Aberystwyth), MA (Brunel), PhD (LSE).

Professor in Politics

Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 0661
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 1717
Room: Elmfield 2.05

Profile

Professor Andrew Hindmoor joined the Department in February 2012. Whilst studying for his PhD Andrew held temporary lectureships at the London School of Economics and the University of Durham. He then held a tenured lectureship at the University of Exeter between 1997 and 2005. Prior to arriving in the Department Andrew worked at the University of Queensland in Brisbane where he was Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Social Science. Andrew grew up in Hunter’s Bar: about a ten minute walk away from the University.

Professor Hindmoor is interested in just about any kind of politics. He teaches and researches in public policy, political economy (with a particular interest in the banking crisis and bank reform), British politics, governance, rational choice theory and political analysis but still tries to follow and learn from debates within political theory and international relations.

Teaching

I contribute to teaching on:

POL115 Consensus, Crisis and Coalition: Introduction to British Politics
POL3129 Parliamentary Studies
POL6230 Comparative Governance and Public Policy
POL6225 Advanced Political Analysis
I am also developing a module for MA students on the financial crisis.

One of the many things which attracted me to working here in Sheffield is the quality of teachers in the Department and the commitment of staff here to the relationship between research and teaching.

The teaching philosophy I have always worked with is articulated very clearly by Dr. Garrett Brown on his profile. ‘I have a simple teaching philosophy – I treat my students as intellectuals who have interesting and insightful ideas to bring to the debate. As a result, more times than not, my students rise to the intellectual challenge of ... debate and engage with these debates with vigour and challenge’. I try and live up to this goal whether I am teaching first year classes or supervising doctoral students.

I have won Faculty, University and national teaching awards whilst in Australia.

Current Research

At the moment I am engaged in two major research projects.

The first relates to the causes of the 2007/8 banking crisis and the regulatory lessons which have been drawn from it. I am working with Professor Stephen Bell at the University of Queensland on a major book about the causes of the crisis which measures and seeks to explain inter-country and intra-country variation in banking performance during the crisis. Why did some countries (most notably Australia and Canada) escape largely unscathed from the crisis? Why did some banks in the UK and US (most notably HSBC and Wells Fargo) largely eschew complex trading and emerge from the crisis in a stronger position?

As a part of this work on the banking crisis I have also written a number of papers with Stephen Bell on the structural power of business in general and the banking industry in particular. I have also written with Professor Alan McConnell at the University of Sydney on why politicians and regulators ignored warning signals about the impending banking crisis.

The second project I am engaged with relates to the way in which we can measure the contents of and explain changes in the policy agenda. I’m working with Professor Keith Dowding (at the Australian National University) and Dr. Aaron Martin (at the University of Melbourne) to develop the Australian ‘leg’ of the Policy Agendas Project (http://www.comparativeagendas.org/).

What I really want to do over the next few years is to find some time to also write a book about what I want to describe as the strange survival of social democracy in the UK.

PhD Supervision

Andrew is currently supervising PhD projects dealing relating to:

The way and extent to which the financial crisis has changed our ideas about economic management and bank regulation.
The nuclear power industry and business power.
Meta-governance and economic development in the Maldives
The political impact of the long-serving former Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

I am interested in supervising promising research students in any of the areas in which I have a research expertise.

Key Publications

Books:

Rethinking Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) (with Stephen Bell).

Rational Choice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Constructing Political Space: New Labour at the Centre (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Recent Articles and Book Chapters:

‘Luck, Systematic Luck and Business Power. Lucky all the way Down or Trying Hard to get What it Wants Without Trying? Political Studies (forthcoming in 2013).

‘Why Didn't They See it Coming? Warning Signs, Acceptable Risks and the Global Financial Crisis’. Political Studies (with Allan McConnell) (forthcoming in 2013).

‘Who Saw it Coming? The UK’s Great Financial Crisis’, Andrew Hindmoor, Journal of Public Policy
(with Allan McConnell) (forthcoming in 2013).

‘Turtles all the way down: Revisiting the Rational Policy Debate in an Evidence-Based Age’. Policy Studies (with Linda Botterill) (forthcoming in 2013).

‘Change and Continuity in the Ideology of Australian Prime Ministers: The Governor-General’s
Speeches (1946-2010). Australian Journal of Political Science, 47 (2012), 455-72 (with Keith Dowding and Aaron Martin).

‘Governance Without Government? The Case of the Forest Stewardship Council. Public
Administration, 90 (2012), 144-59 (with Stephen Bell).

‘Major Combat Operations are Over: The Rational Choice Debate’, British Journal of Political
Science’, 41 (2011), 191-2010.

‘Policy Agendas in Australian Politics: The Governor-General’s Speeches, 1945-2008’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 45 (2010), 533-57 (with Keith Dowding, Peter John and Richard Iles).

‘Persuasion as Governance’, Public Administration, 45 (2010), 533-57 (with Stephen Bell and Frank
Mols).

‘Internships in Political Science’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 45 (2010), 483-90.

‘Rational Choice and Interpretive Evidence: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Political
Studies, 58 (2010) 47-65 (with Iain Hampsher-Monk).

‘Rational Choice’, in Stoker, G. and Marsh, D. (eds.), Theory and Methods in Political Science (3rd
edition) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

‘Assessing the Influence of Select Committees: The Education and Skills Committee 1997-2005’,
Journal of Legislative Studies, 15 (2009) 71-89 (with Phil Larkin and Andrew Kennon).

‘The Governance of Public Affairs’, Journal of Public Affairs, 9 (2009) 149-59 (with Stephen Bell).

‘Explaining Networks through Mechanisms: Vaccination, Priming and the 2001 Foot and Mouth
Disease Crisis’, Political Studies, 57 (2009) 75-94.