Academic Staff: David Richards
Professor David Richards, B.A. [Essex], MSc. [L.S.E], Ph.D.[Strathclyde]
Professor
Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 1666
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 1717
Room: 2.05 Elmfield
Feedback & Consultation hours: Wednesday 11.00 - 12.00, Thursday 15.00 - 16.00
email : d.richards@sheffield.ac.uk
Profile
Professor Richards was awarded his PhD from the Department of Government, University of Strathclyde (1996). The thesis examined the politicisation of the Civil Service under the 1979-97 Conservative Government. He then became a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham (1995-1998). In 1998 he joined the School of Politics and Communication Studies, University of Liverpool as a Lecturer, becoming a Senior Lecturer in 2001 and a Reader in 2004. In the year 2000, he was a Visiting Honorary Fellow at the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, Australia. In 2008, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. He joined the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield in 2004 as a Reader, becoming a Professor in 2010.
His main research interests are in British politics, Australian politics, public policy, governance, globalisation, state theory and political biography. He is currently researching: the changing role of the state through a critique of the literatures on governance, democracy and accountability, the regulatory state and implementation; leaks and whistle blowing in government; a multi-theoretical study on diffuse water pollution and the role of political biography in political analysis.
He is the Director of the Faculty of Social Science MPA in Global Public Administration and Management.
Teaching
I have been teaching for over twenty years on a wide range of politics modules from large Level 1 foundation courses on concepts in politics, representation, political analysis and British Politics to much more specialised Level 4 modules reflecting my own particular research specialisms. Whatever level I teach at, my main concern is to engage students in contemporary debates at the cutting edge of the subject, encourage them to make their own connections between the theoretical and the empirical and to approach the learning process from a critical perspective challenging established orthodoxies. My teaching is very much informed by whatever my current research interests are, helping to ensure that the material on my courses is fresh, contemporary and engaging.
POL315 Issues and Decision Making in British Politics
POL3018 Advanced Political Anaysis
Recent Invited Papers and Keynote Lectures
Invited contributions include:
- The State in Late Modernity: Understanding Changing Forms of Power and Democracy, Workshop on ‘Governance and Democracy’, Gothenburg University, Sweden, November 10-11, 2011 [with Martin J. Smith]
- Crisis, Coalition and the Embedding of the Hybrid State? Reflections on the Nature of UK Governance in a Post Bureaucratic Era Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Conference of Centre for British Politics, University of Nottingham – ‘Governance and Public Policy in the United Kingdom’, 10 December 2010
- The Future of State Centric Governance in the UK: Crisis and the Embedding of the Hybrid State Model? Paper presented at SOG Conference, Crisis as Opportunity: State, Markets and Communities in Turbulent Times, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, 4-5 November 2010
- The House of Lords Constitution Committee’s Inquiry into the Cabinet Office and the Role Central Government – ‘The Centre of Government: Past and Present Challenges’ House of Lords, London, 4 November 2009
Key Projects/Grants
Title of project: The Technical, Governance and Regulatory Muddle of Diffuse Urban Water Pollution
Awarding body: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
People Involved: David Richards [P.I.] and Daniel Fitzpatrick [Politics], John Hennerbury [Town and Regional Planning] , David Lerner, Virginia Stovin and Adrian Saul [Engineering] – all University of Sheffield.
Duration: 2011-12
Total award: £50,125
Title of project: Building Bridges between Political Biography and Political Science – A Methodologically Innovative Study of the Core Executive under New Labour
Awarding body: Economic and Social Research Council
People Involved: David Richards
Duration: 2006-9
Total award: £81.251
Title of project: Public Service Delivery Programme: Analysing Delivery Chains in the Home Office.
People Involved: Martin Smith, David Richards and Andrew Geddes
Duration: 2007-9
Total award: £43,275
Professional Activities and Recognition
- 2009-10: Special Adviser to the House of Lords Constitution Committee´s Inquiry into `The Cabinet Office and Central Government´, co-authoring the subsequent report: Constitution Committee - Fourth Report The Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government 29 January 2010.
Constitution Committee - Fourth Report The Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government - 2007-11: Editor of Political Studies Review and on the Editorial Board of Political Studies.
- 2005-8: Fellow of the ESRC Virtual College
Current Research
- Diffuse Water Pollution: This is a multi-disciplinary study [involving Depts. of Engineering, Politics and Town and Regional Planning] to analyse the complexity involved in responding to the issue of diffuse water pollution that has been highlighted as a significant water management issue in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). This research project aims to examine the highly topical, but ill-defined and under-researched problem of the diffuse pollution of urban water [DWP].
- Governance and State Transformation: Explores the dichotomy between the governance literature that emphasises a disaggregated, hollowed-out [minimal] state and the regulatory state literature with its emphasis on an increased role for state agencies and a reconstituted [active] state. Central to this research is to try to frame critical frames of the British political tradition.
- Public Policy: Exploring the evolving nature of public policy in the light of the challenges presented by the governance narrative in the form of greater fragmentation, segmentation and devolution and the State’s response. This area of research incorporates developing an analytical framework for understanding change in the form of the strategic relational approach and policy networks.
- Political Biography: This research offers a methodologically innovative approach from within the critical realist tradition bringing together approaches from both core executive studies and political biography to explore the dialectical relationship between the material and ideational.
Recent Key Publications
- New Labour and the Civil Service: Reconstituting The Westminster Model (Basingstoke: Palgrave December 2008
- 'Sustaining the Westminster Model: A Case Study of the Transition in Power between Political Parties in British Government' Parliamentary Affairs, Vol 62/1, January 2009.
- ‘Decentring Policy Networks: Lessons And Prospects’ Public Administration Vol. 87/1 March 2009 [with Mark Bevir]
- ‘Political Memoirs and New Labour: Interpretations of Power and the Club Rules’ British Journal of Politics and International Relations Vol 12/4, November 2010 pp.498-522.
- ‘Labour in and Out of Government: Political Ideas, Political Practice and the British Political Tradition’ Political Studies Review Vol 9/2 May 2011, [with David Blunkett] pp.180-192.
- ‘Analysing Policy Delivery: The Case of Street Crime and Anti-social Behaviour’ Public Administration Vol 89/3, September 2011, pp.975-1000 [with M. Smith, A. Geddes and H. Mathers]
- ‘The Case for Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in British Political Studies: Reviewing New Labour’s Political Memoirs and the British Political Tradition’, Political Studies Review, Vol.10/2, May 2012 [with Patrick Diamond]
Click here for Professor Richards' full list of publications.
PhD Supervision
He is keen to supervise promising research students in a range of areas including: British and Australian politics, the nature of the state, state theory and state transformation, and comparative studies on governance, public policy, the regulatory state, and political biography.
He has in the recent past successfully [co-]supervised PhD theses on topics including:
- 'Manifestly Different?' An Analysis of the British Labour Party's Policy Development, Examined Through the Party Manifestos of 1983-1997.
- 'Welfarism Anew? Territorial Politics and Inter-War State Housing in Three Lancashire Towns'.
- 'What is New Labour's Idea of the State?' 'A Study of Mayoral Elections: Independent success in the First English Mayoral Elections'
- 'Xenortransplantation and the Home Office' The Winner of the 2007 Political Science Association Walter Bagehot Prize for Government and Public Administration
- ‘The Political Power of Business in the Regulatory State: An Analysis of State-Market Relations in the Age of Governance’
- ‘Implementation in Britain in an Era of Governance: A Case Study of Sure Start under New Labour’
- 'Filling-in' the hollowed out'? Assessing the strategic value of ICT in the New Labour core executive (1997-2010’)
- ‘Power And Autonomy In The Saudi State. Case Study Analysis Of Policy Implementation’
Areas of present supervision:
- 'The Viability of Local Political Governance in the UK'
- ‘Regulation, Governance and State Transformation in Japan’
- ‘New Labour and the Disability Social Movement’
- ‘Interpreting change in the UK core executive: The nature and contingency of New Labour’s approach to governance’