Gillian Peele

I have been teaching at LadyMargaret Hall Oxford since 1975 when I took up the position of politics fellow there. My primary interestsare in empirical politics and I have published in the field of British, American and comparative politics. In addition to my more specialist research interests, I have enjoyed writing and editing books which make political developments available to a broader audience. Such books include two works in the Developments series (Developments in British Politics and Developments in American Politics as well as a text on British Government (Governing the UK ) and the Blackwells series on modern governments.

My broad interests are in the fields of comparative government, leadership, comparative conservatism and the relationship between legal and political institutions. I am currently writing (with David Hine) a book on the reform of the UKs machinery for regulating standards of conduct in public life. This builds on some earlier work done on conflict of interest cross-nationally for a new centre for the study of corruption based in Mexico and for a comparative study fo conflict of interest.

I am also writing a study of the British Conservative Party since 1979 as well as a study that compares contemporary conservative movements across different countries. In this context I organized (togetherwith Joel Aberbach of UCLA) a conference held in Oxford in May 2008 focussing on the future of the American right. This conference brought together academics, public intellectuals and think tank analysts to discuss various aspects of the American conservative movement and its poltiical impact. OUP New York published that book in 2011.

In 2013 I organized a panel at APSA in Chicago on Modernizing Conservatism: Challenges and Constraints. In addition Nigel Allington and I have been looking at the changing nature ofparliamentaryworkin the last twenty years. We have an article on the use of web sites by MPs which came out in 2010and are conducting a survey of recently retired MPs.