Andrew Gamble

Andrew Gamble joined the Department in 2007. Before that he was Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield, where he was a founder member and
subsequently the Director of the Political Economy Research Centre, and a Pro ViceChancellor. He read economics at Cambridge for his first degree, then political theory at Durham before returning to Cambridge for his PhD in social and political sciences.
He is a joint editor of New Political Economy and The Political Quarterly, and a
Fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences. He was awarded a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust in 2004, and in 2005 received the Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize for Lifetime Contribution to Political Studies from the UK Political Studies Association.

Research Interests

In relation to the broad field of political studies I have always regarded myself first and foremost as a political economist. My research interests and publications have been quite diverse, but a common thread is the attempt to use a political economy approach, seeking to understand politics by exploring the complex interrelationships between state and economy, and the ideas, policies and institutions through which these are expressed. Political economy currently has various meanings, but my own approach has been primarily historical, institutionalist, and comparative, and has also sought wherever possible to be interdisciplinary.

My research has had three main, often overlapping, strands. The first is the
application of a political economy approach to the study of British politics in four linked books which I have published over the last thirty years: The Conservative Nation (1974), Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy, and the British State (1981), The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism (1988) and Between Europe and America: The Future of British Politics (2003). These books, together with associated papers in journals and edited collections, have attempted to understand the shifting agendas, issues, outcomes and debates in British politics through an analysis of the political economy of the British state, exploring the historical, institutionalist, and ideological contexts which have shaped it. A second strand, in political theory and political ideology, which has run parallel to this work, has analysed the main doctrines of political economy and their relationship to the ideologies of the modern era. I published a preliminary version of this in An Introduction to Modern Social and Political Thought (1981), and have developed it further in Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty (1996), as well as in papers on neoliberalism, neo-conservatism and socialism. A third strand has explored a number of theoretical and applied issues in political economy – including ownership, stakeholding, corporate governance, and assets and human capital. This research attracted funding from the Leverhulme Trust, the AngloGerman Foundation and the ESRC, and has issued in a number of publications.

Post-graduate supervision interests

British politics: Anglo-America, the British constitution, British political parties and political leadership, Britain and Europe, British political history.

Political thought and ideology: conservatism, Hayek and neo-liberalism, marxism, contemporary state theory.

Political economy: egalitarianism (ownership and assets), institutions and economic policy, states and markets, models of capitalism and national economic development, global governance and theories of world order, political ideologies and economic policy.

Key Publications

‘Hayek and liberty’ Critical Review (forthcoming)
‘Oakeshott’s ideological politics’ in E.Podoksik (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott Cambridge University Press, 2012, 153-176.
The Spectre at the Feast: capitalist crisis and the politics of recession (London: Palgrave 2009)
Between Europe and America: The Future of British Politics (London: Palgrave, 2005).
Politics and Fate (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).
Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty (Cambridge: Polity, 1996).