Post: Andrew Mellon Professor of American Government and Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College

Appointed: 1996

College: Nuffield College

Phone No: (01865) 277342 -  Contact electronically

Website: http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/Politics/King.htm

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Research Activities and Interests:

Comparative Government
Public Policy

Research News

• Jul 2009, Professor Desmond King contributes to 'The Long View' on BBC radio 4, Read more


• Oct 2004, Professor Desmond King, Andrew Mellon Professor of American Government, Read more

Previous Posts Held:

• Director of Graduate Studies Politics 2003-05
• RAE Research Co-ordinator DPIR, 2005-

Publications:

My research is currently focused in two areas:

(a) American political development. Projects include continuing collaborative work with Rogers M Smith (Pennsylvania) on racial orders, a book-length study of the development of the American State (funded by the Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship and under advance contract), and research that places US democratization in a broader comparative context ( with Robert Lieberman, Gretchen Ritter and Laurence Whitehead).

Recent work includes:

The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation. 2005. New York: Oxford University Press; paperback 2006.

“De-Centering the South: America’s Nationwide White Supremacist Order after Reconstruction,” (with Stephen Tuck)

Past and Present No. 194 (February) 2007) 219-257.

“The American State and Social Engineering: Policy Instruments in Affirmative Action,” Governance 20 (2007): 109-126.

“Racial Orders in American Political Development” (with Rogers M. Smith)
American Political Science Review 99 (2005): 75-92.

Reprinted in Race and American Political Development eds Joe Lowndes, Julie Novkov & Dorian Warren (New York: Routledge, 2008).

New edition with a Postscript of Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the US Federal Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

"Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests and Policy Vairance: Immigration and Sterilization Policy in Birtain and the US" (with R Hansen) World Politics  53 (2001) 237-263 

(b) Comparative political economy and state policy. Related projects include collaborative work with David Rueda (Oxford University) on cheap labour (from which an op-ed appeared in the Financial Times on 7-09-06:), the historical-institutional origins of eugenics in four countries with Randall Hansen (University of Toronto), and welfare policy.

Recent work includes:

“Cheap Labour is Europe’s Outsider Class” (with David Rueda). Financial Times, op-ed 7 September 2006.

“Cheap Labor: The New Politics of ‘Bread and Roses’ in Industrial Democracies?” (with David Rueda). Presented at the International Conference of Europeanists, Chicago, March 29-April 2, 2006 and Midwest Political Science Association meeting April 20o7.

“The Politics of Path Dependency: Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism” (with B G Peters & J Pierre),

Journal of Politics 67 (2005), 1275-1300.

Reprinted in Institutionalism: 4 Volumes (Berkeley and London: Sage Publications, 2007).

"The State and Democratization: The US in Comparative Perspective," (with F. E. Gonzalez), British Journal of Political Science, vol   34, 2004: 193-210