Alex Williams wins Q-Step Essay Prize

Alex Williams (Lincoln) has won the 2016 Oxford Q-Step Centre Political Analysis Essay Prize for his essay on ‘Does Consensus Democracy Improve Economic Outcomes?’

All First Year PPE and History & Politics students are taught Quantitative Methods through the Oxford Q-Step Centre, which enables them to use statistical modelling to test theoretical statements. The Q-Step Political Essay Competition is the end of course assessment, and it gives students the opportunity to display their data analysis skills in an original piece of work.

Judges Professor Andy Eggers and Professor Robin Harding said of Alex’s work “This essay concisely develops a theoretical argument that draws on the literature on veto players, complements Lijphart’s dataset with extra variables that permit an empirical assessment of the argument, and clearly presents the results with a combination of well-designed tables and figures.”

Honourable mentions were given to Harveen Judge (Keble), Lukas Leitner (LMH) and Khoo Wu Shaun (Regent’s Park).

All four essays are on the Q-Step Website http://www.oqc.ox.ac.uk/blog.html