‘Party Representation in Turbulent Times’: Professor Stephen Whitefield Receives British Academy / Leverhulme Grant

Professor Stephen Whitefield was recently awarded funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme. This funding will support a research project that focuses on ‘Party Representation in Turbulent Times’.

The grant will support the fourth wave of a unique online expert survey on the stances of all electorally relevant political parties in 27 European states. This will enable direct comparison with previously collected data taken from Central and Eastern Europe in 2002, and data taken across Europe as a whole in 2007-8 and 2013.  

Prof. Whitefield’s study is taking place during a moment of great change and political uncertainty, where data that enables systematic analysis of the changing issues bases of party politics is of great importance.

Prof. Whitefield explains, ‘The issues that must be addressed by contemporary European political parties are changing. In addition to the economy and social issues, parties must also take stances on international globalisation, integration, migration – areas that have previously been further from the central concerns of domestic politics.’

He also cites the rise of ‘critical parties’, which advocate strongly negative views of the performance of national democratic institutions, as having potentially even more significance, ‘Citizens in many countries increasingly look to these parties to represent them’.

Prof. Whitefield is Pembroke's Rhodes Pelczynski Fellow in Politics and Professor of Comparative Russian and East European Politics and Societies. Click here to find out more about Prof. Whitefield’s research.