Undergraduate Admissions Tutor

Contact Details

• Tel: +44 (0)116 252 2700
• Fax: +44 (0)116 252 5082
• Email: aw148@leicester.ac.uk

I am also a member of the Centre for American Studies.

Research Interests

My research has primarily been concerned with US politics and particularly the development of American social policy. I have looked extensively at the causes and consequences of the major reform of the US welfare system in 1996. This reform ended a welfare entitlement and made access to welfare benefits conditional on a willingness to engage with the world of work. In addition I have looked at the development of the American health care system and have examined the potential and limits of the process of incremental health care reform.

In addition to this focus on US social policy I have written extensively about the Clinton presidency and his efforts to develop a 'Third Way' in US politics and policy. This work examined how Clinton's initially ambitious agenda was whittled down as he encountered both ideological and institutional obstacles. In the end, while Clinton was able to devise strategies that secured his own political survival he could not map out a new political philosophy that will stand as a long-term Third Way legacy.

Current Research

My current research focuses on the continuing conservative shift in American social policy. Sometimes this is achieved through direct legislation as in the 1996 welfare reform. In other cases, where the institutions of the welfare state have greater support and hence a popular legitimacy that is difficult to challenge explicitly, change comes about more discretely as existing programmes are not updated to meet with changing circumstances. This work also notes, however, that the institutions of the welfare state are sometimes resilient and that some efforts to bring about change end in failure. Hence, a key part of this research project is to understand which factors lead to policy change and which encourage policy continuity. This work is being conducted in collaboration with Professor Daniel Beland at the University of Calgary and will result in a book to be published by Georgetown University Press in 2009.

PhD Supervision

I am keen to supervise postgraduate work on most aspects of contemporary American politics, particularly research examining:

• US social policy
• US party politics
• The Clinton Presidency
• The George W Bush Presidency
• US Foreign Policy since the end of the Cold War

Teaching

Undergraduate Modules

• Introduction to American Politics
• American Foreign Policy After the Cold War
• The American Presidency

Postgraduate Teaching

• US Interventions Since 1993

Most Recent Publications

Books

Clinton's Legacy? A New Democrat in Governance, Palgrave, 2002

Recent Journal Articles and Chapters

• 'From Thatcher (and Pinochet) to Clinton? Conservative Think Tanks, Foreign Models and US Pensions Reform' (with Daniel Beland), Political Quarterly, Vol. 71, No.2, April-June 2000, pp.202-10.

• 'Third Way Social Policy: Clinton's Legacy?', (with Daniel Beland and Francois de Chantal), Policy and Politics, January 2002, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp.19-30.

• 'Redesigning the Welfare Contract in Theory and Practice: Just What is Going on in the USA', Journal of Social Policy, January 2003, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp.19-35.

• 'Mixed Messages from the USA: the Impact of Sanctions in Welfare-to-Work' Benefits, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 2004.

• 'The Social Policies Presidents Make: Pre-emptive Leadership Under Nixon and Clinton' (with Daniel Beland,), Political Studies, April 2006 Vol. 54, No. 1, pp.65-83.

• 'Whither Blue America?' in Right On? political change and continuity in george w. bush's america, edited by Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies (Insitute for the Study of the Americas, 2006).

• 'Recent Incremental Health care Reforms in the US: a way forward or false promise?' (with Douglas Jaenicke), Policy and Politics, April 2006, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 241-264.

• 'President Bush and Social Policy: The Strange Case of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit' (with Douglas Jaenicke), Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2006 Vol. 121, No.2, pp. 217-240.

• 'Conservative Ideas and Social Policy in the United States' (with Daniel Beland), Social Policy and Administration, Vol. 41, No. 7, pp. 768-786.

• 'Immigration, Social Policy and Politics in the United States' in The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-US Migration: Both Sides of the Border, edited by Eddie Ashbee, Helene Bayley Clausen and carl Pedersen (Palgrave, macmillan: New York, 2007).

• 'Taking Big Government Conservatism Seriously? The Bush Presidency Reconsidered', (with Daniel Beland) The Political Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 1, 2008, pp. 109-118.

• The Politics and Policy of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program' (co-author with Douglas Jaenicke) in I. Morgan and P. Davies eds, The Federal Nation (New York: Palgrave) 2008, pp.147-166.

• 'The Politics of Aging' in A. Wroe and J. Herbert eds Assessing the George W Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two terms, (Edinburgh University Press), 2009, pp.166-181.

• 'The Politics of social policy change: lessons of the Clinton and Bush presidencies', Politics and Policy, Vol. 38, No. 2, April 2010, pp.217-33 (co-author with Daniel Beland).

• 'The Obama Administration and US Trade Policy' (with Edward Ashbee), The Political Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 2, 2010, pp.253-62.

• 'The US Safety Net, Inequality and the Great Recession', in The Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, Vol.18, No.3, October 2010, pp.243-254.