Matthew Vincent Flinders

• Professor
• The University of Sheffield

Anxiety is often seen as a driver of far-right politics in British political culture that is strategically irrational insofar as the consequences of the policies pursued by such parties contribute to an increase in poverty and inequality, which are drivers of anxiety. This article shows that anxiety can also drive voter support for strategically ra...

This article focusses on why, when and where government policies may become undeliverable. It therefore adds a distinctive dimension to the traditional analysis of policy failure, while also contributing to more solution‐orientated analyses of effective policy making. Its central argument is that ‘some policies are born undeliverable, some attain u...

At the start of the pandemic, three of us came together out of shared concern for the place of emotions in politics and shared belief that many orthodoxies on fear as an instrument of public administration were just wrong. As the pandemic worked its way through communities and countries across the globe, it became increasingly clear that longstandi...

Background Although research-to-policy (R2P) fellowships are increasingly used to facilitate mobility, promote knowledge-exchange, and support evidence-based policy making, the evaluation of these initiatives in terms of (multi-level) impacts and broader ‘ecosystem effects’ remains under-researched. Aims and objectives The aim of this article is t...

This article argues that it is possible to identify a ‘new’ politics of public inquiries. A sizable seam of scholarship and parliamentary discussion has for at least a century bemoaned the limited independence of public inquiries. The ‘old’ politics of public inquiries has traditionally been defined by a largely internalised and administrative focu...

This article reflects on the past, present and future of the BJPIR through a content analysis of all 999 articles that have been published in the journal between its launch in April 1999 and the latest issue in May 2024. By charting ‘core’, ‘secondary’ and ‘peripheral’ pools of scholarship, this reveals a politics of journal content which, in turn,...

The relationship between academe and society is shifting. Academics are increasingly expected to work through forms of co‐design and co‐production with potential research‐users to address state‐selected societal challenges and produce evidence of “impact”. The risk, however, is that this shift incentivises a form of Faustian bargain whereby scholar...

How can UK and devolved governments be more effective when addressing chronic problems like inequalities or crises like climate change? The dominant story is of pessimism: policymaking is bound to a Westminster tradition of short-termism, elitism, and centralization, and reform efforts are doomed to failure. We present a more cautiously optimistic...

At the start of the pandemic, the three of us came together out of shared concern for the place of emotions in politics and shared belief that many orthodoxies on fear as an instrument of public administration were just wrong. As the pandemic worked its way through communities and countries across the globe, it became increasingly clear that longst...

With the surge of populism around the world, blame games have also begun to transform. For populists, blame is not something to be avoided, but rather, generated, and used to one's own advantage, even when being at the receiving end of blame. Based on the 21 months that EKRE, a populist radical right party from Estonia, spent in office as a junior...

On 10 March 2024 the Commission on the Centre of Government published its final report: Power with Purpose . The aim of the commission had been to explore why Number Ten, the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury do not always work as well as they should and to explore what could be done to improve the centre of government radically. Perennial concerns ab...

From coping with Covid-19 through to manging climate change, from Brexit through to the barricading of Congress, from democratic disaffection to populist pressures, from historical injustices to contemporary social inequalities, and from scapegoating through to sacrificial lambs... the common thread linking each of these themes and many more is an...

The relevance and impact of political scientists’ professional activities outside of universities has become the focus of public attention, partly due to growing expectations that research should help address society’s grand challenges. One type of such activity is policy advising. However, little attention has been devoted to understanding the ext...

This article offers results of a comparative case study into how pressures from the media translate into the involvement of senior civil servants (SCSs) in media management and how this is reflected in differentiated ways in politico-administrative relationships. It offers tentative explanations for these differences through the lens of ‘public ser...

Why would a politician ever want to be blamed? Under what contextual conditions might blame-seeking behaviour emerge as a rational strategy? What tactics, tools and strategies might they deploy? Where is the empirical evidence of blame-seeking in action and why does it matter? These are the questions this article engages with as it challenges the l...

This article explores the interplay between crises, opportunities and democratic change in the United Kingdom. A vast body of scholarship underlines that crises open ‘windows of opportunity’ that can occasionally lead to radical shifts in the role of the state and the design of public policy. Even when a radical shift occurs, however, it has often...

How, when and why do policies change? This article engages with this question through a focus on the taxation of menstrual products in the United Kingdom from its initial emergence as an issue in 1996 through to the eventual abolition of the ‘tampon tax’ on 1 January 2021. Despite the significance of this topic for broader debates concerning gender...

In a recent article in this journal Mark van Ostaijen and Shivant Jhagroe (O&J) provided a highly critical analysis of Positive Public Administration (PPA). “[It] will not create a way out” they argued “but only a new way into traditional and intellectual problems that have haunted PA as a discipline” and was nothing more than “a rather romantic, n...

This book explores accountability from a range of perspectives, crossing traditional disciplinary, thematic and professional boundaries. It asks fresh questions about accountability and its place and importance in democratic societies. Accountability matters. It matters because it connects the governors with the governed, and for this reason it is...

This book explores accountability from a range of perspectives, crossing traditional disciplinary, thematic and professional boundaries. It asks fresh questions about accountability and its place and importance in democratic societies. Accountability matters. It matters because it connects the governors with the governed, and for this reason it is...

This book explores accountability from a range of perspectives, crossing traditional disciplinary, thematic and professional boundaries. It asks fresh questions about accountability and its place and importance in democratic societies. Accountability matters. It matters because it connects the governors with the governed, and for this reason it is...

Within the vast seam of scholarship on parliamentary history the evolution and role of select committees in the house of lords, particularly in relation to investigatory or policy‐focused committees, has been almost completely overlooked. They have been ‘institutions ignored’. This gap in the existing research base is particularly stark when compar...

Background This comment piece responds to points raised by Steve Johnson in ‘The policy impact of entrepreneurship research: challenging received wisdom’ (Johnson, 2022). Aims and objectives To build upon the intellectual foundations that Johnson has provided so expertly and to continue the debate through a focus on two issues – problem definition...

Background: Socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions strongly affect health across the life course. Local government plays a key role in influencing these wider determinants of health and levels of inequality within their communities. However, they lack the research infrastructure and culture that would enable them to develop an eviden...

This paper develops and applies the concept of accountability styles for analyzing and comparing accountability practices in different countries. This is relevant as there is considerable scholarship on public sector accountability but only very few comparative studies. Extant studies have shown that national styles of accountability are both marke...

The main conclusion of the existing research base is that, despite the public anger it ignited, the MPs’ expenses scandal actually had little impact on British politics. This article questions this conclusion and suggests that the impact of the scandal was far more significant and multi-dimensional than has generally been recognised. This article u...

Range and variety in models of public inquiry: how to stimulate innovative inquiry design, process and practice

As a vast literature on political disaffection, populism, "pitchfork politics," and the emergence of an "age of anger" testifies, the nature of democratic politics and the socio-political context in which it operates appear to have shifted sharply during the last decade. This is reflected in the rise of challenger parties, the election of unorthodo...

This chapter seeks to explore the role of political scientists within the UK’s policy advisory system through a three-stage process. The first stage seeks to map out the topography of the policy advisory system and assess the extent and nature of the discipline’s historical role and position. It concludes that a combination of demand-side and suppl...

This article engages with Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban's (2021) argument that the Westminster model is ‘a concept stretched beyond repair’ that deserves ‘to be retired’. We examine the logic, theory and methods that led to such a powerful, potent and provocative argument. We suggest their approach may have inadvertently ‘muddied’ an already mudd...

Background: Socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions strongly affect health across the life course. Local government plays a key role in influencing these wider determinants of health and levels of inequality within their communities. However, they lack the research infrastructure and culture that would enable them to develop an eviden...

Background: Socio-economic, cultural and environmental conditions strongly affect health across the life course. Local government plays a key role in influencing these wider determinants of health and levels of inequality within their communities. However, they lack the research infrastructure and culture that would enable them to develop an eviden...

Between 2017 and 2020 a comprehensive review of the framework of investigatory scrutiny committees in the House of Lords was undertaken. This process led to a far-reaching set of recommendations and reforms. Although carefully couched in the language of evolutionary change, this article argues that these reforms possess a transformational dynamic t...

Robert Putman’s The Upswing (written with Shaylyn Romney Garrett) provides a powerful meta-analysis of American social, political, economic and cultural change throughout the twentieth century. What this analysis reveals is the existence of an almost perfect arc of social progress which begins from a low position around the Gilded Age at the beginn...

In this programmatic essay, we argue that public governance scholarship would benefit from developing a self-conscious and cohesive strand of “positive” scholarship, akin to social science subfields like positive psychology, positive organizational studies, and positive evaluation. We call for a program of research devoted to uncovering the factors...

As a group of fifteen scholars from different sub-fields, countries, and generations, we argue that public administration would benefit from launching a self-conscious and cohesive strand of ‘positive’ scholarship, akin to social science subfields like positive psychology, positive organisational studies, and positive evaluation. We call for a prog...

Background Tooth extractions are the most common cause of hospital admissions for children in England. Water fluoridation has the potential to reduce this number by 60%, is backed by the scientific and public health communities, and yet is currently consumed by only 10% of the population. Aims and objectives This ‘evidence-policy gap’ is explored...

Providing an initial set of conceptual tools and insights, this chapter sets down a clear reference point by distinguishing between two types of research funding relevance: ‘scholarly selectedRelevance scholarly selected’ versus ‘politically selectedRelevance politically selected ’/’state-directedRelevance state-directed ’. Charting the historical...

Based on the findings of an international research project, the chapter reveals how an emphasis on relevance—generally discussed through the notion of an ‘impact agenda’—has not only become a central element of funding regimes but has also trickled down to influence political science more specifically. The introduction of incentives to deliver demo...

In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The...

Over the last 20 years, the notion of relevance vis-à-vis political science became not only a subject of academic debates but also a domain of practice, largely due to the developments in the research funding, increasingly referred to as the 'impact agenda'. In this article, we explore how the growing focus on socio-economic impact as the assessmen...

The traditional account of political authority and policy-making in the United Kingdom offers a simplistic picture of governance. Under the ‘Westminster model’, governance capacity is seen to be centralised in a strong executive which dominates legislative and policy-making processes and exercises control through a unitary state. In recent decades,...

‘This compelling volume literally spans the globe, from North America to Europe and on to the Middle East, as it apprehends how agenda-setting and research support by public authorities can redirect and limit the contours and content of political science. Sharply argued, the essays raise many points of concern’. —Ira I. Katznelson, Ruggles Profess...

In 2017, an international consortium of public administration and political science scholars sent out a survey to the leaders of quasi-autonomous public agencies in seven countries (Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK). 10 Lessons: 1. Coordination and steering also work through the perceptions of those who are coordi...

On 27 June 2020, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, gave the Ditchley Annual Lecture on the theme of ‘the privilege of public service’. Although the fact that it took place in the context of the broader Coronavirus crisis meant that it received relatively little publicity or attention, the ce...

Although the politics of street trees has attracted a huge amount of public interest and scholarly attention in recent years what has often been missing is the ability to step-back from the anxieties and anger surrounding specific incidents in order to understand the deeper drivers of concern and resistance. It is in exactly this context that this...

The latest Hansard Society ‘Audit of Political Engagement’ (2019) provides a stark insight into the existence of these pressures with 72 per cent of those surveyed suggesting that the system of governing in the UK needs ‘quite a lot’ or a ‘great deal’ of improvement, 75 per cent thought the main parties were so divided they cannot serve the best in...

This chapter suggests that it is simply too easy to interpret the 2019 General Election in the UK as as 'Brexit election'. It also explores the populist and performative styles of Boris Johnson and focuses on the funnelling of anti-political sentiment.

The COVID-19 crisis has served, not just to instill fear in the populace, but to highlight the importance of fear as a motivating dynamic in politics. The gradual emergence of political philosophical approaches calling for concern for 'positive' emotions may have made sense under non-pandemic conditions. Now, however, describing fear in the face of...

The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top-down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the m...

The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the m...

This chapter explores the emergence of the impact agenda for political science from a comparative perspective.

Politicians are primarily motivated by avoiding blame for failure. But what happens in a major crisis, when some level of failure is inevitable? Matthew Flinders examines the politics of blame during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examination of the role of fear in Government messaging and the loss of control by the UK Government in light of Dominic Cummings' behaviour during the COVID-19 Pandemic: https://theconversation.com/dominic-cummings-and-boris-johnson-have-lost-control-of-the-fear-factor-139237

This article locates the current coronavirus pandemic within broader debates concerning the crisis of democracy. It achieves this through a focus on trust, blame and understanding which, when taken together, help to identify and understand the subtle inter-play or layering between forms of crisis. The core argument is that to define the coronavirus...

This article seeks to explore and emphasise the role of emotions as a key variable in terms of understanding both the rise of anti-political sentiment and its manifestation in forms of ethno-populism. It argues that the changing emotional landscape has generally been overlooked in analyses that seek to comprehend contemporary social and political c...

Wellcome Trust funded report into the Science of Team Science and its Implications for the Social Sciences

In recent years, the discipline of political science has been the focus of extensive criticism from observers based both within and beyond the academy. This is reflected in a sizable number of scholars who have called for the discipline to recognize its obligations to the public, and especially to supporting active citizenship, promoting democratic...

Matthew Flinders and Alexandra Anderson look back on the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal and find that while the crisis had a far-reaching impact on British politics, there is still a need for an honest conversation about the price of politics and the value of democracy.

By failing to acknowledge the link between the design of our political institutions and growing levels of anti‐political sentiment, the restoration and renewal programme risks falling into a trap of its own making. Involving the public from the outset in an open review of the (re)design options for Westminster—in a positive and confident conversati...

Two separate, but inter-linked, dilemmas have highlighted the importance of design-led thinking. First, the crumbling physical fabric of the Palace of Westminster has prompted a multi-billion rebuilding project, which will require the parliamentary studies specialism to engage with questions of design, space, and architecture. Separately, political...

Public administration-as a field of both academic study and professional practice-would benefit greatly from a more systematic and cohesive strand of research that is explicitly geared towards systematically studying the successes and positive contributions of government. At present, the citizenry at large is ill-informed about what government does...

The chapter begins with a review of the existing research and data on the impact of citizenship education globally in order to reveal the existence of particular correlations with socio-political outcomes. It points out that the positive potential of citizenship education for democracy relies heavily on the interaction of distinct macro, meso, and...

The very premise of this book seeks to identify positive and progressive manifestos for democratic renewal and, in their commitment to that mission statement, the chapters thus far have made clear the crisis of contemporary democracy. In this context, political science has arguably been preoccupied with supply-side theories of democratic design and...

Civic disengagement has left us with a dangerous chasm between political institutions and the public. This book sets out why and how governments should reconnect with the citizens they serve, both for the sake of democratic legitimacy and public service improvement. It brings together a team of academic experts and public policy leaders to examine...

Issues of sustainable development, liveable cities, green infrastructure, and urban ecosystem services currently receive attention from researchers and decision-makers. Furthermore, the benefits to public wellbeing and health of high quality open spaces and green areas are now undisputed (e.g. Simson, 2008; Booth, 2005, 2006). However, with increas...

The Palace of Westminster is in need of urgent, substantial repairs. This provides a ‘window of opportunity’ for change. This essay traces the restoration and transformation (or lack of) that the Palace of Westminster has seen in the last half a century, before assessing its current state, and considering whether parliament is fit for purpose. It p...

The aim of this article is to explore the link between different notions of co‐production. It seeks to emphasise the underlying politics of co‐production in the sense of who defines co‐production, especially in relation to initial decisions concerning which specific policy areas are deemed suitable for codesigning, cocreating, or codelivering with...

Despite the singular importance of the work of national politicians in creating legislation, representing constituents and holding government to account, relatively little work has been done concerning their wellbeing and psychological health. There are unique, as well as universal, stressors that impact upon politicians; a neglect of these issues...

Existing research on alternative forms of political participation does not adequately account for why those forms of participation at an “everyday” level should be defined as political. In this article we aim to contribute new conceptual and theoretical depth to this research agenda by drawing on sociological theory to posit a framework for determi...

Existing research on alternative forms of political participation does not adequately account for why those forms of participation at an “everyday” level should be defined as political. In this article we aim to contribute new conceptual and theoretical depth to this research agenda by drawing on sociological theory to posit a framework for determi...

It is now two decades since the Advisory Group on Citizenship, commissioned by the newly elected Labour government, recommended the introduction of statutory citizenship education. On the twentieth anniversary of the eponymously named ‘Crick Report’, this article presents the findings of a rigorous mixed‐methods study of citizenship educators in th...

This chapter discusses the role that design and space play in the UK Parliament. The architecture and design of parliamentary buildings and chambers occupy a central place in political culture. In the case of the Palace of Westminster, three elements must be highlighted: the external projection of the building, the internal structure and the manner...

A growing body of research suggests the existence of a disconnection between citizens, politicians and representative politics in advanced industrial democracies. This has led to a literature on the emergence of post-democratic or post-representative politics that connects to a parallel seam of scholarship on the capacity of deliberative democratic...

An extensive literature on aversive constitutionalism and elite blockages outlines the manner in which embedded political elites will generally reject or dilute reform agendas that threaten their privileged position within a constitutional configuration. It is for exactly this reason that the same seam of scholarship frequently highlights the role...