Christopher Byrne
Biographic Data
| ID | 3698463 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Byrne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Byrne |
| SIGNATURE | BYRNE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2390-7126 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 178 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Keir Starmer’s statecraft: A critical appraisal of Labour in power
This article provides a critical appraisal of the Starmer government’s first two years in power and an overview of its policy agenda and political decision-making during this period. Our analysis is underpinned by the influential statecraft framework first set out by Jim Bulpitt. We make the following arguments. First, despite entering office with a landslide electoral victory, the new Labour government was ill-prepared for office, contributing t…
Twenty years on: British Politics in flux
What kind of discipline are we? A network analysis of British Politics
Research on British politics has traditionally been too reliant on a single model for understanding its field of inquiry—initially the Westminster model and then, since the 2000s, the governance-focused ‘differentiated polity model’. It has also been criticised for being preoccupied by the institutions that make up the Westminster system in terms of its substantive analytical focus, neglecting theory and international comparisons, failing to lear…
What determines perceived graduate employability? Exploring the effects of personal characteristics, academic achievements and graduate skills in a survey experiment
Governments have become increasingly concerned with improving the employability of university graduates in recent years, but most existing studies of what graduate employers look for are limited by their reliance on self-reported preferences. This study, which focuses on the UK context, aims to develop our knowledge of the determinants of perceived graduate employability by measuring the relative importance for employability of a range of persona…
Guidelines adherence in the prevention and management of chronic kidney disease in patients with diabetes mellitus on the background of recent European recommendations – a registry-based analysis
Theresa May’s disjunctive premiership: Choice and constraint in political time
Theresa May’s premiership is widely acknowledged to have been a failure, but political commentators and the scholarly literature have, thus far, tended to focus on May’s misuse of her agency. This article argues that May’s premiership presents a particularly powerful example of the need to disentangle structure and agency when assessing prime ministerial performance. Drawing upon the work of Stephen Skowronek, it sets out a framework of evaluatin…
Aristotle and Scientific Experiments
Many have argued that there is no room for experiments in Aristotle's natural science: experiments intervene in nature, but Aristotle holds that we must simply observe nature; if we intervened, the result would be something artificial or contrary to nature. Against this, I argue that Aristotle not only performed experiments, but also holds that there is much about nature that can be discovered experimentally
Aristotle's Science of Matter and Motion
Understanding the power of the prime minister: Structure and agency in models of prime ministerial power
Aristotle's Science of Matter and Motion
Neoliberalisms in British Politics
On Cold Mountain: A Buddhist Reading of the Hanshan Poems
Despite the numerous translations and popularity of the Tang Dynasty poet Hanshan 寒山 (Cold Mountain) among Western audiences since the mid-twentieth century, no one has produced a comprehensive ana
Neoliberalism as an object of political analysis: An Ideology, a Mode of Regulation or a Governmentality
This article aims to bring some definitional clarity to the study of neoliberalism by investigating the three most common conceptualisations of the project as an ideology, mode of regulation, and market-oriented governmentality. It is argued that the heretofore somewhat marginalised governmentality perspective offers the most untapped potential for new analytical insights due to its ability to avoid three problems apparent in the literature on ne…
Evaluating British prime ministerial performance: David Cameron’s premiership in political time
This article contributes to the developing literature on prime ministerial performance in the United Kingdom by applying a critical reading of Stephen Skowronek’s account of leadership in ‘political time’ to evaluate David Cameron’s premiership. This, we propose, better understands the inter-relationship of structure and agency in prime ministerial performance than existing frameworks, particularly those based on Greenstein’s and Bulpitt’s approa…
Leaving the House: The Experience of Former Members of Parliament Who Left the House of Commons in 2010
This article reports the findings of a large-scale survey investigating the experiences of the large number of MPs who left Parliament following the 2010 General Election. We have found that: the widely held perception that MPs make a smooth transition into lucrative private sector employment after leaving Parliament is largely mistaken; the MPs' expenses scandal has seriously undermined the status of MPs and, as such, may also have made a career…
What Kind of ‘Big Government’ is the Big Society? A Reply to Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley
Research Highlights and Abstract This article Contributes to the debates applying Foucauldian theory to contemporary British Politics and invigorates the debate through a discussion with Bulley and Sokhi Bulley Develops understandings of contemporary British Politics under the Coalition government, particularly in light of the ‘Big Society’ project. Compares, through a Foucauldian framework, the differences and similarities between the New Labour…
Rolling back to roll forward: Depoliticisation and the Extension of Government
Premised on the assumption that depoliticisation is a crucial aspect of neo-liberal governmentality, this paper attempts to synergise these two, previously disparate, concepts. Borrowing from Foucault’s theorisation of governmentality and drawing from inclusive definitions of politics/ the political, this paper argues for a reformulation of our understanding of depoliticisation and politicisation. The paper contends that depoliticisation is best …
Questions to the Prime Minister: A Comparative Study of PMQs from Thatcher to Cameron
This article provides a comparative analysis of the opening sessions of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) for the last five Prime Ministers in order to test a general perception that PMQs has become increasingly a focal point for shallow political point scoring rather than serious prime ministerial scrutiny. Our data appear to confirm that PMQs has become both rowdier and increasingly dominated by the main party leaders. It also indicates that Pr…
The Personal is Not Political: At Least in the UK's Top Politics and IR Departments
Through mapping the provision of teaching gender and sexuality studies on politics/political science and international relations (IR) programmes, this article asserts that the top-ranked politics and IR departments in the UK offer very little provision of such teaching. We argue that this lack of gender and, more so, sexuality teaching is highly problematic for the discipline. Moreover, we suggest that the lack of such provision is not reflective…
Theorising Cameronism
This article represents an early and, largely speculative, attempt to make sense of Cameronism as a distinctive political project. Herein, we present three separate, but potentially overlapping, narratives that could be employed to locate the significance of Cameronism within broader trends in British and global party politics. In this respect, we view Cameronism as: a continuation of Thatcherism; a development in the unfolding of forms of neo-li…
Hot toys are dead: Long live hot products
Recalls the hot toys phenomenon of several past Christmases in the USA, such as for Cabbage Patch dolls and Power Rangers. Argues that such toys created headlines in order to gain publicity, but also that this trend appears to have died because of eBay: what made toys hot and a cultural event was their inaccessibility, but eBay makes them all accessible for those willing to pay the price. Continues with how toys have changed: the old barriers bet…
Disaster Victims Speak: Part I. An Empirical Review of the Empirical Literature, 1981–2001
Results for 160 samples of disaster victims were coded as to sample type, disaster type, disaster location, outcomes and risk factors observed, and overall severity of impairment. In order of frequency, outcomes included specific psychological problems, nonspecific distress, health problems, chronic problems in living, resource loss, and problems specific to youth. Regression analyses showed that samples were more likely to be impaired if they we…
Matter and Aristotle's Material Cause
If by the term ‘matter’ is meant the extended, movable, and corporeal stuff out of which perceptible objects are made, then, according to one interpretative tradition, there is nothing in Aristotle's account of the world that corresponds to matter in the above sense of physical stuff. Aristotle does indeed describe certain things as extended, movable, and corporeal: for example, the five elements, earth, water, air, fire, and ether, as well as ev…
Theorising Cameronism
This article represents an early and, largely speculative, attempt to make sense of Cameronism as a distinctive political project. Herein, we present three separate, but potentially overlapping, narratives that could be employed to locate the significance of Cameronism within broader trends in British and global party politics. In this respect, we view Cameronism as: a continuation of Thatcherism; a development in the unfolding of forms of neo-li…
Questions to the Prime Minister: A Comparative Study of PMQs from Thatcher to Cameron
This article provides a comparative analysis of the opening sessions of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) for the last five Prime Ministers in order to test a general perception that PMQs has become increasingly a focal point for shallow political point scoring rather than serious prime ministerial scrutiny. Our data appear to confirm that PMQs has become both rowdier and increasingly dominated by the main party leaders. It also indicates that Pr…
Rolling back to roll forward: Depoliticisation and the Extension of Government
Premised on the assumption that depoliticisation is a crucial aspect of neo-liberal governmentality, this paper attempts to synergise these two, previously disparate, concepts. Borrowing from Foucault’s theorisation of governmentality and drawing from inclusive definitions of politics/ the political, this paper argues for a reformulation of our understanding of depoliticisation and politicisation. The paper contends that depoliticisation is best …
Leaving the House: The Experience of Former Members of Parliament Who Left the House of Commons in 2010
This article reports the findings of a large-scale survey investigating the experiences of the large number of MPs who left Parliament following the 2010 General Election. We have found that: the widely held perception that MPs make a smooth transition into lucrative private sector employment after leaving Parliament is largely mistaken; the MPs' expenses scandal has seriously undermined the status of MPs and, as such, may also have made a career…
The Personal is Not Political: At Least in the UK's Top Politics and IR Departments
Through mapping the provision of teaching gender and sexuality studies on politics/political science and international relations (IR) programmes, this article asserts that the top-ranked politics and IR departments in the UK offer very little provision of such teaching. We argue that this lack of gender and, more so, sexuality teaching is highly problematic for the discipline. Moreover, we suggest that the lack of such provision is not reflective…
Neoliberalism as an object of political analysis: An Ideology, a Mode of Regulation or a Governmentality
This article aims to bring some definitional clarity to the study of neoliberalism by investigating the three most common conceptualisations of the project as an ideology, mode of regulation, and market-oriented governmentality. It is argued that the heretofore somewhat marginalised governmentality perspective offers the most untapped potential for new analytical insights due to its ability to avoid three problems apparent in the literature on ne…
Theresa May’s disjunctive premiership: Choice and constraint in political time
Theresa May’s premiership is widely acknowledged to have been a failure, but political commentators and the scholarly literature have, thus far, tended to focus on May’s misuse of her agency. This article argues that May’s premiership presents a particularly powerful example of the need to disentangle structure and agency when assessing prime ministerial performance. Drawing upon the work of Stephen Skowronek, it sets out a framework of evaluatin…
Understanding the power of the prime minister: Structure and agency in models of prime ministerial power
Evaluating British prime ministerial performance: David Cameron’s premiership in political time
This article contributes to the developing literature on prime ministerial performance in the United Kingdom by applying a critical reading of Stephen Skowronek’s account of leadership in ‘political time’ to evaluate David Cameron’s premiership. This, we propose, better understands the inter-relationship of structure and agency in prime ministerial performance than existing frameworks, particularly those based on Greenstein’s and Bulpitt’s approa…
What determines perceived graduate employability? Exploring the effects of personal characteristics, academic achievements and graduate skills in a survey experiment
Governments have become increasingly concerned with improving the employability of university graduates in recent years, but most existing studies of what graduate employers look for are limited by their reliance on self-reported preferences. This study, which focuses on the UK context, aims to develop our knowledge of the determinants of perceived graduate employability by measuring the relative importance for employability of a range of persona…
What Kind of ‘Big Government’ is the Big Society? A Reply to Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley
Research Highlights and Abstract This article Contributes to the debates applying Foucauldian theory to contemporary British Politics and invigorates the debate through a discussion with Bulley and Sokhi Bulley Develops understandings of contemporary British Politics under the Coalition government, particularly in light of the ‘Big Society’ project. Compares, through a Foucauldian framework, the differences and similarities between the New Labour…
Matter and Aristotle's Material Cause
If by the term ‘matter’ is meant the extended, movable, and corporeal stuff out of which perceptible objects are made, then, according to one interpretative tradition, there is nothing in Aristotle's account of the world that corresponds to matter in the above sense of physical stuff. Aristotle does indeed describe certain things as extended, movable, and corporeal: for example, the five elements, earth, water, air, fire, and ether, as well as ev…
Disaster Victims Speak: Part I. An Empirical Review of the Empirical Literature, 1981–2001
Results for 160 samples of disaster victims were coded as to sample type, disaster type, disaster location, outcomes and risk factors observed, and overall severity of impairment. In order of frequency, outcomes included specific psychological problems, nonspecific distress, health problems, chronic problems in living, resource loss, and problems specific to youth. Regression analyses showed that samples were more likely to be impaired if they we…
Hot toys are dead: Long live hot products
Recalls the hot toys phenomenon of several past Christmases in the USA, such as for Cabbage Patch dolls and Power Rangers. Argues that such toys created headlines in order to gain publicity, but also that this trend appears to have died because of eBay: what made toys hot and a cultural event was their inaccessibility, but eBay makes them all accessible for those willing to pay the price. Continues with how toys have changed: the old barriers bet…
Theorising Cameronism
This article represents an early and, largely speculative, attempt to make sense of Cameronism as a distinctive political project. Herein, we present three separate, but potentially overlapping, narratives that could be employed to locate the significance of Cameronism within broader trends in British and global party politics. In this respect, we view Cameronism as: a continuation of Thatcherism; a development in the unfolding of forms of neo-li…
The Personal is Not Political: At Least in the UK's Top Politics and IR Departments
Through mapping the provision of teaching gender and sexuality studies on politics/political science and international relations (IR) programmes, this article asserts that the top-ranked politics and IR departments in the UK offer very little provision of such teaching. We argue that this lack of gender and, more so, sexuality teaching is highly problematic for the discipline. Moreover, we suggest that the lack of such provision is not reflective…
What Kind of ‘Big Government’ is the Big Society? A Reply to Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley
Research Highlights and Abstract This article Contributes to the debates applying Foucauldian theory to contemporary British Politics and invigorates the debate through a discussion with Bulley and Sokhi Bulley Develops understandings of contemporary British Politics under the Coalition government, particularly in light of the ‘Big Society’ project. Compares, through a Foucauldian framework, the differences and similarities between the New Labour…
Rolling back to roll forward: Depoliticisation and the Extension of Government
Premised on the assumption that depoliticisation is a crucial aspect of neo-liberal governmentality, this paper attempts to synergise these two, previously disparate, concepts. Borrowing from Foucault’s theorisation of governmentality and drawing from inclusive definitions of politics/ the political, this paper argues for a reformulation of our understanding of depoliticisation and politicisation. The paper contends that depoliticisation is best …
Questions to the Prime Minister: A Comparative Study of PMQs from Thatcher to Cameron
This article provides a comparative analysis of the opening sessions of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) for the last five Prime Ministers in order to test a general perception that PMQs has become increasingly a focal point for shallow political point scoring rather than serious prime ministerial scrutiny. Our data appear to confirm that PMQs has become both rowdier and increasingly dominated by the main party leaders. It also indicates that Pr…
Evaluating British prime ministerial performance: David Cameron’s premiership in political time
This article contributes to the developing literature on prime ministerial performance in the United Kingdom by applying a critical reading of Stephen Skowronek’s account of leadership in ‘political time’ to evaluate David Cameron’s premiership. This, we propose, better understands the inter-relationship of structure and agency in prime ministerial performance than existing frameworks, particularly those based on Greenstein’s and Bulpitt’s approa…
Leaving the House: The Experience of Former Members of Parliament Who Left the House of Commons in 2010
This article reports the findings of a large-scale survey investigating the experiences of the large number of MPs who left Parliament following the 2010 General Election. We have found that: the widely held perception that MPs make a smooth transition into lucrative private sector employment after leaving Parliament is largely mistaken; the MPs' expenses scandal has seriously undermined the status of MPs and, as such, may also have made a career…
On Cold Mountain: A Buddhist Reading of the Hanshan Poems
Despite the numerous translations and popularity of the Tang Dynasty poet Hanshan 寒山 (Cold Mountain) among Western audiences since the mid-twentieth century, no one has produced a comprehensive ana
Neoliberalism as an object of political analysis: An Ideology, a Mode of Regulation or a Governmentality
This article aims to bring some definitional clarity to the study of neoliberalism by investigating the three most common conceptualisations of the project as an ideology, mode of regulation, and market-oriented governmentality. It is argued that the heretofore somewhat marginalised governmentality perspective offers the most untapped potential for new analytical insights due to its ability to avoid three problems apparent in the literature on ne…
Aristotle's Science of Matter and Motion
Understanding the power of the prime minister: Structure and agency in models of prime ministerial power
Aristotle's Science of Matter and Motion
Neoliberalisms in British Politics
Aristotle and Scientific Experiments
Many have argued that there is no room for experiments in Aristotle's natural science: experiments intervene in nature, but Aristotle holds that we must simply observe nature; if we intervened, the result would be something artificial or contrary to nature. Against this, I argue that Aristotle not only performed experiments, but also holds that there is much about nature that can be discovered experimentally
Guidelines adherence in the prevention and management of chronic kidney disease in patients with diabetes mellitus on the background of recent European recommendations – a registry-based analysis
Theresa May’s disjunctive premiership: Choice and constraint in political time
Theresa May’s premiership is widely acknowledged to have been a failure, but political commentators and the scholarly literature have, thus far, tended to focus on May’s misuse of her agency. This article argues that May’s premiership presents a particularly powerful example of the need to disentangle structure and agency when assessing prime ministerial performance. Drawing upon the work of Stephen Skowronek, it sets out a framework of evaluatin…
What determines perceived graduate employability? Exploring the effects of personal characteristics, academic achievements and graduate skills in a survey experiment
Governments have become increasingly concerned with improving the employability of university graduates in recent years, but most existing studies of what graduate employers look for are limited by their reliance on self-reported preferences. This study, which focuses on the UK context, aims to develop our knowledge of the determinants of perceived graduate employability by measuring the relative importance for employability of a range of persona…
What kind of discipline are we? A network analysis of British Politics
Research on British politics has traditionally been too reliant on a single model for understanding its field of inquiry—initially the Westminster model and then, since the 2000s, the governance-focused ‘differentiated polity model’. It has also been criticised for being preoccupied by the institutions that make up the Westminster system in terms of its substantive analytical focus, neglecting theory and international comparisons, failing to lear…
Twenty years on: British Politics in flux
Keir Starmer’s statecraft: A critical appraisal of Labour in power
This article provides a critical appraisal of the Starmer government’s first two years in power and an overview of its policy agenda and political decision-making during this period. Our analysis is underpinned by the influential statecraft framework first set out by Jim Bulpitt. We make the following arguments. First, despite entering office with a landslide electoral victory, the new Labour government was ill-prepared for office, contributing t…
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Political and Economic history of UK and US (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Economics (6 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works)