Nuffield Home \| Politics Home
	NUFFIELD COLLEGE Politics Group

Desmond King, FBA
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government

Field:

Desmond King specializes in the study of the American state in US executive politics, race and politics in American political development, comparative welfare politics and labour market policy, democratization and immigration policy. Before coming to Nuffield in 2002, he was a Fellow and Professor of Politics at St John’s College, Oxford of which he is now an Emeritus Fellow, and a Lecturer in Government at the London School of Economics. He also worked at the University of Edinburgh and has held visiting positions at Sciences Po, Cornell and Goteborg University. He held a Nuffield Foundation Social Science Research Fellowship in 1997-98, a British Academy Research Readership in 2000-2002, and a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship 2005-08. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.

Curriculum Vitae

Current research interests:

On Race, the Silence is Bipartisan (New York Times article)

*Race in American politics. This work includes the books The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation (2005), Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the US Federal Government (2007), and a collaborative project with Rogers M. Smith (University of Pennsylvania) the latest part of which appears in our jointly authored book Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America (2011); papers from this project include “Racial Orders in American Political Development” American Political Science Review 2005, and (with third author Philip Klinkner) “Barack Obama and American Racial Politics” Daedalus Spring 2011.
Further papers are in progress.

*The American State. This research interest includes work with such colleagues as: Robert Lieberman (Columbia University) “Ironies of the American State” World Politics 2009; Marc Stears (University College, Oxford) “How the US state works: a theory of standardization” Perspectives on Politics 201; Ines Valdez (Ohio State University) “From Workers to Enemies: National Security, State Building and America’s War on Illegal Immigrants” in Michael Bass ed. Narrating Peoplehood Amidst Diversity (Aarhus 2011); and Patrick LeGales (Sciences Po) “Sociologie de l’Etat en recomposition.” Revue Francaise de Sociologie, 2011. Several manuscripts are in preparation including a study of presidential war powers with Samuel Kleiner (Oxford University).

*The American Political Economy Project. This project includes a series of workshops (May 2008, March 2010, and October 2012) in Oxford co-convened with Lawrence R Jacobs (University of Minnesota) on contemporary American political economy attended by leading scholars in APD, political economy and comparative politics. Resulting publications include Jacobs and King eds. The Unsustainable American State (2009), the essays in Perspectives on Politics September 2010 and the forthcoming
Obama at the Crossroads.

*Experts and Politics. This project includes work with Randall Hansen (University of Toronto), building on our paper “Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests and Policy Variance” World Politics 2001, and further work on the history and politics of public funding for the social sciences in advanced democracies.

*Labour market policy and workfare. The most recent work in this long standing interest is in collaboration with David Rueda (Merton College, Oxford) and includes our paper “Cheap Labor: The New Politics of Bread and Roses in Industrial Democracies” Perspectives on Politics 2008. This interest builds on the books Actively Seeking Work: The Politics of Work and Welfare in the USA and Britain (1995) and In the Name of Liberalism: Illiberal Social Policy in the USA and Britain (1999).

E-mail address:

desmond.king@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Secretary: Sarah McGuigan
Tel: (44) +1865.278612

The Nuffield College Politics pages are maintained by Lin Sorrell

Last updated: March, 2012

(Copyright) Nuffield College, OXFORD.

Field:	Desmond King specializes in the study of the American state in US executive politics, race and politics in American political development, comparative welfare politics and labour market policy, democratization and immigration policy. Before coming to Nuffield in 2002, he was a Fellow and Professor of Politics at St John’s College, Oxford of which he is now an Emeritus Fellow, and a Lecturer in Government at the London School of Economics. He also worked at the University of Edinburgh and has held visiting positions at Sciences Po, Cornell and Goteborg University. He held a Nuffield Foundation Social Science Research Fellowship in 1997-98, a British Academy Research Readership in 2000-2002, and a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship 2005-08. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.
Curriculum Vitae Current research interests:	On Race, the Silence is Bipartisan (New York Times article) Race in American politics. This work includes the books The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation* (2005), Separate and Unequal: African Americans and the US Federal Government (2007), and a collaborative project with Rogers M. Smith (University of Pennsylvania) the latest part of which appears in our jointly authored book Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America (2011); papers from this project include “Racial Orders in American Political Development” American Political Science Review 2005, and (with third author Philip Klinkner) “Barack Obama and American Racial Politics” Daedalus Spring 2011. Further papers are in progress. The American State. This research interest includes work with such colleagues as: Robert Lieberman (Columbia University) “Ironies of the American State” World Politics* 2009; Marc Stears (University College, Oxford) “How the US state works: a theory of standardization” Perspectives on Politics 201; Ines Valdez (Ohio State University) “From Workers to Enemies: National Security, State Building and America’s War on Illegal Immigrants” in Michael Bass ed. Narrating Peoplehood Amidst Diversity (Aarhus 2011); and Patrick LeGales (Sciences Po) “Sociologie de l’Etat en recomposition.” Revue Francaise de Sociologie, 2011. Several manuscripts are in preparation including a study of presidential war powers with Samuel Kleiner (Oxford University). The American Political Economy Project. This project includes a series of workshops (May 2008, March 2010, and October 2012) in Oxford co-convened with Lawrence R Jacobs (University of Minnesota) on contemporary American political economy attended by leading scholars in APD, political economy and comparative politics. Resulting publications include Jacobs and King eds. The Unsustainable American State* (2009), the essays in Perspectives on Politics September 2010 and the forthcoming Obama at the Crossroads. Experts and Politics. This project includes work with Randall Hansen (University of Toronto), building on our paper “Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests and Policy Variance” World Politics* 2001, and further work on the history and politics of public funding for the social sciences in advanced democracies. Labour market policy and workfare. The most recent work in this long standing interest is in collaboration with David Rueda (Merton College, Oxford) and includes our paper “Cheap Labor: The New Politics of Bread and Roses in Industrial Democracies” Perspectives on Politics* 2008. This interest builds on the books Actively Seeking Work: The Politics of Work and Welfare in the USA and Britain (1995) and In the Name of Liberalism: Illiberal Social Policy in the USA and Britain (1999).
E-mail address:	desmond.king@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Secretary:	Sarah McGuigan Tel: (44) +1865.278612