Professor Alan Hamlin

Before coming to Manchester as Professor of Political Theory in 2006 I was Professor of Economics at the University of Southampton, where I was also Dean of the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences. I have held visiting posts at The Centre for Study of Public Choice, Virginia, USA; All Souls College, Oxford; and the Australian National University.

I am the Director of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT).

I am a member of the Political Economy Institute

I am a member of the Democracy, Citizens and Elections Research Network

I am the lead editor of the journal Constitutional Political Economy.

I am a member of the Competition Commission

My research interests lie in both positive and normative political theory. I am interested in, and willing to supervise work in, areas such as:

• Rational Actor Political Theory and Political Economy - whether from a methodological or a substantive perspective.
• Democratic theory - including positive aspects such as electoral competition, voter behaviour, the role of political parties and interest groups, etc. and the normative debate on democracy, procedural and substantive accounts of democracy, deliberative democracy, etc.
• Contemporary contractarianism - issues of consent, compliance and legitimacy.
• Issues relating to the motivation of political agents.
• Conservatism as a political idea and ideology.
• Institutional and constitutional design.
• Public policy - particularly competition policy.

I am currently working on:

• The Links between Positive and Normative Political Theory
• Ideal Theory and the theory of Ideals
• Analytic Conservatism
• PPE: a Research Programme?
• Campaigning in British General Elections
• Expressive Political Behaviour

As Head of Politics, I am not teaching at undergraduate level this year.

Publications Database

Complete listing of publications

MANCEPT Working Papers series.

Phd Students

I currently supervise two PhD students:

• Chris Hughes - working on Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis
• Dogancan Ozsel - working on conservative ideology