Simon Hix
Room CON.H307
Government Department
LSE, Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7955 7657
E-mail:
s.hix@lse.ac.uk
last updated on:
24 February 2012
Research
Curriculum vitae
My PhD students
Simon Hix
Professor of European and
Comparative Politics and Fellow of the British Academy
Department of Government
London School of Economics and Political Science
My main areas of research and teaching are comparative democratic institutions, especially voting in parliaments and electoral system design, and European Union politics and the design of regional integration.
Websites and Datasets
www.VoteWatch.eu. This website tracks voting behaviour in the European Parliament. This is a collaborative project by myself, Sara Hagemann (also LSE), Abdul Noury (NYU), and Doru Frantescu (QVORUM Institute). (see Financial Times report).
Political impact of electoral systems data (John Carey
and Simon Hix)
European Parliament roll-call voting
data (Simon Hix, Abdul Noury and Gerard Roland)
European Parliament Research Group MEP survey data (David Farrell, Simon Hix and Roger
Scully)
Party political
make-up of the EU institutions data (Christophe Crombez, Simon Hix and Andreas Warntjen)
Evidence to Parliament
Evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee in the House of Commons on Possibilities for Reinforcing the Eurozone, 4 January 2012
(with Iain McLean) Evidence to the Joint Committee of the Commons and Lords on the Draft House of Lords Reform Bill, 23 September 2011
Evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee in the House of Commons on the Draft European Union Bill, 8 December 2010
Evidence to the European Union Committee of the House of Lords on the Impact of the Reform Treaty on the Institutions of the EU, 27 November 2007
Media Contributions
Letter in The Guardian on Jack Straw's call for
abolishing of the European Parliament, 24 February 2012
Blog entry on "Victory
for Europe, disaster for Britain", on Britain's isolation at EU
summit, 9 December 2011
"The rights and wrongs of AV",
letter in The Evening Standard on electoral reform in the UK, 1 April
2011
"Time to catch up with reality", letter in
The Financial Times on electoral reform in the UK, 28 February 2011
Interview with on
www.nouvelle-europe.eu on
United Kingdom EU bill,
23 February 2011
TV Interview on
Launch of VoteWatch report on "Voting in the European
Parliament Post-Lisbon",
26 January 2011
Why electoral reform is needed in the UK (but not AV),
short interviews for the Constitution Society, 18 November 2010
"Structural Problems in the Eurozone",
interview on BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 28 October 2010
"EU budget negotiations",
interview on BBC Radio 5 Live, Wake Up To Money programme, 28 October 2010
"Electoral Reform: A Vote for Change?"
(with Ron Johnston and Iain McLean), in Political Insight, vol. 1,
issue 2, September 2010
"The State of
European Democracy After Lisbon",
video of talk at the IIEA,
Dublin, 26 May 2010
"Putting the
question of electoral reform in proportion",
letter in The Guardian
on electoral reform in the UK, 28 April 2010
"MEPs defend their voting records",
BBC The Record: Europe interview on VoteWatch.eu annual report, 24 February
2010
"The 2009 European Parliament Elections: A Disaster
for Social Democrats", EU Studies Association Review,
3 November 2009
"Recognition at last for Political Science",
letter in The Financial Times on the Nobel Prize for Elinor Ostrom,
15 October 2009
"EU
is Flawed, But it Can be Fixed", article in The Daily Telegraph,
28 September 2009
LSE "Hot Seat" interview
on the outcome of the 2009 European Parliament elections, 19 June
2009
BBC The Record: Europe discussion about the
outcome of the 2009 European Parliament elections, 12 June 2009
BBC interview about
www.VoteWatch.eu
website, 16 May 2009
"Viewpoint:
A truly European vote?", BBC Website, 5 May 2009
Books
Simon Hix and Bjorn Hoyland
(2011) The Political System of the European Union, 3rd edn, Palgrave.
(see).
Simon Hix (2008) What's Wrong
With the European Union and How to Fix It, Polity. (see).
Simon Hix, Abdul Noury and Gerard Roland (2007) Democratic Politics in the European Parliament,
Cambridge University Press. (see). This book won the Richard F. Fenno Jr. Prize for the best book
on legislative studies published in 2007, from the Legislative Studies
Section of the American Political Science Association.
Working Papers (see more)
Simon Hix and Abdul Noury, Government-Opposition or Left-Right? The Institutional Determinants of Voting in Legislatures (version 10 March 2011). In this paper we use recorded (roll-call) voting data from 16 legislatures to test which theory of legislative politics fits which institutional context. These 16 legislatures include several cases of two key institutional features: (1) regime type (parliamentary or presidential); and (2) form of government (single-party or coalition). We use a geometric scaling metric (IDEAL) to estimate the 'revealed space' in each of these legislatures and a regression analysis to identify how much of this space can be explained by government-opposition dynamics as opposed to the left-right policy positions of parties. We also test these inferences in two natural experiments. We find that the standard 'floor agenda' spatial model fits legislative voting where coalitions have to be built issue by issue (as in presidential systems with coalition governments or parliamentary systems with minority governments). But, in all other institutional contexts we find a strong government-opposition dynamic in legislative voting. Put another way, voting in most legislatives is more like Westminster than Washington, DC.
Simon Hix, Ron Johnston and Iain McLean, Choosing an Electoral System (10 March 2010). This is a report for the British Academy, which sets out the issues, options and trade-offs for electors, parties, and designers on the question of electoral system design in the UK, based on the experiences of how electoral systems have worked in Britain and elsewhere in the world.
Simon Hix,
What to Expect in the 2009-14 European Parliament: Return of the Grand
Coalition? (1 August 2009).
This is a policy briefing paper for the Swedish Institute for European
Policy Studies. The paper looks at what is likely to happen in the
new European Parliament, and argues that although an EPP-PES 'grand
coalition' was necessary at the start of the Parliament, it is not
likely to be stable on most legislative issues in the coming years. (see
description on European Parliament website)
Recent Academic Articles (see more)
Christophe Crombez and Simon Hix (2011) 'Treaty Reform and the Commission's Appointment and Policy Making Role in the European Union', European Union Politics, 12(3) 291-314.
John Carey and Simon Hix (2011) 'The Electoral Sweet Spot: Low-Magnitude Proportional Electoral Systems', American Journal of Political Science 55(2) 383-339.
Simon Hix and Michael Marsh (2011) 'Second-Order Effects Plus Pan-European Political Swings: An Analysis of European Parliament Elections Across Time', Electoral Studies, 30(1) 4-15.
Simon Hix, Bjorn Hoyland and Nick Vivyan (2010) 'From Doves to Hawks: A Spatial Analysis of Voting in the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England', European Journal of Political Research, 49(6) 731-758.
Hae-Won Jun and Simon Hix (2010) 'Electoral Systems, Political Career Paths and Legislative Behavior: Evidence from South Korea's Mixed-Member System', Japanese Journal of Political Science 11(2) 153-171.
Simon Hix, Abdul Noury and Gerard Roland (2009) 'Voting Patterns and Alliance Formation in the European Parliament', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364, 821-831.
Hae-Won Jun and Simon Hix (2009) 'Party Competition in the Parliamentary Arena: The Case of the Korean National Assembly', Party Politics 15(6) 667-694.
Simon Hix and Sara Hagemann (2009) 'Could Changing the Electoral Rules Fix European Parliament Elections?', Politique Europeenne 28, pp. 27-41.
Simon Hix and Abdul Noury (2009) 'After Enlargement: Voting Patterns in the Sixth European Parliament', Legislative Studies Quarterly 34(2) 159-174.
Bjorn Hoyland, Indraneel
Sircar and Simon Hix (2009) 'An Automated Database of the European
Parliament', European Union Politics 10(1) 143-152.
Links
LSE Political Science and Political Economy Group
European
Union Politics
European
Parliament Research Group
EP
Animate
West Ham
United FC
Chris Anderson's "SoccerbytheNumbers"
blog (the best quant. football blog in the world!)
Michiel van Hulten's "PlaceLux" blog
Matthew Shugart's "Fruits and Votes" blog on elections and electoral systems
Josep
Colomer's political science blog
Simon
Jackman's blog on politics, statistics and computing