Dr John Parkinson

BA Wellington, MA Auckland, PhD Australian National University

Contact details

Department of Politics, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK
Derwent College, Room D/101
+44 (0)1904 43 3550
jrp12@york.ac.uk

Personal website

Biography

John Parkinson specialises in democratic theory and practice, especially deliberative democracy, and in discursive approaches to explaining policy agendas, processes and outcomes. He is a member of the Public Policy group, teaching a variety of topics in public policy and British politics, research skills, and Democracy in Theory and Practice. Dr Parkinson has published a book and articles on deliberative democratic theory, referendums in Switzerland and New Zealand, restorative justice, the House of Lords, and deliberative techniques in the National Health Service. He is presently working on a project exploring the relationship between democracy and public space, with a book, also with OUP, due in 2010.

Selected recent publications

2009. ‘Symbolic r epresentation in public space: capital cities, presence and memory’, Representation 45(1): 1-14

2009. ‘Does democracy require physical public space?’ in Geenens, R. and R. Tinnevelt (eds.), Does Truth Matter? Democracy and public space. Dordrecht: Springer, pp.101-114

2007. ‘Localism and deliberative democracy’, The Good Society 16 (1): 23-29

2007. ‘The House of Lords: a deliberative democratic defence’, Political Quarterly 78(3): 374-81

2006. Deliberating in the real world: problems of legitimacy in deliberative democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Professional activities

John Parkinson is on the editorial board of Policy Studies, and is a regular reviewer for journals, publishers and research councils in the UK, the Netherlands, the United States and Australia, on topics in general politics, public administration and political philosophy. He has given invited papers in the UK, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Research supervision

Dr Parkinson would be interested in supervising research students on the following topics:

deliberative and discursive democracy
public participation in policy-making
political legitimacy
public space
rhetoric, narrative, performance and democracy

Dr Parkinson’s current research students are:

Tom Flynn: Reconciling deliberative democratic and rational choice theory: an investigation into micro-models of deliberation and political participation
Juan Morales: Rethinking deliberative democracy through interculturalism: Chile and the Mapuche people
Pantharak Phookpan: Participatory democracy and community forestry management in Thailand
Ashwini Swain: Macro implications of micro-privatisation: participatory management of electricity distribution in Eastern India