Head of Department
Hong Kong Baptist University
03411-5643
Alistair Cole is Head of the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. He obtained a 1st in Government and History from the LSE (1980, awarded the Bassett Prize for Political Science) and a D. Phil from Balliol College, Oxford (1986, funded by a BA grant). He held positions in Oxford, Caen, Aston, Keele and Bradford before being named as Professor of European Politics at Cardiff University, Wales- UK in 1999. From 2015-2019, Alistair Cole was Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Studies, Lyon, France. He has published extensively, mainly in the field of French, British, and European politics. He has published 20 books (6 single author monographs, 6 co-written monographs, 8 edited or co-edited books), 65 refereed journal articles, 25 professional articles and 62 chapters in edited books. His publications are widely cited (with an H Index of 29 according to Google Scholar). His latest book - Emmanuel Macron and the Two years that Changed France - was published by Manchester University Press in May 2019.
Overview This project utilised a mixed-methods design incorporating interviews, focus groups, a scoping analysis of secondary quantitative data and a cross-national survey to explore the role of trust and transparency within the context of multi-level governance. The core
Books and Book Chapters
Civil Society Book Series Forthcoming 2022 Is transparency a necessary condition to build and restore citizen and civil society trust in governance and democracy? Throughout Europe there is a growing demand for effective forms of citizen engagement and decentralisation in...
Towards a territorial political capacity approach for studying European regions
This article proposes a framework for studying the territorial political capacity of regions in Europe. The proposed framework identifies three main dimensions of territorial political capacity. Mainly material indicators include institutions and institutional resources...
Working Paper
This short publication presents the main proceedings of an international conference held at Sciences Po Lyon, France, on 4 May 2018. The symposium pulled together several research initiatives around the central theme of trust–transparency paradoxes. Trust (and its corollary...
Journal Articles
Article in the Journal of Trust Research.
Reports and Briefings
The issues of Trust and transparency lay at the heart of contemporary debates regarding governance and democracy. Measures of trust and transparency (in the national leadership, in the conduct of professional politicians, in diffuse affect for the political regime) have been...
Journal Articles
Montée des populismes, abstention récurrente, rejet des structures partisanes, profonde défiance vis-à-vis des élites politiques en général… La crise démocratique qui touche la France (comme d’autres pays comparables) n’est pas chose nouvelle1. Les derniers résultats d’une...
Journal Articles
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 14(3) pp 458-476 This article deals with issues relating to trade union density and the fact that while over the past 30 years, union densities have followed a declining path in all regions, this retreat was not...
Journal Articles
British Politics 6(3) pp 379-396 On the basis of extensive new empirical evidence, this article offers an assessment of how post-devolution Wales has determined the strategies employed in attempts to engage with, and influence, EU policy-making processes. The primary focus...
Last Thursday I was invited to the French Senate, the second chamber, to contribute my thoughts on introducing territorial diversity into the French constitution, with a focus on drawing lessons from comparable European experiences. The specific...
This one day workshop will focus on the question of how trust in political institutions can be built. The overall aim of the workshop is to bring together practitioners and academics of German public administration and the German / International...
This free one day conference explores the overarching theme of trust-transparency paradoxes. The conference panels are organised on:- 1. The relationship between trust and transparency in a context of multi-level governance: 2. The links between...
The perceived decline in trust in democracy and government has become a cliché of our times. Furthermore, transparency has frequently been identified as a potential remedy to this phenomena. However, both the concepts of ‘trust’ and ‘transparency’...