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Biography
Armen Hakhverdian is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the same department and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Leiden (2005) and received his MPhil (2007) and PhD (2010) at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Research Interests
• Political representation
• Public opinion
• Political institutions
• Inequality
• Populism
Publications
• 'Institutional Trust, Education, and Corruption: a Micro-Macro Interactive Approach', Journal of Politics, Forthcoming, with Quinton Mayne.
• 'The Emergence of a 'diploma democracy'? The Political Education Gap in the Netherlands, 1971-2010', Acta Politica, Forthcoming, with Wouter van der Brug and Catherine de Vries.
• 'Political Representation and its Mechanisms: A Dynamic Left-Right Approach for the United Kingdom, 1976-2006’, British Journal of Political Science, 2010, 40 (4): 835-856.
Dissertation
One of the key concerns in democratic theory is whether policy outputs are related to public preferences. My dissertation examines the relationship between public opinion and government policy in the United Kingdom on the left-right scale from 1976 to 2006.
It is shown that representation has two pathways, one indirect, the other direct. More specifically, a right-wing public elects the Conservative Party to power, which in turn implements its right-wing election promises. Alternatively, controlling for government partisanship, a rightward shift in public opinion pushes government policy in the same direction a year later.
The Westminster system is criticized for its weak link between the rulers and the ruled, but government responsiveness on the left–right scale in the United Kingdom seems to have functioned admirably in this period.