Debate: Do political academics live in the real world?

 

YES: Lord Norton of Louth; NO: Peter Kilfoyle MP

 

email

print

Also in this section:

• Is the Church of England still the Tory Party at prayer?

Andrew Hawkins

• Enough Said

• A view from the city

Mark Fox

Lord Norton of Louth says... Yes

Political academics not only live in the real world but they also help make sense of that world.

 

At a very practical level, political scientists - like other academics - are ordinary members of the community. They are not exceptionally well paid but work long hours and have to cope with a corrosive bureaucratic burden. The nature of the work means that there is no clear cut-off point. Essays and scripts can be taken home to be marked and weekends used to get on with research. Vacations are vacations for undergraduates, not for academic staff and postgraduates.

 

As student numbers have increased, the number of staff has not increased proportionately. Not only are there more students, but the needs of those entering university are more diverse, placing additional burdens on resources.

 

The salary scale for academics at my university below professorial level ranges from £13,000 to £55,000 with no particular perks or allowances. Even the top end of the guaranteed professorial scale falls below the salary of an MP. For insurers, academics are no longer deemed to be lowrisk in actuarial terms. Though academics are generally on continuing contracts, tenure was abolished for most in 1987.

 

The bureaucratic burden is substantial. A great deal of time is consumed by paperwork, some of it repetitive and eating into the time that could be spent on the core tasks of teaching and research. Any sense of a relaxed, ivory-tower existence died decades ago. Universities are under intense pressure to generate research and to teach a growing body of students. The environment is demanding and highly competitive. Departments have to produce in order to attract funding and, indeed, to survive.

 

Within this real-world existence, political scientists engage in substantial research. Much of that research helps make sense of the political environment in which we exist. It helps correct the myths that often underpin political discourse and it can be highly relevant to policy.

 

Take Parliament itself. A great many myths swirl around the institution, often imbued and repeated by politicians. One still hears claims made about MPs being far more independent 40 or 50 years ago. They weren't.

 

My academic research specialisation is parliamentary voting behaviour. When I studied the period from 1945 to 1979, I systematically analysed every division list in that period - well over 3,000 of them containing, I estimate, between one and two million names. As a result, I was able to dispel much of the mythology that had grown up.

 

The 50s, for instance, was the high point of party unity. Today, the research is continued by Philip Cowley and widely disseminated  through the revolts.co.uk website - a source frequently consulted by journalists and parliamentarians. As a result, there is far greater knowledge about MPs and their behaviour. Without it, we would still be reliant on anecdote and hearsay.

 

The research of political scientists, not least Meg Russell, in the constitution unit at University College London, has also provided an essential base to any discussion of the role and future of the second chamber. The research provides a clearer understanding of what has happened in the House since 1999, what explains the increased impact of the House, and what priorities the public attach to different aspects of input and output legitimacy.

 

Maintaining what the House presently does (output legitimacy) is deemed more important than how it is chosen (input legitimacy). Some of the findings are counterintuitive. The government does not seek to overturn approximately 40 per cent of the defeats it suffers in the Lords but, surprisingly, it is the more important defeats that it tends to accept.

 

Other political scientists are engaged in research covering the whole gamut of the discipline. To take my own department, we have academics researching, among other things, environmental politics, the European Union, global governance, political economy, British political development, the United Nations, war and security studies, legislative studies, international relations, and the ethics of assisted dying.

 

This research is not some abstract theorising that is of interest only to fellow academics. It is disseminated to, and drawn on by, practitioners. We have a number of research centres that act as catalysts for research and engagement. Such engagement is a growing aspect of political science. It is not yet as well developed as in the USA, where policy-makers are far more aware than those in the UK of the value of such research, but we are moving in the right direction.

 

Political scientists live in the real world. Given the pay and the demands made on them, they do not have much choice. Through their research they are helping make sense of that world and assisting policy makers in the process of determining what can be done to improve it. They do so in terms of value for money. Academic research in the UK is generally rated among the best in the world, even though the resources devoted to it lag well behind competitor countries.

 

Philip Norton, Lord Norton of Louth, is professor of government at the University of Hull

Peter Kilfoyle MP says... No

Ask any member of the public: "Do politicians live in the real world?" and the odds are you will get a resounding "No!"

 

They would follow up with a whole host of reasons they know this to be the case, usually based on a sublime ignorance of what politicians are, and what they do. Throw in a large dose of tabloid sensationalism from that other grossly misunderstood lot - the lobby - and the misjudgement becomes sublime.

 

However, swap politician or political academic or political  journalist, and a whole different perspective is offered. The academic, like the journalist, is assumed to be a learned individual with specialist knowledge, and a morally superior status to a  mere practitioner, whether an elected councillor or member of Parliament.

 

I have not shared that view since being interviewed by a political academic for a place on a course back in 1969.

 

On that occasion, the learned lecturer (for that was then his humble role in life) was Robert Kilroy-Silk, later to become a Member of Parliament, television host and, latterly, a Euro-MP. I remember being wholly unimpressed by Kilroy-Silk. As he was by me - he rejected me for the course. We had a dreary and inconclusive difference of opinion about 60s guru Herbert Marcuse and his book One Dimensional Man. (Of course, Marcuse was himself completely at odds with reality, even for the 60s!)

 

It transpired that Kilroy-Silk's grip on reality involved abandoning his constituency and his loyal supporters for the attractions of day-time television, and the rustic charms of Berkshire, complete with celebrity neighbours including Terry Wogan and his own duck pond. Hardly typical of the national polity he was still to pontificate about.

 

Of course, not all political academics are like Kilroy-Silk. He had at least left the comfort of his own faux ivory towers at Liverpool University, and there are others who actually dabble in politics themselves, rather than merely talk about the issues, and what we practitioners ought to be doing. One such political academic is Dr Tony Wright, who has chaired the Public Administration Select Committee with such distinction. However, I never had the same level of regard for Anne Campbell or Melanie Johnson - both now out of Parliament - who struck me as more at home in the senior common room (SCR) than in the hurly burly of the tea room.

 

This may seem a rather harsh assessment of former colleagues. It is not meant to be - they were both charming people. But they had an air of detachment and slow reflection about them which really did not fit with the practicalities of actual politics. As a result, they appeared to be generally bewildered by what was going on around them. It is well and good to be both detached and reflective, but at Westminster pace, not SCR pace.

 

Mind you, I did have the pleasure of dealing, while in the Cabinet office, with Peter Hennessy and Vernon Bogdanor - two academics whose speciality was government. They had an intimate knowledge of the intricacies of both our constitution and the arcane ways in which we actually govern. However, their function was to advise and to comment, not to make any practical decisions themselves. This is the responsibility ultimately of ministers. It meant a process of consultation with all departments of state, as well as many other agencies, before any decision was made. That was the real world for ministers. In that sense, political academics might propose, but politicians have the responsibility of disposing. That means considering, most of all, the views of electors.

 

Of course, it is easy to cherry pick academics and charge them with being out of touch. My two favourites would probably be Roger Scruton and Patrick Minford. But as an exemplar of how, almost by definition, an academic lives in a parallel universe, I have to choose the London School of Economics' Tim Leunig.

 

In a rather abstruse discussion paper on regional economies, Tim managed to convey the view that the inhabitants of provincial cities - Liverpool and Hull were two of his examples - should simply pack their bags and move to Oxford and London for a more prosperous future. Since then, 800 car workers have been laid off in Oxford, while the fabled City of London appears to be in meltdown.

 

Tim, like many of his colleagues, was looking at the figures and the theories, not at reality. Even without the current crisis, is it realistic to suggest abandoning huge swathes of the country? Is it realistic to expect the south east to absorb ever more internal migrants on top of its present external immigrants? Could it cope?

 

These are the real questions to ask and to answer. Politicians practise the art of the possible, unlike academics, whose grand theories too often lead to disaster. As a canny friend charged me when I was a teacher: "those who can, do; those who cannot, teach".

 

Peter Kilfoyle is Labour MP for Liverpool Walton