Anthony King (political scientist)
Political scientist (1934-2017)
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Anthony Stephen King FBA (17 November 1934 – 12 January 2017) was a Canadian-British professor of government, psephologist and commentator. He taught at the Department of Government at the University of Essex for many years.
17 November 1934
Anthony King | |
|---|---|
King giving a talk on "The Blunders of our Governments" at the Essex Book Festival, 2014 | |
| Born | Anthony Stephen King 17 November 1934 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | 12 January 2017 (aged 82) Wakes Colne, Essex, England |
| Education | Queen's University, Ontario University of Oxford |
| Spouses |
Vera Korte
(m. 1965; died 1971)Jan Reece (m. 1980) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Government, psephology |
| Workplaces | University of Essex |
| Thesis | Some aspects of the history of the Liberal Party in Britain, 1906–1914 |
Early life
King was born in Toronto on 17 November 1934,[1][2][3][4] the son of Marjorie and Harold King.[4] He gained a B.A. in History and Economics at Queen's University, Ontario.[5][6] In 1956,[1] he moved to UK as a Rhodes Scholar[2] to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford, after which he gained a D.Phil.[5][3] with thesis titled "Some aspects of the history of the Liberal Party in Britain, 1906–1914".[7]
Career
He initially taught at Magdalen College, Oxford, before transferring to Essex, from which he never officially retired.[2][8] From 1969, he was Professor of Government at Essex, where he also led a Wednesday brainstorming class of selected bright students from the Department of Government.[9] King taught the course GV100 – Introduction to Politics.[10] He also taught at Princeton and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in the United States.[9]
He regularly appeared on election results programming and analysed their implications. For each UK General Election from 1983 to 2005, he was BBC television's analyst on their election night programming.[3] On a monthly basis, he analysed political opinion polls on voting intentions for The Daily Telegraph.[3] He also wrote many books on politics and was co-editor of the Britain at the Polls series of essays and, in 2008, The British Constitution.[6]
King was co-author with David Butler of two Nuffield College election studies (those for 1964 and 1966) and author of Britain Says Yes: the 1975 Referendum on the Common Market and Running Scared: Why America's Politicians Campaign Too Much and Govern Too Little.[4] He was also co-author with Ivor Crewe of the semi-official SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party[11] and The Blunders of our Governments.[2][6] He edited The New American Political System,[12] New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls 1997,[6][13] Britain at the Polls 2001[6][14] and Britain at the Polls 2005.[6]
King was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords (the Wakeham Commission).[15][16] In 2010, he was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.[9][17] He also served as an associate at the Institute for Government, a non-partisan charity that aims to improve the effectiveness of central Government in the UK.[18] During the latter part of his life, his research focused on: the changing British constitution; the British prime ministership; American politics and government and the history of democracy.
King was also a member of the Academia Europaea, a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.[9]
Personal life
Publications
- British Members of Parliament: A Self-portrait (1974)[4]
- "The View from Europe" with David Sanders in Charles O. Jones, ed., The Reagan Legacy: Promise and Performance (1988)[5]
- "Margaret Thatcher as a Political Leader" in Robert Skidelsky, ed. Thatcherism. ISBN 0-701-13342-2 (1988)[5]
- Britain at the Polls 1992 (editor)[4]
- The New American Political System. ISBN 0-333-55053-6 (editor) (1990)[4]
- SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party with Ivor Crewe (co-winner of the 1996 W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize awarded by the Political Studies Association for the best book in the field of political science) (1995)[4][5]
- Running Scared: Why America's Politicians Campaign Too Much and Govern Too Little (1997)[4]
- New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls (editor) (1998)[13]
- The British general election of 1966 with David Butler. ISBN 0-333-77870-7 (1999)[20]
- Does the United Kingdom Still Have a Constitution? ISBN 0-421-74930-X (2001)[4]
- Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections. ISBN 0-198-29791-2 (editor) (2002)[4]
- The British Constitution. ISBN 0-199-23232-6 (2007)[21]
- The Founding Fathers v. the People: Paradoxes of American Democracy. ISBN 978-0674045736 (2012)[22]
- The Blunders of Our Governments with Ivor Crewe. ISBN 1-780-74405-6 (2014)[23]
- Who Governs Britain? ISBN 0-141-98066-4 (2015)[24]