Jonathan Hopkin

Jonathan Hopkin is a political scientist in the Department of Government of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He obtained a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence, and lectured at the Universities of Bradford, Durham and Birmingham, joining LSE in 2004. He teaches comparative politics and political economy, and has published in the areas of political parties and elections, political corruption, decentralization and welfare states. His best known work is on the development of political parties in contemporary Spain and Italy. His book, Party Formation and Democratic Transition in Spain (Palgrave 1999), analyzes the collapse of the ruling Union of Democratic Centre during the Spanish transition to democracy. He has also developed (with Caterina Paolucci) the concept of the 'business firm party', a political party controlled by narrow economic interests and lacking a cohesive mass base. He has also written extensively on how political parties adapt to the creation of sub-national governments, such as the devolution reforms in the UK, arguing that statewide parties are able to control the process and prevent decentralization increasing the fragmentation of the party system. His current research, with Mark Blyth of Brown University and Riccardo Pelizzo of Griffith University, examines the reasons for the narrowing of the range of political choices in advanced democracies, a process conceptualized as 'cartelization'.