Professor Tim Haughton

Department of Political Science and International Studies
Professor of Comparative and European Politics
Deputy Director of the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR)

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)121 414 6360
Email: t.j.haughton@bham.ac.uk

View my research portal

Address: Department of Political Science and International Studies
School of Government
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Tim Haughton is a political scientist with a particular interest in electoral and party politics, electoral campaigning, and the politics of Central and Eastern Europe, especially Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. He is the co-author of The New Party Challenge, published by Oxford University Press and was the joint editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies’ Annual Review of the European Union for nine years (2008-16). Professor Haughton served as the Director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies (CREES) from 2012 to 2014. During his directorship he initiated and organized the celebrations surrounding the Centre's 50th anniversary including a special series of seminars and an enhanced annual conference.

He served as Head of the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) from 2016-18. During his tenure, the department expanded its cohort of staff and its student enhancement activities. In 2018 POLSIS achieved an overall student satisfaction score of 91% in the National Student Survey, the second highest in the Russell Group. Moreover, he developed a strategy, POLSIS 2026, outlining an intellectual vision for the department, organized a series of high profile events and initiated and lead the organization of the first ever POLSIS conference.

Professor Haughton's google scholar profile
Professor Haughton’s ORCID profile

Professor Haughton is founding co-director of the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation. (CEDAR)

Qualifications

PG Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (Birmingham)
PhD in Social Sciences/Slavonic and East European Studies (UCL)
Diploma in Czech (Westminster)
MA in Slavonic and East European Studies (London)
BSc (Econ) in Government (LSE)

Biography

Tim Haughton joined the University of Birmingham in 2003 having previously taught at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), Sheffield University and Comenius University in Bratislava. Initially appointed as Lecturer in the Politics of Central and Eastern Europe, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2006, Reader in European Politics in 2012, and Professor of Comparative and European Politics in 2022. He has taken on a number of significant administrative roles in the University including Head of POLSIS (2016-18), Director of CREES (2012-14), Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes in POLSIS (2018-21) and POLSIS Director of Research (2022- ). He is a founding co-director of the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR).

He has held Visiting Fellowships at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Institute of International Relations in Prague, Colorado College and was an Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC.

Professor Haughton has published widely in a number of journals including Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Comparative European Politics, East European Politics, East European Politics and Societies, Electoral Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Party Politics, Perspective on Politics, Political Studies Review, Politics and Policy and West European Politics. He has also written several articles for the Washington Post. He is the co-author with Kevin Deegan-Krause of The New Party Challenge: Changing Cycles of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe and Beyond (2020), the author of Constraints and Opportunities of Leadership in Post-Communist Europe (2005), the editor of Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Does EU Membership Matter? (2011) and was the co-editor with Nathaniel Copsey of the JCMS Annual Review of the European Union for nine years (2008-2016). His research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Nuffield Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, the Centre for East European Language Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) and the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation.

Professor Haughton has good links with the policymaking community, having briefed inter alia five British Ambassadors to Slovakia, and given several presentations on Central European politics at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London and at the State Department in Washington DC.

Teaching

Professor Haughton’s primary teaching responsibilities are:

Varieties of Politics: The Comparative Politics of Parties, Institutions and Regimes (MA module)
Parties and Voters Around the Globe (final year undergraduate module)
Politics as a Vocation (first year undergraduate module)
(contribution to) Approaches to Research in Government (PhD module)

He has also taught numerous modules/courses for undergraduates and postgraduates including introduction to the EU, comparative politics, democratization, the political history and contemporary politics of Central and Eastern Europe and specialized courses on the European Union for civil servants on programmes funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Postgraduate supervision

Professor Haughton has supervised 13 doctoral researchers through to the completion of their PhDs: Dr Bernd Rechel's PhD thesis, 'Minority Rights in Post-Communist Bulgaria'; Dr Brigid Fowler's thesis examining EU accession and party politics in Hungary; Dr William Westwater's thesis on regional legislatures in Russia; Dr Magdalena Skrybant's thesis exploring the relationship between the intellectuals and workers in the Solidarity movement in Poland; Dr Lara Scarpitta's thesis examining Romanian accession to the EU; Dr Richard Connolly's thesis exploring the relationship between economic structures and political change in post-communist Europe; Dr Odeta Barbullushi's thesis examining Albania's Euro-Atlantic orientation; Dr Mike Adkins's thesis exploring party based Euroscepticism; Dr Laurence Cooley's PhD thesis examining the European Union and ethnic conflict resolution and management in the Western Balkans; Dr Stephanie Garstin’s thesis assessing infrastructure, legacy and scientific knowledge in the process of nuclear development in Poland; Dr Charlotte Galpin’s thesis examining the euro crisis and discourses of Europe in Germany, Ireland and Poland; Dr Veysel Erdemli’s thesis exploring Georgian Associations in Turkey; and Dr Ziad Attiya Abu Mustafa thesis examining the causes of Palestinian disunity, 1993-2014.

Professor Haughton is currently supervising PhD students examining Bulgarian party politics, elections in Zambia, the role of parties in the process of democratization in Georgia and voting behaviour of ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. He is particularly keen to supervise students wishing to study the domestic politics of East-Central Europe, party politics and political campaigning.

Research

Research Interests

There are currently three main strands to Dr Haughton's research:

Party politics, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe
Political campaigning
Domestic Czech, Bulgarian, Slovenian and especially Slovak politics

Current and Recent Projects

The New Party Challenge (with Kevin Deegan-Krause).
Slovak Party Politics from the 1989 Gentle Revolution to the Present
Splitting the Difference/the Volatility of Volatility: Towards a More Sophisticated Measures of Volatility (with Fernando Casal-Bertoa and Kevin Deegan-Krause)
Parties and Party Systems Across the Globe (with Kevin Deegan-Krause)
Political Campaigning in Central and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspective (with David Cutts)
Corruption in Electoral Politics in East-Central Europe (with Natascha Neudorfer)

Other activities

With Nathaniel Copsey he was the joint editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies Annual Review of the European Union for nine years (2008-17) which is published by Wiley. In addition to a host of articles by leading scholars in the field, the nine Annual Reviews they edited included commissioned articles by Jose Manuel Barroso, Jean-Claude Trichet, Jerzy Buzek, Douglas Hurd, Iveta Radicova and Sergey Lavrov.

In autumn 2020 he became alongside Dr Fernando Casal Bertoa the co-director of REPRESENT: a network of scholars from the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham whose work focuses on parties, elections and representation and seeks to act as ‘hub’ for knowledge exchange between academic researchers, policy-makers and practitioners.

Publications

Recent Publications

Haughton, T. and Deegan-Krause, K. (2020) The New Party Challenge: Changing Patterns of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe and Beyond Oxford: Oxford University Press (2020)

Cutts, D. and Haughton, T. (2021) ‘Winning Votes and Influencing People: Campaigning in Central and Eastern Europe’, East European Politics, 37 (2), pp. 239-266

Haughton, T., M. Rybar and K. Deegan-Krause (2022) ‘Corruption, Campaigning, and Novelty: The 2020 Parliamentary Elections and the Evolving Patterns of Party Politics in Slovakia’, East European Politics and Societies, 36 (3), pp. 728-752.

Haughton, T. (2021) ‘Ruling Divisions: the Politics of Brexit’, Perspectives on Politics, 19 (4), pp. 1258-1263.

Selected Publications

Deegan-Krause, K. and Haughton, T. (2018) ‘Surviving the Storm: Factors Determining Party Survival in Central and Eastern Europe’, East European Politics and Societies, 32 (3) pp. 473-492

Casal Bertoa, F., Deegan-Krause, K. and Haughton, T. (2017), ‘The Volatility of Volatility: Measuring Change in Party Vote Shares’ Electoral Studies, 50, pp. 142-156

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (eds) (2017) The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2016 (including keynote articles by Helen Wallace, John Curtice and Catherine De Vries) Oxford: Wiley

Haughton, T. (2017) 'Central and Eastern Europe: The Sacrifices of Solidarity, the Discomforts of Diversity and the Vexations of Vulnerabilities' in Desmond Dinan, Neill Nugent and William Paterson (eds) The European Union in Crisis, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 253-268

Haughton, T. (2016) 'Beelines, Bypasses and Blind Alleys: Theory and the Study of the European Union', Journal of Common Market Studies, 54 (s1), pp. 65-82

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (eds) (2016) The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2015 (including keynote articles by Tanja Borzel, Kevin Featherstone and Hanspeter Kriesi) Oxford: Wiley

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (2015) The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2014 (including keynote articles by Sara Hobolt, Kathleen McNamara, Sonia Lucarelli and David Phinnemore) Oxford: Wiley

Haughton, T . and Deegan-Krause, K. (2015) ‘Hurricane Season: Systems of Instability in Central and East European Party Politics’, East European Politics and Societies 29 (1), pp. 61-80

Haughton, T. (2014) ‘When Permissiveness Constrains: Money, Regulation and the Development of Party Politics in the Czech Republic (1989-2012)’, East European Politics 30 (3), pp. 372-388

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (2014) ‘Farewell Britannia? “Issue Capture” and the Politics of Cameron’s EU Referendum Pledge’ (with Nathaniel Copsey), Journal of Common Market Studies, 52 (s1), pp. 74-89

Martin, N., Haughton, T. and Purseigle, P. (eds) Aftermath: Legacies and Memories of War in Europe, 1918-1945-1989 Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate (2014)

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (2014) (eds), The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2013 (including keynote articles by Andre Sapir, Heather Grabbe, Anand Menon and Daniel Hamilton), Oxford: Wiley

Haughton, T. (2014), 'Exit, Choice and Legacy: Explaining the Patterns of Party Politics in Post-communist Slovakia', East European Politics, 30 (2), pp. 210-229

Haughton, T. (2014), 'Money, Margins and the Motors of Politics: the EU and the Development of Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe, Journal of Common Market Studies, 52 (1), pp. 71-87

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (eds) (2013) The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2012 (including keynote articles by Sergey Lavrov, Iveta Radicova, Paul de Grauwe and Christian Lequesne), Oxford: Wiley (2012)

Haughton, T. (2013), ‘Battlefields, Ammunition and Uniforms: the Past and Politics in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe’, Comparative European Politics, 11 (2), pp. 249-260

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (eds) (2012) The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2011 (including keynote articles by Willem Buiter, Daniel Gros, Douglas Hurd and Erik Jones), Oxford: Wiley

Copsey, N. and Haughton, T. (eds) (2011) The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2010 (including State of the Union article by Jerzy Buzek), Oxford: Wiley

Haughton, T. (ed) Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Does EU Membership Matter?, London: Routledge (2011) originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics (vol. 25 no.4, 2009)

Krasovec, A. and Haughton, T., (2011) ‘Money, Organization and the State: the Partial Cartelization of Party Politics in Slovenia’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 44 (3), pp. 199-209

Haughton, T. (2011) ‘Half Full But Also Half Empty: Conditionality, Compliance and the Quality of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe’, Political Studies Review, 9 (3), pp. 323-333

Haughton, T. Novotna, T. and Deegan-Krause, K. (2011), ‘The 2010 Czech and Slovak Parliamentary Elections: Red Cards to the “Winners”’, West European Politics, 34 (2011), pp. 394-402

Haughton, T. (2010), ‘Zranitelnost, povstupni kocovina a role predsednictvi: formovani narodnich preference novych clenskych statu EU’, Mezinarodni vztahy, 45 pp. 11-28

Deegan-Krause, K. and Haughton, T. (2010), ‘A Fragile Stability: the Institutional Roots of Low Party System Stability in the Czech Republic 1990-2009’, Politologicky casopis/Czech Journal of Political Science, 10, pp. 227-241

Full list of Publications (PDF)

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Expertise

Domestic politics of Central and Eastern Europe, EU politics, parties and elections, and political campaigning.

Alternative contact number available for this expert: contact the press office

Expertise

Tim’s research is on domestic politics of Central and Eastern Europe, EU politics, parties and elections, and political campaigning.

Alternative contact number available for this expert: contact the press office