Professor Christopher Bickerton

Queens' College
  • Professor of Modern European Politics
  • University Teaching Officer
Professor Christopher Bickerton

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About

Christopher Bickerton is a Professor in Modern European Politics at POLIS and an Official Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He obtained his BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) from Somerville College, Oxford and his Masters from the Graduate Institute in Geneva. He obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford (St John’s College) in 2008 and since then has held teaching positions at Oxford, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Sciences Po in Paris.

He has published numerous books and articles that span a number of different fields within social and political science. These include three research monographs, European Union Foreign Policy: From Effectiveness to Functionality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; paperback in 2015), European Integration: From Nation-States to Member States (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics (Oxford University Press, 2021, co-authored with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti). His 2012 book on state transformation was awarded the Best Book prize by the University Association of Contemporary European Studies. His articles have been published in the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), Political Studies, International Politics and the Revue Française de Science Politique. In 2011, he co-edited a special issue in JCMS on the EU’s security and defence policy (with Bastien Irondelle and Anand Menon).

In 2016, he published the best-selling The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide with Penguin, which was submitted for the Baillie-Gifford prize, the UK’s leading non-fiction literary prize. He is currently under contract with Allen Lane/Penguin in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA for a history of Europe since 1989. Beyond academic publishing, he has written articles for the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, New York Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs and The Big Issue. He is regularly interviewed for national and international radio and has been a panellist on the Talking Politics podcast.

Research

His research interests span the disciplines of international relations, comparative politics and contemporary European history. The focus of his research has long been on the comparative study of state-society relations, looking in particular at dynamics of state transformation in Europe, the relationship between regional integration and the transformation of national political and party systems, and the challenges presented to representative democracy by growing disenchantment with democracy in advanced industrialised societies.

He is currently completing a collaborative project on conflicts of sovereignty in Europe with colleagues at the Free University in Brussels (ULB), financed by the Wiener Anspach Foundation. His current project is a history of Europe since 1989 – a work of contemporary history that looks at the economic, political, social and cultural development of Europe, both East and West. The rights to this book have been sold to Allen Lane/Penguin in the UK and to Penguin Press in the USA.

Publications

Books:

2021

  • Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics, co-authored with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp256

2016

  • The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide (London: Penguin) pp288; nominated for the Baillie-Gifford prize and for the European Union Studies Association prize [reviewed and cited in The Economist, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Evening Standard, La Vie des Idées, Times Literary Supplement, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian]; translated into Estonian in 2019

2012

  • European Integration: From Nation States to Member States (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp240; winner of the University Association of Contemporary European Studies best book prize of 2013 [reviewed in Journal of Common Market Studies, Political Studies Review, West European Politics, Swiss Political Science Review, Plurilogue, Politics and Philosophy Reviews, Liberales (in Dutch)]

2011

  • European Union Foreign Policy: From Effectiveness to Functionality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) pp192 [reviewed in the Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, Revue Française de Science Politique, Journal of European Integration]

Peer Reviewed Articles:

2019

  • ‘The Limits of Differentiation: capitalist diversity and labour mobility as drivers of Brexit’, Comparative European Politics, 17:2, 231-245
  • ‘Parliamentary, popular and pooled: conflicts of sovereignty in the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union’, Journal of European Integration, 41:7, pp887-902

2018

  • ‘Beyond the European Void? Reflections on Peter Mair’s Legacy’, European Law Journal, 24:4-5, pp268-280
  • ‘‘Techno-populism as a new party family: the case of the Five Star Movement and Podemos’, co-authored with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, Contemporary Italian Politics, 2018, 10:2, pp132-150

2017

  • ‘Populism and technocracy: opposites or complements?’, co-authored with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20:2, pp186-206

2015

  • ‘The New Intergovernmentalism: European Integration in the Post-Maastricht Era’, co-authored with Dermot Hodson and Uwe Puetter, Journal of Common Market Studies, 53:4, pp703-722;

A Selection of Public Commentary:

  • ‘Europe Failed Miserably with Vaccines. Of Course It Did’, New York Times, 17 May 2021
  • ‘The rise of the technopopulists’, New Statesman, 23-29 October, 2020
  • ‘Pourquoi le Labour a perdu’, Le Monde Diplomatique, Février 2020
  • ‘Le Brexit, une voie étroite pour la gauche’, Le Monde Diplomatique, Février 2019
  • ‘It’ll take more than shopping to save our debt-addled economy’, The Guardian, August 2018
  • ‘The collapse of Europe’s mainstream centre left’, New Statesman, May 2018
  • ‘Why Emmanuel Macron will be another failed French President’, New York Times, September 2017
  • ‘Will Angela Merkel save the West? Don’t count on it’, New York Times, March 2017
  • ‘Europe in Revolt’, Prospect, January 2017
  • ‘Life after Brexit’, The Big Issue, August 2016
  • ‘Brexit is not the property of the political right’, The Guardian, June 2016
  • ‘How Britain fell out of love with Europe’, Wall Street Journal, July, 2015
  • ‘The real sins of Varoufakis’, Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2015
  • ‘It won’t be an accident if Britain leaves the EU’, Wall Street Journal, June, 2015
  • ‘European democracy cannot be a clubby world of familiar faces’, with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, Financial Times, January 2015
  • ‘Dutch Culture Wars’, New York Times, October 2010