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Office Hours

Wednesday 14.30-16.30

Qualifications

• Licentiaat Politieke Wetenschappen (KULeuven)
• MA International Relations (ULBruxelles)
• D.Phil Politics, St Antony's College (University of Oxford )

Research areas of interest

• Comparative federalism and territorial politics
• Intergovernmental relations in federal states
• Organization and strategy of parties in a multi-level setting
• Institutional engineering for divided societies

Course convenor

• Introduction to Politics and International Relations (First year UG, 2010-)
• Comparing Scottish Devolution (Honours 2010-
• Approaches to Politics and International Relations (Honours 2012-)

Biographical statement

Wilfried Swenden is a Senior Lecturer in Politics. He hails from Belgium where he completed undergraduate studies in Political Science (Leuven) and International Relations (Bruxelles). He took up a lectureship in Politics in 2004 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2009. He has been a visiting scholar at the Centre for European Studies (Harvard) and most recently the Political Science Department at Delhi University in India. At Edinburgh, he is associated with the Institute of Governance and the Centre for South Asian Studies. Wilfried's current research interests are situated in the following four areas: (1) the comparative study of constitutional dynamics and intergovernmental relations in federal states (2) territorial party politics, especially the organization and strategies of statewide parties in a multi-level context; (3) the strength and weaknesses of territorial management for governing divided societies and their comparison with other strategies for conflict management (4) the dynamics of Indian federalism, especially since the regionalization of the party system . His research has been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research and the Hayter Fund. He has published two monographs, four edited collections and (co-) authored several articles, which appeared among others in the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, Publius: the Journal of Federalism, Regional & Federal Studies and West European Politics. Since May 2007, Wilfried has co-convened the ECPR Standing Group on Federalism and Regionalism, the largest European network in the field of territorial politics. He is also an executive member of IPSA RC28, the Research Committee on Comparative Federalism and Federation and co-editor of Regional & Federal Studies.

Research supervision

Wilfried welcomes PhD proposals on (1) the territorial dimension of party politics in Western Europe, but also beyond (especially India) (2) constitutional reform and intergovernmental relations in multi-level polities (3) the capacity of federalism or regionalism to regulate conflict in divided societies and its comparison with other conflict regulating institutions for divided societies.

Recent Publications include

Nicola McEwen, Wilfried Swenden and Nicole Bolleyer, 'Intergovernmental Relations in the UK. Continuity in a time of Change?' in Nicola McEwen, Wilfried Swenden and Nicole Bolleyer, eds., Governments in Opposition? Intergovernmental Relations in the UK in a context of party political incongruence, British Journal of Politics and International Relations (forthcoming)

Nicola McEwen, Wilfried Swenden and Nicole Bolleyer, 'Introduction: Political Opposition in a Multi-Level Context' in Nicola McEwen, Wilfried Swenden and Nicole Bolleyer, eds., Governments in Opposition? Intergovernmental Relations in the UK in a context of party political incongruence, British Journal of Politics and International Relations (forthcoming)

Liselotte Libbrecht, Bart Maddens and Wilfried Swenden, 'Party Competition in Regional Elections. The strategies of statewide parties in Spain and the United Kingdom', Party Politics, [published on-line ahead of print], 29 June 2011

Wilfried Swenden, 'The European Union and the competence catalogue after the Lisbon Treaty. Insights from Comparative Federalism' in Rekha Saxena, eds., Varieties of Federal Governance . Major Contemporary Models (Delhi: Foundation books/Cambridge University Press, 2011), 467-93

Wilfried Swenden, 'The Belgian Regions and the European Union: Unintended partners in unravelling the Belgian state?' in Jones, R.W and Scully, R. eds. Regionalism and Constitutionalism in an Enlarged European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan,) 16-34

Wilfried Swenden, 'Why Belgian federalism is not more asymmetrical' in Ferran Requejo and Klaus-Jürgen Nagel, eds. Federalism Beyond Federations: Asymmetry and Processes of Re-Symmetrization in Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 13-36

Wilfried Swenden, 'Subnational participation in national decisions: the role of second chambers' in Enderlein, Henrik, Sonja Wälti, and Michael Zürn (Eds.): Handbook on Multi-Level Governance. (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2010), 103-23

Wilfried Swenden, 'Beyond UK Exceptionalism? Comparing Strategies for Territorial Management' in Klaus Stolz, ed. Ten Years of Devolution in the United Kingdom. Snapshots at a Moving Target (Augsburg: Wißner Verlag, 2010), 13-35

Jan Erk and Wilfried Swenden, eds., New Directions in Federalism Studies (London: Routledge, 2010)

Wilfried Swenden and Bart Maddens, eds. Territorial Party Politics in Western Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009)

Marleen Brans, Lieven De Winter and Wilfried Swenden, eds., The Politics of Belgium, Institutions and Policy under bipolar and centrifugal federalism, (London: Routledge, 2009; first published as special issue of West European Politics, (29), 5, 2006

Liselotte Libbrecht, Bart Maddens, Wilfried Swenden and Elodie Fabre, eIssue salience in regional elections in Spainf, European Journal of Political Research, 48, (2009), 1, 58-79

Wilfried Swenden (2009), 'Schottland in Europa: Mit oder ohnes Vereinigtes Königreich?' in Karl-Heinz Lambertz, Martin Große Hüttman, eds., Europapolitik und EuropafÄhigkeit van Regionenf, (Nomos: Baden-Baden), 101-122 [in German]

Earlier publications include

Federalism and Regionalism in Western Europe : a comparative and thematic analysis (Basingstoke : Palgrave 2006). A Japanese translation with a new preface was published in 2010

Federalism and Second Chambers: Regional representation in parliamentary federations. The German Bundesrat and Australian Senate Compared (Brussels : PIE-Peter Lang, Federalism and Regionalism Series, No.2)

W. Swenden and M.T. Jans (2006), 'Will it Stay or will it Go? Federalism and the Sustainability of Belgium', West European Politics, vol.29 (5), 2006, 877-894;

Robertas Pogorelis, Bart Maddens, Wilfried Swenden and Elodie Fabre , (2005) 'Issue Salience in Regional and National Party Manifestoes in the UK ', West European Politics , vol.28, no.3, 992-1014

Wilfried Swenden (2005), 'What - if anything - can the European Union learn from Belgian federalism and vice versa?' Regional and Federal Studies, vol.15, no.2, pp. 187-205

Wilfried Swenden (2004), 'Is the European Union in need of a Competence Catalogue? Insights from Comparative Federalism', Journal of Common Market Studies , 42, (2), pp. 371-392.

Wilfried Swenden (2002), 'Asymmetric Federalism and Coalition-Making in Belgium', Publius: the Journal of Federalism , vol.32, No.3, pp. 67-87