What kind of discipline are we? A network analysis of British Politics

Abstract

Research on British politics has traditionally been too reliant on a single model for understanding its field of inquiry—initially the Westminster model and then, since the 2000s, the governance-focused ‘differentiated polity model’. It has also been criticised for being preoccupied by the institutions that make up the Westminster system in terms of its substantive analytical focus, neglecting theory and international comparisons, failing to learn from other disciplines, and neglecting issues of age, gender, ethnicity and the environment (Marsh in Br Polit 7:43–54, 2012; Randall in Br Polit 7:17–29, 2012; BJPIR in Br J Polit Int Relat 24:3–10, 2022). This article aims to substantiate some of these claims using a network analysis of articles published in the journal British Politics to illuminate the who and the what of contemporary British politics research: Who authors it, which communities they form, what topics they focus on, and how they relate to the rest of the discipline. The evidence presented paints a picture of a valuable, but also still somewhat insular and fragmented discipline, and one that is itself inflected by structured inequalities.