His general area of interest is comparative public policy with particular reference to the European Union and the United States. The main policy areas he is interested in are economic policy, trade policy, government-business relations, agricultural policy and environmental policy. He also has a long standing interest in the study of pressure groups. He is also interested in the political economy of football.  

He recently completed work on a joint research project with Warwick HRI funded by the research councils on bio-pesticides and their regulation and writing up of publications from this project is in progress (see web site below).
Biopesticides research project home page

 

Current Research Projects

• Completed a major three-year Research Councils funded project on biopesticides and their regulation with Dave Chandler at Warwick HRI.   As well as extensive field work, the project examined whether there was a 'government failure' problem in terms of the slow take-up of biopesticides.   Regulatory arrangements have been developed with chemical pesticides in mind and may be unduly onerous for bio-pesticides which are niche products.   The project included an examination of the extent to which retail led governance has been important in Britain and compare this with the system of regulation developed in Denmark. Analysis has also been undertaken of the regulatory systems in the Netherlands and the United States. Work is in progress on a book based on the project for CABI Books. A Warwick video about the project is available at Video

• Undertook with colleagues at Warwick HRI and Darren Halpin at Robert Gordon University  a one year project funded by Defra on 'the environmental footprint of horticulture'.    There has been increasing concern about whether horticulture has a particular environmental footprint that raises policy issues, e.g., large-scale growing of strawberries in polythene tunnels.

• Submitted a successful research application with colleagues in Biological Sciences, Law and Economics on diseases of cattle to the RELU 3 programme on which work has now started. The project particularly looks at the governance of these diseases in terms of how different diseases are treated and whether there is 'joined up' thinking. Web page here: Gold