(1) Regulators and central banks under pressure: Analysing communicative responses (Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship)

• Independent regulatory agencies and central banks have come under growing public and political pressure since the global financial crisis. Whilst their independence has always been criticised for a lack of legitimacy, their performance is now also increasingly contested. How have the organisations responded to this pressure? In this project, I analyse the speeches delivered by their key decision-makers between 2000 and 2019. Has the focus shifted toward consumer interests and citizen trust? Has their scope increased, and their complexity decreased? By analysing speeches, the project will shed light on the communicative and strategic responses of unelected bodies under pressure.

(2) Reconnecting citizens to the administrative state (NORFACE grant) (with Martin Lodge, Caelesta Braun, Jacint Jordana, and Nick Sitter)

• Public administration is central to democratic governance as it connects citizens to the state in multiple ways. Yet, the current age of political turbulence – expressed through citizen dissatisfaction and populist politics – represents a fundamental challenge to the authority of the institutions of the administrative state. This has led to disconnection, but also to administrative efforts to reconnect citizens with the state. The RECONNECT project investigates how calls for more 'responsive' administrative state institutions have developed – both among citizens and politicians – and how the administrative state has sought to become more responsive, especially when simultaneously faced with expectations of neutrality and impartiality. The project explores five distinct citizen-focused dimensions of the administrative state: constitutional, regulatory, enabling, consumer-protecting and consulting dimensions. Using a mixed-methods approach, including attitudinal, media, document and interview analysis, RECONNECT generates new knowledge to compare and explain variation across both European jurisdictions and dimensions of the administrative state. In the process, the project contributes to academic and practitioner debates regarding the future of the administrative state, and to a better understanding of how citizens can be reconnected to wider democratic governance and the administrative state in particular.
• RECONNECT is funded by the AEI, ESRC, NWO and RCN, and the European Commission through Horizon 2020 (Grant No. 822166).