FRSA

Professor of United States Government and Politics

Department of Politics and International Relations
The Centre for the Study of Democracy

Telephone: +44 (0)207-911-5000 ext 7606
Postal: Centre for the Study of Democracy
University of Westminster
32-38 Wells Street
London, W1T 3UW
Email: owensj@westminster.ac.uk

Professor of United States Government and Politics in the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster and a Faculty Fellow in the Centre for Congressional and Presidential Studies at the American University in Washington, DC and the Institute for the Study of the Americas in the University of London's School of Advanced Study. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

Author of over 40 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and book chapters as well as the co-author or co-editor of books on congressional-presidential relations, the United States Congress, and comparative legislative politics. His new, coedited book, The “War on Terror” and the Growth of Executive Power? A Comparative Perspective was published by Routledge in 2010.

Previous publications include America's "War on Terrorism". New Dimensions in US Government and National Security edited with John W. Dumbrell, published by Lexington Books in 2008, Congress and the Presidency: Institutional Politics in a Separated System (Manchester University Press), co-authored with Michael Foley and After Full Employment (Hutchinson University Press), coauthored with John Keane. He is also the coeditor of Leadership in Context (Rowman & Littlefield), coedited with Erwin C. Hargrove; and The Republican Takeover of Congress (Palgrave), coedited with Dean McSweeney.

Professional responsibilities include being a member of the editorial boards of Congress and the Presidency www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t905131667~db=all and The Journal of Legislative Studies www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13572334.asp, and Politics and Policy, where he is also Associate Editor www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1555-5623. He is also an executive committee member of the International Political Science Association's Research Committee of Legislative Specialists, a former member of the board of Presidential Studies Quarterly, formerchair of the Political Studies Association's Committee for the Annual Richard Neustadt Prize for the best book on United States presidential politics, andformer chair and vice-chair of the American Politics Group of the UK Political Studies Association.

He is director of the CSD's Project on Legislative Governance and has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, the Centennial Center of the American Political Science Association, the University of Essex, Texas A&M University, and a visitor to numerous universities throughout the world. He has also received awards from the British Academy, the Nuffield Foundation, The Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Leadership Center, USIS, and the LBJ Foundation.

Current Research Interests

• War and the growth of executive power
• Speakers’ leadership styles in the US House of Representatives (financed by the British Academy and the Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Leadership Center).
• Rules and agenda-setting and structuring in the US Congress (financed by the Nuffield Foundation).
• Contemporary congressional-presidential relations: Obama and the Congress
• Comparative legislative parties and party cohesion

Research Supervision & MA Modules

• US presidential and executive politics
• US congressional politics
• Political leadership
• Congressional-presidential relations
• Comparative legislative politics
  

MA Modules

Professor Owens is module leader of the MA module Controversies in United States Foreign Policies and Processes.

Latest News

Westminster Professor Advises Commonwealth Parliamentarians and Clerks on Legislative Committee Systems

Recent Publications

The “War on Terror” and the Growth of Executive Power? A Comparative Perspective. Edited by John E. Owens and Riccardo Pelizzo
(Routledge 2010)

The 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington prompted a "global war on terror" that led to a significant shift in the balance of executive-legislative power in the United States towards the executive at the expense of the Congress. The contributors to this volume ask whether this pattern was repeated across a range of democracies that were also threatened by terrorist attacks after 9/11.

In this volume, seasoned scholars examine the extent to which terrorist threats and counter-terrorism policies led uniformly to the growth of executive or Government power at the expense of legislatures and parliaments in other political systems, including those of Australia, Britain, Canada, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, and Russia. The research reported questions whether the “crises” created by 9/11 and subsequent attacks and foiled attacks elsewhere, led inexorably to executive strengthening at the expense of legislatures and parliaments. The research reported finds that democratic forces served to mitigate changes to the balance of legislative and executive power to varying degrees in different political systems.

"In a timely and original book, the authors merge together two traditionally separate literatures to assess in a number of important cases the impact of extraordinary critical events, such as terrorist attacks, on the domestic relationships between the executive and legislature. The reaction of democratic institutions is brilliantly singled out and shows, contra Carl Schmitt, that critical events do not always lead to an erosion of democratic quality."

Leonardo Morlino, Jean Monnet Professor of Political Science, Instituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Florence; President of the International Political Science Association, and author of Assessing the Quality of Democracy and Rule of Law and Democracy.

“A well-focused, highly informative and nuanced comparative study of shifting executive-legislative relations during the first years of the US-led 'war on terror'. John Owens and Riccardo Pelizzo are to be congratulated for bringing together competent contributors writing on eight cases, including not only the US and the UK, but also the less frequently covered Russia, Australia and Indonesia. They help to understand why in some cases executives were less successful in loosening parliamentary controls over their often-problematic conduct. The book offers plenty of material to advance theory, but also to mount a critique of some of the excesses of executive power in response to jihadist extremism.”

Christoph O. Meyer, King's College, London. Editor of Europe’s Response to International Terrorism and author of The Quest for a European Strategic Culture

“Taking advantage of the research opportunity presented by world-wide terrorist attacks, this volume examines the resulting balance of executive-legislative relations through both a multi-country and longitudinal research design. While the executive gained power over the legislature in Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the results were different in Australia, Indonesia, Israel and Italy. This readable set of essays on seven political systems differing greatly in constitutional structure, democratic stability and religious identities, highlights the utility of real time comparative research in a global age.”

David M. Olson, Co-Director of the Center for Legislative Studies, University of North Carolina. Author of Democratic Legislative Institutions: A Comparative View

Contents

• Introduction: The "War on Terror" and the Growth of Executive Power? A Comparative Analysis - JOHN E. OWENS AND RICCARDO PELIZZO
• Congressional Acquiescence to Presidentialism in the US ‘War on Terror’: From Bush to Obama - JOHN E. OWENS
• Parliamentary Scrutiny and Oversight of the British “War on Terror”: Surrendering Power to Parliament or Plus Ça Change? - MARK SHEPHARD
• Putin, Parliament, and Presidential Exploitation of the Terrorist Threat - THOMAS F. REMINGTON
  
• Bipartisanship and Bicameralism in Australia’s ‘War on Terror’: Forcing Limits on the Extension of Executive Power - PHIL LARKIN and JOHN UHR
  
• Canada’s “War on Terror”, Parliamentary Assertiveness, and Minority Government - JONATHAN MALLOY
  
• Israeli’s Prolonged War against Terror: From Executive Domination to Executive-Legislative Dialogue - CHEN FRIEDBERG and REUVEN Y. HAZAN
• Nihil Novi Sub Sole? Executive Power, the Italian Parlamento and the ‘War on Terror’ - RICCARDO PELIZZO
• Reformasi and the Indonesian ‘War on Terror’: State, Military and Legislative-Executive Relations in an Emerging Democracy - EDWARD V. SCHNEIER

America's "War on Terrorism": New Dimensions in US Government and National Security
Edited by John E. Owens & John W. Dumbrell, Lexington Books, 2008.

“How has 9/11 and George W. Bush’s self-declared “war on terror” changed American government and U.S. foreign policy? This is the central question addressed in the nine original essays in this book. Following an introduction by the editors, in which they survey issues and debates raised by America’s “war on terrorism” and its consequences for U.S. government and politics, foreign policy, and for American foreign relations, the contributions to this broad ranging and theoretically informed volume explain the implications of the post-9/11 mobilization and reconfiguration of U.S. foreign and internal security policies.

Issues addressed in the book include: the growth of presidential power, executive branch reconfiguration and the managerial presidency, the Bush doctrine of preemption, the changing role of the United States in the international order, the impact of the “war” on terrorism on the U.S. military, intelligence failure and the changed role of U.S. intelligence, renewed tension in U.S.-European relations, and Bush’s problems with alliance management. Taken together, the essays represent an original and timely assessment of the domestic and international repercussions of George W. Bush’s responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Contributors include John Owens, John Dumbrell (Durham), Richard Conley (Florida), Saki Dockrill (Kings, London), Tim Dunne and Gareth Stansfield (Exeter), Richard Lock-Pullan (Birmingham), Mark Phythian (Leicester), and James McCormick (Iowa State).

 

Leadership in Context
Edited by Erwin C. Hargrove and John E. Owens
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2003).

What is political leadership and does it operate differently in different political contexts? In addition to context, personal political skill plays a large role in the area of leadership, often yielding significant results. Whether a leader is active or passive, creating dynamic relations of talent and institutional powers or choosing to leave situations as they are, skill is frequently the key factor in policy achievement.

In this book, editors Hargrove and Owens gather seven very different studies of skill in context. From the role of the European Commission president to the well established function of the president of the United States, each essay analyzes and interprets the effects of institutional powers and the environments in which leaders operate on their effectiveness and degree of personal talent each brings to the table.

Contributors includeErwin C. Hargrove (Vanderbilt), Colin Campbell (British Colombia), David Scott Bell, Christine Margerum Harlen, Christopher J. Lord, and Kevin Theakston (all Leeds).