In principle, it is possible to observe British elites in action, but such access is rare. Therefore, Rhodes’s study of court politics is not ethnographic in the conventional sense as it does not rely on participant observation or deep immersion. However, it still seeks to understand the webs of significance that people spin for themselves; it is interpretive. The book uses eclectic methods for data collection, employing a ragbag of tools; whatever works best. The aim is to understand the ‘lived experience’ of politicians, political advisers, and administrators, focusing on the practices of elites and their everyday ‘ways of doing things.’

We can learn about these elites’ ways from biographers, who explore the reasons behind their subjects’ actions. The beliefs and practices of the governing elite can be explored through their letters, diaries, and speeches. We can learn from journalists because their exposé tradition probe actions to show ‘all is not as it seems’. Both approaches focus on individual actors and serve as important sources of data on beliefs and practices. This interpretive historical ethnography aims to reconstruct a socially rich historical setting using textual materials, such as considered writings.

It seeks to provide a ‘quasi-immersive experience’ of a past institutional or other social context. As with all ethnography, it explicates the meaning of actions rooted in a specific time or place by deploying an ethnographic sensibility (MacKay and Levin 2017: 446). The book looks for patterns of meaning in how prime ministers and their various aides make sense of their world, interpreting other people’s stories. It presents a collage of court life in the twentieth century. The seminar will explore the strengths and weaknesses of this historical interpretive method.

Rod Rhodes is Professor of Government (Research) at the University of Southampton (UK) and Director of the Centre for Political Ethnography. He is the author or editor of 45 books. He has also published 200 articles and chapters in books. His most recent publications include The Prime Ministerial Court (Oxford University |Press 2024); Comparing Cabinets (with D. Grube and P. Weller, Oxford University Press 2021); The Art and Craft of Comparison (With J. Boswell and J. Corbett, Cambridge University Press 2019); Networks, Governance and the Differentiated Polity. Selected Essays. Volume I. (Oxford University Press, 2017), Interpretive Political Science. Selected Essays. Volume II (Oxford University Press, 2017).

He previously served as editor in chief of Public Administration, and Public Policy and Administration. He has edited six book series and currently edits Political Ethnography for Manchester University Press and Transforming British Government for Palgrave-Macmillan. In 2015, the ECPR awarded him their biennial Lifetime Achievement Award for his ‘outstanding contribution to all areas of political science, and the exceptional impact of his work’.

Note: This is a hybrid seminar with the speaker appearing online: if you are on campus please join us at Seminar Room 3.72 in the RSSS Building.

To join online: https://anu.zoom.us/j/3364169330?pwd=ZStOdm4vTWpwS1RMbmFYUisxWVB2UT09

Seminars are 1 hour in duration.

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