Jean Blondel

Jean Blondel receiving an honorary degree in Political Sciences from the University of Siena, October 9th, 2008

Jean Blondel (born Toulon, 26 October 1929) is a French political scientist specialising in comparative politics. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the European University Institute in Florence, and visiting professor at the University of Siena.

He graduated from the Institut d'Études Politiques of Paris in 1953. He studied at St Antony's College (Oxford) from 1953 to 1955, graduating with a B.Litt. He returned to France for military service, returning to Britain to study the relations between central and local government at Manchester University. He was a lecturer at the University College of North Staffordshire (now Keele University) from 1958 to 1963, a fellow at Yale University in 1963-4 and then moved to the University of Essex in 1964, where he founded the Department of Government. He started the European Consortium for Political Research in 1969 and directed it for ten years following its foundation meeting in 1970. Having left Essex in 1984, he was appointed scholar of the Russell Sage Foundation in New York in 1984 before becoming professor of political science at the European University Institute in Florence from 1985 to 1994. He holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Salford and Essex in the United Kingdom, Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, Turku in Finland, and Siena in Italy.

He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of the Academia Europaea. In 2004 he was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science "for his outstanding contribution to the professionalisation of European political science, both as a pioneering comparativist and an institution builder".

Blondel is particularly noted for the contributions he has made to the theory of party systems, the comparative study of cabinets, and the relations between parties and governments.

His latest book, "The Presidential Republic" is a comparison of different presidential systems across the globe, with a particular emphasis on Latin America, Africa and the ex-Soviet republics. It seeks to be amongst the first comprehensive studies of different presidential systems.

Selected publications

• Voters, parties and leaders : the social fabric of British politics. Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1963.
• An Introduction to Comparative Government. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969.
• Comparative legislatures. Englewood Cliffs, N.J : Prentice-Hall, 1973.
• Political parties. A genuine case for discontent?. London : Wildwood House, 1978.
• The Discipline Of Politics. London & Boston : Butterworths, 1981.
• Political leadership : towards a general analysis. London & Beverly Hills : SAGE, 1987.
• Blondel, Jean and Ferdinand Müller-Rommel (eds.) Cabinets in Western Europe . Basingstoke : Macmillan, 1988.
• Blondel, Jean and Ferdinand Müller-Rommel (eds.) Governing together : the extent and limits of joint decision-making in Western European cabinets. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1993.
• Blondel, Jean and Maurizio Cotta (eds.) Party and government : an inquiry into the relationship between governments and supporting parties in liberal democracies. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1996.
• Blondel, Jean, Richard Sinnott, and Palle Svensson People and Parliament in the European Union : participation, democracy, and legitimacy[1]. Oxford, England : Clarendon Press, 1998.
• Blondel, Jean and Maurizio Cotta (eds.) The nature of party government : a comparative European perspective. New York : St. Martin's Press, 2000.
• Blondel, Jean and Ferdinand Müller-Rommel (eds.) Cabinets in Eastern Europe . Basingstoke : Macmillan, 2001.
• Blondel, Jean. The Presidential Republic. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.