Professor Lawrence Pratchett
Biography
Lawrence Pratchett is Professor of Local Democracy and Director of the Local Governance Research Unit. He is also the expert consultant to the Council of Europe’s ad hoc Committee on e-democracy (CAHDE).
Research interests
His research interests are focused around several aspects of local democracy:
- Public participation - he has worked on various projects concerned with citizen participation in local politics, and was co-director of the ESRC sponsored project the locality effect: local government and citizen participation (with Vivien Lowndes).
- E-democracy - he has a long standing interest in the relationship between the implementation of new technologies and the development of democracy. He was director of the Government sponsored research into ‘The implementation of e-voting in the UK’ (2002) and was academic advisor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s £4 million ‘National Project on Local e-Democracy’ (2003-2005). He is also the expert consultant to the Council of Europe’s ad hoc Committee on e-democracy (CAHDE) (2006-8)
- Comparative local democracy - he has an emerging interest in the institutional variations in local democracy and their relationship with national and international institutions. This interest is fuelled particularly by his work for the Council of Europe on making democratic institutions work and a more recent project on comparing local participation in seven European countries (both with Vivien Lowndes). This has also been developed in relation to comparative e-democracy developments in Europe.
ProGov People
“ The mark of a professional civil service is having at hand a number of informed policy choices for any given scenario. The key to this is a strong, internationally-informed knowledge base.”
— Mark Evans, Director of the Institute of Governance, ANZSOG
“ Those who lead public sector organisations have the capacity to innovate by listening to all their stakeholders and properly evaluating their responses.”
— Richard Common, Senior Research Fellow in Public Management, Manchester Business School
“ Few people are born leaders — most have to learn how to acquire the skills that make them effective managers and communicators. Good public sector management is about leading teams”
— Andrew Massey, Professor of Public Administration, University of Exeter
“ Any idiot can make a decision, or design a policy. The real challenge is developing the capacity to actually implement the decision.”
— Wayne Parsons, Profesor of Public Policy, Queen Mary, University of London
“ Learning online can be as engaging and effective as in any classroom, with the advantages of flexible timing and interaction with international participants”
— Ellen Roberts, director of the e-Masters in Public Policy and Management at the University of York