John Leslie

Lecturer

BA Princeton, MA, PhD UC Berkeley

Profile

John Leslie is a Lecturer in Political Science. His research interests are in European politics and integration and the comparative politics of advanced industrial democracies. He is the VUW Representative on the Executive Board of the New Zealand European Union Centres Network.

The New Zealand European Union Centres Network joins seven New Zealand universities in a consortium funded by the European Commission and administered by the National Centre for Research on Europe at the University of Canterbury.  The EUCN combines the three elements of research, teaching and outreach under a unique thematic umbrella focused on the impact, role and understanding of the European Union within New Zealand and the wider Pacific region.

The Network is multidisciplinary in orientation and open to all New Zealand universities with an interest in European Union Studies. The 1999 EU-NZ Joint Declaration - involving economics, politics, security, innovation, development, democratic values and people and cultures - defines the scope of the Network's activities.

The Network’s activities include but are not limited to:

• Co-administration of the Facilitating Research between Europe and New Zealand (FRENZ) Programme with the Ministry of Research Science and Technology.
• Funding Staff and Student Research
• Providing Scholarships for Postgraduate Study
• Selecting/Supporting European Parliament Internship Programme
• Organizing an annual Europa Lecture (2007 European External Relations Commissioner Bettina Ferrero-Waldner)
• Hosting a European-in-Residence (2007 Terry Wynn, fmr. MEP and Chairman of the European Parliament Budgetary Commission)
• Supporting European Teaching Fellows (2007 VUW and Massey University)
• Annual Conference on the European Union
• Sponsoring Public Seminars and Speakers

Current Research Projects

One long-term project compares the processes by which service employees are integrated into existing institutions of interest representation, particularly unions and union movements constructed to represent industrial workers.

In June and August 2007 I conducted research on debates going on inside German unions about the need to introduce a legal minimum wage as well as union resistance to the country-of-origin principle in the European Union’s Services Directive (2006/123/EC). Support for this research was provided by the NZ Royal Society’s International Science and Technology (ISAT) Linkages Fund and the NZ EU Centres Network.

Next year I shall be working on a book manuscript that compares processes of institutional change inside the Socialist Party of Austria and the Social Democratic Party of Germany from the postwar era until the 1990s.

Selection of Publications

• “Party Institutions, the SPD and the Fall of Franz Müntefering,” German Politics and Society, Issue 78 Vol.25, No.1 (Spring 2007), pp.1-27.
• “Hierarchy, Institutions and Decision Making in Party Organizations: Lessons from the Socialist Party of Austria and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, 1945-1959” (under review)
• Co-convenor with Elizabeth McLeay and Kate MacMillan, Rethinking Women and Politics in New Zealand Conference Victoria University    Wellington 25-26 May 2007.
• with Sarah Wiliarty, “Gate Crashers and Engraved Invitations: Integrating Feminist Activists in the SPD and CDU from the 1960s to the 1980s,” paper presented to Rethinking Women and Politics in New Zealand Conference Victoria University Wellington 25-26 May 2007.
• “The Transatlantic Relationship and the South Pacific,” Paper presented to The Impact of Asia on Transatlantic Relations Annual Conference; of the Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association San Francisco 21-24 June 2007.
• “The Changing Nature of Borders: Citizenship and Club Goods,” paper presented to the 100th Annual Meeting of the International Union of Socialist Youth 24 August 2007, Berlin, Germany.
• “The ‘Double Movement’ in European Integration?: Labour, the Country-of-Origin Principle and Europe’s Internal Market for Services,” paper presented to the Annual Conference of the NZ EU Centres Network  The EU at 50: Assessing the Past, Present and Future, 12-13 November 2007, University of Otago, Dunedin.

Current Teaching

• POLS/INTP417 (not offered 2009) The Politics of Market Creation and Expansion – uses a historical perspective to investigate the intensely political process of creating and expanding market structure.
• POLS/INTP351 (offered 2nd Trimester 2009) Power and Policy in the European Union – explains the origin and development of the institutions of the European Union and how these institutions shape monetary, social, enlargement, common foreign and security policies.
• POLS/INTP 205 (offered 2nd Trimester 2009) The New Europe – compares the development and operation of diverse political, social and economic institutions in postwar Western Europe, concentrating on the experience of France, West Germany and the UK.

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