Academic researcher (PhD) in Politics and Political Science at University College London, working in theory-oriented empirical research (interest groups, coalition, ideation theory, role of ideas in political action, group formation, political sociology). Looking at gun politics in the US, my focus is on elite capture of issues. I have taught at King's College London, the University of Bath, University of Exeter, University College London, and lectured at the British Library. In 2018, I was a visiting research fellow at Yale University. Membership secretary of the Political Studies Association's American Politics Group (APG). Parallel career as policy analyst in EU/UK policy (past work in Parliament, Remain Campaign, Open Britain, UK in a Changing Europe, Equality Trust). Address: London
Under what conditions is local governance influenced by external interests? I illustrate the capa... more Under what conditions is local governance influenced by external interests? I illustrate the capacity of external lobbies' strategic behavior to affect local change on hot button issues by exploiting resource asymmetries between them. Using a case of gun policy in the Chicago suburbs, I analyse how local policymaking on guns changed. While the gun lobby's federal impact has been explored, its local influence is insufficiently considered. I find two main insights. First, the institutional landscape around firearms after 2008 impacted local policymaking that was resilient to challenge in 1981. Second, the gun lobby became more resourceful in its influencing strategies, which activated the latent potential of these institutional changes to exert a local effect. This granular study contributes insights on the gun lobby's local impact and the institutional local consequences federal changes brought. This comparative analysis theorises the NRA's strategic use of ‘precedent as resource’, locales' risk aversion when faced with better-resourced external lobbies, and how resource asymmetries become significant in unfavorable legal environments, with wider implications regarding lobby-locale policy interactions after Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022). The social-political uses of law as a strategic resource offers a study of the downstream impacts of the courts' politicization since the 2000s.
This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant... more This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant cultural identifiers. It uses the Weberian concept of the state, in which the state’s monopoly on force is the basis of its legitimacy. Using this theory of the state, my key theoretical contribution is that gun culture is a contestation of the state’s monopoly on force. Relatedly, I argue that the system of cultural identifiers attached to gun culture competes with state power. In this way, gun culture asserts a devolved, local and patrimonial system of social power. I use this synthetic context of U.S. gun culture to understand theoretical issues of citizen–state relations and the role of identification in envisaging local power while offering narcissistic compensations to disenfranchised people. This descriptive theory argues that the state monopoly on force constitutes a central clause of the social contract between state and citizen, and the breach of this monopoly within gun cultu...
This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant... more This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant cultural identifiers. It uses the Weberian concept of the state, in which the state's monopoly on force is the basis of its legitimacy. Using this theory of the state, my key theoretical contribution is that gun culture is a contestation of the state's monopoly on force. Relatedly, I argue that the system of cultural identifiers attached to gun culture competes with state power. In this way, gun culture asserts a devolved, local and patrimonial system of social power. I use this synthetic context of U.S. gun culture to understand theoretical issues of citizen-state relations and the role of identification in envisaging local power while offering narcissistic compensations to disenfranchised people. This descriptive theory argues that the state monopoly on force constitutes a central clause of the social contract between state and citizen, and the breach of this monopoly within gun culture challenges the contract itself. Identity and its conceptual markers, then, have a political end as a surrogate for social authority and personal-local power. This political function is hinted at but not adequately theorized in gun culture literature, certainly not using a Weberian, 'monopoly on force' framework. I propose that gun culture signals an antagonism within the social contract, in which citizens cede use of force to the state. This antagonism is activated in this case but theoretically latent in citizen-state relations. This article builds on the Hobbesian-Weberian premise to propose a model of Martial Culture Theory (MCT) to describe U.S. gun culture and those political movements that seek to reduce through force the state monopoly on power by diminishing its legitimacy and claiming theirs as a legitimate exercise of force.Through this process occurs a renegotiation of socio-political power distribution with the state. I submit this insight has valuable implications for state theory and citizen-state relations. In addition, it offers the most complete theory of how small government conservatism aligns with identity politics in U.S. gun culture, and how the prevailing mode of identitarian politics can manifest and be harnessed toward contestations of state power in Hobbesian-Weberian thought.
The Future of the EU: New Perspectives (report) (UK in a Changing Europe, King's College London think tank), 2020
Extract: The single market is the second half of the European project to remove internal barriers... more Extract: The single market is the second half of the European project to remove internal barriers to trade. Thecustoms union, which was part of the original agreement between the six founding members, removed internal tariffs, and, by setting a common external tariff, removed the need for goods to prove their origin as they crossed internal boundaries. But the customs union did nothing to remove non-tariff barriers which stood in the way of the circulation of goods and services. The removal of those barriers, through a combination of harmonisation of rules, and mutual recognition, has been the aim of the single market over the past 35 years...
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) organises a summer school each year at one of... more The League of European Research Universities (LERU) organises a summer school each year at one of the member universities on a different theme, inviting PhD students from Europe's top research-intensive universities. This year's LERU summer school was organised around the theme of collaboration in research, with the aim of developing a guidebook for early career researchers including tips and advice for successful collaborations.
Under what conditions is local governance influenced by external interests? I illustrate the capa... more Under what conditions is local governance influenced by external interests? I illustrate the capacity of external lobbies' strategic behavior to affect local change on hot button issues by exploiting resource asymmetries between them. Using a case of gun policy in the Chicago suburbs, I analyse how local policymaking on guns changed. While the gun lobby's federal impact has been explored, its local influence is insufficiently considered. I find two main insights. First, the institutional landscape around firearms after 2008 impacted local policymaking that was resilient to challenge in 1981. Second, the gun lobby became more resourceful in its influencing strategies, which activated the latent potential of these institutional changes to exert a local effect. This granular study contributes insights on the gun lobby's local impact and the institutional local consequences federal changes brought. This comparative analysis theorises the NRA's strategic use of ‘precedent as resource’, locales' risk aversion when faced with better-resourced external lobbies, and how resource asymmetries become significant in unfavorable legal environments, with wider implications regarding lobby-locale policy interactions after Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022). The social-political uses of law as a strategic resource offers a study of the downstream impacts of the courts' politicization since the 2000s.
This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant... more This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant cultural identifiers. It uses the Weberian concept of the state, in which the state’s monopoly on force is the basis of its legitimacy. Using this theory of the state, my key theoretical contribution is that gun culture is a contestation of the state’s monopoly on force. Relatedly, I argue that the system of cultural identifiers attached to gun culture competes with state power. In this way, gun culture asserts a devolved, local and patrimonial system of social power. I use this synthetic context of U.S. gun culture to understand theoretical issues of citizen–state relations and the role of identification in envisaging local power while offering narcissistic compensations to disenfranchised people. This descriptive theory argues that the state monopoly on force constitutes a central clause of the social contract between state and citizen, and the breach of this monopoly within gun cultu...
This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant... more This article proposes a new analytical framework to understand U.S. gun culture and its attendant cultural identifiers. It uses the Weberian concept of the state, in which the state's monopoly on force is the basis of its legitimacy. Using this theory of the state, my key theoretical contribution is that gun culture is a contestation of the state's monopoly on force. Relatedly, I argue that the system of cultural identifiers attached to gun culture competes with state power. In this way, gun culture asserts a devolved, local and patrimonial system of social power. I use this synthetic context of U.S. gun culture to understand theoretical issues of citizen-state relations and the role of identification in envisaging local power while offering narcissistic compensations to disenfranchised people. This descriptive theory argues that the state monopoly on force constitutes a central clause of the social contract between state and citizen, and the breach of this monopoly within gun culture challenges the contract itself. Identity and its conceptual markers, then, have a political end as a surrogate for social authority and personal-local power. This political function is hinted at but not adequately theorized in gun culture literature, certainly not using a Weberian, 'monopoly on force' framework. I propose that gun culture signals an antagonism within the social contract, in which citizens cede use of force to the state. This antagonism is activated in this case but theoretically latent in citizen-state relations. This article builds on the Hobbesian-Weberian premise to propose a model of Martial Culture Theory (MCT) to describe U.S. gun culture and those political movements that seek to reduce through force the state monopoly on power by diminishing its legitimacy and claiming theirs as a legitimate exercise of force.Through this process occurs a renegotiation of socio-political power distribution with the state. I submit this insight has valuable implications for state theory and citizen-state relations. In addition, it offers the most complete theory of how small government conservatism aligns with identity politics in U.S. gun culture, and how the prevailing mode of identitarian politics can manifest and be harnessed toward contestations of state power in Hobbesian-Weberian thought.
The Future of the EU: New Perspectives (report) (UK in a Changing Europe, King's College London think tank), 2020
Extract: The single market is the second half of the European project to remove internal barriers... more Extract: The single market is the second half of the European project to remove internal barriers to trade. Thecustoms union, which was part of the original agreement between the six founding members, removed internal tariffs, and, by setting a common external tariff, removed the need for goods to prove their origin as they crossed internal boundaries. But the customs union did nothing to remove non-tariff barriers which stood in the way of the circulation of goods and services. The removal of those barriers, through a combination of harmonisation of rules, and mutual recognition, has been the aim of the single market over the past 35 years...
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) organises a summer school each year at one of... more The League of European Research Universities (LERU) organises a summer school each year at one of the member universities on a different theme, inviting PhD students from Europe's top research-intensive universities. This year's LERU summer school was organised around the theme of collaboration in research, with the aim of developing a guidebook for early career researchers including tips and advice for successful collaborations.
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Papers by Josephine Harmon
internal tariffs, and, by setting a common external tariff, removed the need for goods to prove their origin as they crossed internal boundaries. But the customs union did nothing to remove non-tariff barriers which stood in the way of the circulation of goods and services. The removal of those barriers,
through a combination of harmonisation of rules, and mutual recognition, has been the aim of the single market over the past 35 years...
internal tariffs, and, by setting a common external tariff, removed the need for goods to prove their origin as they crossed internal boundaries. But the customs union did nothing to remove non-tariff barriers which stood in the way of the circulation of goods and services. The removal of those barriers,
through a combination of harmonisation of rules, and mutual recognition, has been the aim of the single market over the past 35 years...