Government

Government Departmental Doctoral Programme

Admission requirements including prerequisites

The department normally requires an MSc in a relevant subject at well above pass level.

There are compulsory and optional methodological and other courses/seminars in the first and subsequent years.

The Doctoral Programme Seminar, which is organised and chaired by the Doctoral Programme Director, Dr Mark Thatcher, is compulsory for all first year students. Intended to deepen and broaden students' engagement with political science, it spends the first term on basic advice on research design and methodology, provided by a proportion of the Department's staff. In the Lent and Summer terms the seminar focuses on work-in-progress reports presented by student members of the seminar. Students' attendance and participation is directly taken into account in the review at the end of the first year. In addition, first year doctoral students attend the workshop authoring a PhD organised by the teaching and learning centre.

A large number of seminars and courses are offered by the School's Methodology Institute and elsewhere in the school. Students take advice from their supervisors at the beginning of their first term and attend those sessions deemed to be of particular relevance to their research.

A full range of courses in research methods and design is available from the School's Methodology Institute. There is also an annual ECPR Summer School in Data Analysis at Essex University, to which the Department can nominate two students.

At the start of their second year all research students are required to enrol in at least one workshop, to attend on a regular basis and to present their research for discussion, usually in the presence of their supervisor in addition to the regular workshop members. The content of the workshops varies in detail from year to year, but a typical profile includes workshops in political theory, institutional analysis and political economy, European politics and policy, rational choice, and comparative politics. Initially, students are allocated to workshops on the basis of their current thesis title and their own preferences at the end of the first year. Subsequent changes of enrolment are undertaken if recommended and supported by students' supervisor(s). Account is taken of attendance and performance at the workshops in the regular end-of-year reviews. First year research students are welcome to attend any of these workshops, and regularly do so.

Research students often find some of the seminars and lecture series organised in connection with the large number of MSc programmes offered by the School useful. Programmes in the Government Department are: Political Theory, European Politics and Policy, Public Policy and Comparative Government. In addition members of the Department teach on MSc programmes in The Political Economy of Transition and European Studies (in the European Institute), Management (in the Management Institute), The Politics of Empire and Post-Imperialism and Russian and Post-Soviet Studies (with the International Relations Department) and Regulation (with Geography, Law and other departments).

Departmental requirements about progression

Each research student in the Department is under the care and supervision of a supervisor in accordance with School practice as laid out in the Code of Practice.

In addition to the provision of supervision the Department's own arrangements ensure that each student who is not already co-supervised within the Department will be assigned an advisor.

The role of advisor is a flexible one, but in general includes:

• acting as a substitute in the absence of the supervisor,
• providing a supplementary source of advice and encouragement, and
• constituting a second person on whom students can draw (for example, for references and general academic contacts).

It is the Department's practice to review all full-time students each year and all part-time students every second year. The review takes place each year in week six of the Summer term, with particular importance being attached to the assessment made at the end of the first year, when both re-registration and transfer from MPhil to PhD are considered.

Details of the requirements for review are laid out in the Department's Research Student Handbook, which is provided to all Research Students at the start of every session and is available on the Department's web site.

Departmental expectations about completion

It is the expectation of the School and the Department that full-time students should be able to complete their thesis within four years of initial registration; and part-time students within six years of initial registration.

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