Centre for the Study of Public Policy

Since 1 October 2005 part of the Department of Politics and International Relations of the U. of Aberdeen, the Centre for the Study of Public Policy was founded by Professor Richard Rose in 1976 as the first public policy centre within a European university. Its purpose is to relate social science research to major problems of contemporary societies. It does so by drawing on a variety of social science disciplines, principally political science, sociology and economics, and a variety of methods, both quantitative and qualitative.

The CSPP specializes in comparative research. In the 1980s it conducted major comparative studies of the growth of government, concerning taxation and expenditure, organizational change, and laws. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the CSPP has developed an innovative repertoire of Barometer surveys to advance empirical understanding of mass response to transformation in post-Communist societies.

The CSPP has now conducted more than 100 nationwide Barometer surveys across Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Results have been published in Studies in Public Policy; in six books; in peer-reviewed social science journals on both sides of the Atlantic; in public affairs periodicals such as the Journal of Democracy; and in Russian and German. Reports are presented to policymaking agencies such as the World Bank, OECD, the European Union, Council of Europe and UN agencies, and to universities across Europe, the United States and further afield. CSPP websites have more than 1mn hits a year from more than 80 countries.

After 30 years at the University of Strathclyde, the CSPP has joined the School of Social Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, which is creating a major centre for the comparative analysis of survey research across Europe.