Dowding, Keith (1960-)

Keith Dowding has made two key contributions to understanding political power: demonstrating the importance of the collective action problem for our understanding of power and demonstrating the interplay of agency and structure with his concept of “systematic luck.” Collective action problems show that a group of actors might seem powerless even if there is no other group acting against them. Dowding claims that both pluralists and structural approaches fail to grasp this simple idea. Systematic luck is almost the converse, how one group can get what it wants even though the group does not act. Building from Brian Barry's idea of luck as “getting what you want without trying,” Dowding claims luck is not randomly distributed, but often tied to a person's location in the social structure or “system” the person inhabits. First developed in Rational Choice and Political Power, then in the more accessible Power, Dowding explains that although the systematically lucky might have access to resources that make them powerful, they often want what they get (as opposed to get what they want) because their interests noncontingently coincide with policy makers. The concept of systematic luck is often misunderstood by those who think Dowding is arguing that, for example, capitalists are lucky rather than powerful. He argues they are both, but luck can explain why the powerful often do not seem to act yet attain the outcomes they want.

Dowding has applied these notions to traditional debates in urban theory, arguing that growth coalitions and regime theory can be illuminated by the idea of systematic luck. Indeed, this idea is very close to Clarence Stone's systemic power that underpins his original regime concept. The difference is that Dowding predicates power to agents (individuals, parties, groups, organizations) and not to structure itself, though his accounts of both what the collective action problem and systematic luck mean for analysis of power in society are highly structural.

Dowding is also widely known for his theoretical work about, and promotion of, rational choice theory, testing Charles Tiebout's hypothesis regarding efficient service-provision, exploring why government ministers resign, and latterly turning to the measurement of rights and freedoms. Awarded a doctorate from Oxford in 1987 for his dissertation Collective Action, Group Organization and Pluralist Democracy, Dowding joined the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1993 after teaching at Oxford and Brunel Universities. An editor of the highly regarded Journal of Theoretical Politics since 1995, he is now research professor at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.