Pepper D. Culpepper
Blavatnik Professor of Government and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government and
Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College
University of Oxford

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Welcome! I am the Blavatnik Professor of Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. This site provides easy access to some of my published research, teaching, and public commentary.

My current research project, funded by a five-year Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, is called Banklash. The project investigates the feedback loops connecting policymaking, public opinion, and media coverage in financial regulation. More generally, I am interested in the role of interest groups, the media and public opinion in reinvigorating democracy.
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What's New?

'The economy is rigged': Inequality narratives, fairness, and support for redistribution in six countries. [with Ryan Shandler, Jae-Hee Jung, and Taeku Lee] Comparative Political Studies, 2024.

Does the American dream foster inequality? Financial Times article about our research on inequality and media coverage [gated]. Twitter/X thread on the article.

FTX and Binance: how latest crypto scandals could influence public opinion on digital currency regulation. The Conversation (UK), December 1, 2023.

Banklash: How Media Coverage of Bank Scandals Moves Mass Preferences on Financial Regulation. [with Jae-Hee Jung and Taeku Lee] American Journal of Political Science, 2023.

The Art of the Shitty Deal: Media Frames and Public Opinion on Financial Regulation in the United States. [with Taeku Lee] Socio-Economic Review, 2022.
 
Media Frames, Partisan Identification and the Australian Banking Scandal. [with Taeku Lee] Australian Journal of Political Science, 2021.
 
Quiet Politics in Tumultuous Times: Business Power, Populism, and Democracy. Politics & Society, March 2021 [part of a special issue on quiet politics and the power of business].

Death in Veneto? European Banking Union and the Structural Power of Large Banks. [With Tobias Tesche]. Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 2021.
 
Computational Identification of Media Frames: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Opportunities. [with Tom Nicholls] Political Communication, 2020.

Are We All Amazon Primed? Consumers and the Politics of Platform Power. [with Kathleen Thelen] Comparative Political Studies 2019.

Culpepper's Banklash Project Awarded €2.5 million Advanced Research Grant from the European Research Council. April 2018.​

What President Trump means. Post-Election Panel Discussion at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, November 16, 2016.

Structural Power and Political Science in the Post-Crisis Era. Business and Politics, October 2015.

Structural Power and Bank Bailouts in the United Kingdom and the United States. [with Raphael Reinke] Politics & Society, December 2014.

The Political Economy of Unmediated Democracy: Italian Austerity under Mario Monti. West European Politics, November 2014.

Why Don't Governments Need Trade Unions Anymore? [with Aidan Regan] Socio-Economic Review, October 2014.

Quiet Politics and Business Power

Winner of the 2012 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research

"Quiet Politics is a roaring affirmation of the intellectual power that is generated by combining impressive theoretical sophistication with enormous empirical depth and great political acumen. These days, our debates about the politics of capitalism are noisy and shallow. All serious students of political economy will benefit from some quiet hours chewing on and digesting the intellectual feast that this book offers."

Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University


"‘Quiet politics’ points to a major problem of democracies, often overlooked by the focus of politicians and political scientists on salient political conflicts, partisan coalitions and public debate. It contributes to empirical democratic theory, redirecting attention to policy-making in non-salient but tremendously important arenas. In addition, Culpepper’s study builds empirical and theoretical bridges to the fields of business administration, to law and to comparative political economy more generally. Quiet Politics and Business Power is a major contribution to the study of political and economic institutions, processes and outcomes."

Citation for XVIIth Stein Rokkan Prize


"A remarkable book.... This is first-class qualitative social science, using an alternating process of deductive and inductive reasoning to tease out hypotheses and test them against case study evidence. Lucidly written and persuasively argued, Culpepper convincingly challenges a host of existing approaches to the study of corporate governance and business power, while making his core topic of corporate control of great interest to specialists and accessible to those more interested in his theory.

European Political Science


"Professor Culpepper's insightful analysis exposes a hidden dynamic that shapes takeover regulation in a diverse group of capitalist democracies: managers make the rules while politicians are not watching. Quiet Politics will change how readers think about the buying and selling of companies, and the process of regulating the market for corporate control."

Curtis J. Milhaupt, Columbia Law School