Jean Blondel

Who is Jean Blondel?

Jean Blondel is a French political scientist specialising in comparative politics. He is currently Emeritus Professor at the European University Institute in Florence, and visiting professor at the University of Siena.

He graduated from the Institut d'Études Politiques of Paris in 1953. He studied at St Antony's College from 1953 to 1955, graduating with a B.Litt. He returned to France for military service, returning to Britain to study the relations between central and local government at Manchester University. He was a lecturer at the University College of North Staffordshire from 1958 to 1963, a fellow at Yale University in 1963-4 and then moved to the University of Essex in 1964, where he founded the Department of Government. He started the European Consortium for Political Research in 1969 and directed it for ten years following its foundation meeting in 1970. Having left Essex in 1984, he was appointed scholar of the Russell Sage Foundation in New York in 1984 before becoming professor of political science at the European University Institute in Florence from 1985 to 1994. He holds honorary doctorates form the Universities of Salford and Essex in the United Kingdom, Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, Turku in Finland, and Siena in Italy.