Peter Hupe

In the academic year 2024-25 Professor Pieter Lodewijk Hupe (usually known as Peter) is Visiting Fellow at Oriel College. During Trinity Term he will be working at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. He is interested in the politics of the state in action.

Born in 1951 he studied Political Science (master cum laude, VU Amsterdam) and was in military service, before choosing a career in the civil service. There he became involved in policy formation. He wrote a doctoral dissertation about it (Leiden University), but also discovered the relevance of policy implementation. Understanding 'what happens after a bill becomes law' (Bardach 1977) would become a life-long fascination.

This fascination has been expressed in a variety of publications in which he scrutinized standard views. The differentiated answer to the question ‘what happens’ resulted in perspectives on implementation as operational governance, on street-level bureaucrats as demonstrating professionalism in public service, on discretion as controlled freedom, on accountability as practised beyond hierarchy and on public encounters between individual citizens and the state as the ultimate locus of policy making.

After more than thirty years of teaching and doing research at Erasmus University Rotterdam, since 2017 he is Visiting Professor at the Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven. In 2012-13 All Souls College granted him a Visiting Fellowship. On his return to Oxford he looks forward to discussing substantive matters of shared interest again with Oxford peers and students intrigued by the working of the state in its relation to society.