Grant Amyot
Professor Emeritus
He/Him
PhD Politics (Reading); BA Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (Oxford); BA History (Western Ontario)
Political Studies
Comparative Politics, Political Theory
Professor Emeritus | Term Adjunct
Mackintosh-Corry Hall, C408
Research Interests
Italian politics; European politics; European Union; political economy; economic policy; interest groups; business; labour; trade unions; industrial relations; parties; elections; Marxism; political philosophy; philosophy and methodology of social science
Current research: The EU and Italian economic policy
Brief Biography
Grant Amyot retired from the Department of Political Studies in 2022.
Born in Victoria, B.C., Grant Amyot wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Italian Communist Party, for which he undertook research in the field and at the Gramsci Institute in Rome. At Queen's, he teaches primarily on comparative politics, European politics, and the EU. He has also taught in political thought and the philosophy and methodology of social science, and has co-taught an Italian literature course.
Professor Amyot has served as co-editor of Queen's Quarterly and as a member of the editorial board and executive committee of Studies in Political Economy.
His primary research areas are Italian politics, European politics, and the European Union. His interests include political parties and unions, but most recently he has written on political economy and economic policy, which are the subject of his latest monograph. His current research involves the impact of the EU on the Italian political system and Italian policy-making.
In his recent work, the principal theoretical framework has been provided by political economy and state theory, though he has also drawn on neo-institutional, cultural, and ideological perspectives. Even when focusing on Italian politics, he has striven to introduce the international and European dimensions into these approaches.
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
"The Privatization of Alitalia," in Gianfranco Baldini and Anna Cento Bull, eds., Governing Fear (vol. 24 of Italian Politics: A Review), New York, Berghahn, 2010
The End of the Berlusconi Era? (vol. 21 of Italian Politics: A Review ) ed. with Luca Verzichelli, New York, Berghahn, 2006 (Italian edition: Politica in Italia : Edizione 2006, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006)
“Mortal Risks? The Problem of Italy’s International Competitiveness” (with Francesco Marangoni), in The End of the Berlusconi Era?
Business, the State and Economic Policy: the Case of Italy , London, Routledge, 2004
“The Waning of Political Parties,” in Alain G. Gagnon and Brian Tanguay, eds., Canadian Parties in Transition, 3rd ed., Peterborough, Broadview, 2007
The Italian Communist Party: the Crisis of the Popular Front Strategy, London, Croom Helm, 1981 “’A Matter of Philosophical Preference’? Political Philosophy and Judicial Reasoning in the Sauvé Case,” National Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming)