Professor Anthony Butler

Professor

What makes you interesting? 

Regular columnist for Business Day newspaper

 Room 5.22, Robert Leslie Social 

 

  • Roles

     

  • Biography

    BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford. PhD in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge. Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Director of the Politics and Administration Programme at Birkbeck College, University of London. Chair in Political Studies at University of the Witwatersrand.

  • External Appointments

     

  • Useful Links

    Blog: practicalreason.blog

  • Research, Knowledge Exchange and Impact

    Research interests include

    • Policy analysis
    • Political finance; money and politics
    • Comparative government and institutional reform
    • Political risk and uncertainty
    • Resource nationalism
    • Political biography
    • Sectoral policies (energy, environment, resources, basic education, public health)

  • Teaching

    Undergraduate teaching 

    POL3037F SA Public Policy Analysis

    Postgraduate teaching 

    POL5052F Public Policy

    POL5044FS South African Politics

  • Postgrad Supervision

    I am available to supervise in all my fields of interest

  • Publications

    Books include:

    • Presidential Power: Political leadership in post-apartheid South Africa. Auckland Park, Jacana, 2025.
    • Cyril Ramaphosa: The road to presidential power. 3rd edition. Oxford, James Currey, 2019.
    • Contemporary South Africa, 3rd edition. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
    • Remaking the ANC (editor). Auckland Park, Jacana, 2014.
    • The Idea of the ANC. Athens, Ohio University Press, 2013.
    • Paying for Politics: Party funding and political change in South Africa and the global South (editor). Auckland Park, Jacana, 2010.

    • Democracy and Apartheid: Political science, comparative politics, and the modern South African state. London, Macmillan and New York, St Martin's Press, 1998.

    • Transformative Politics: The future of socialism in western Europe. London Macmillan and New York St Martin's Press, 1995.

       

    Other publications include:

    • ‘Four dimensions of Presidential Leadership: Rethinking Nelson Mandela’s Presidency’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 56, 1, 2026.

    • ‘The Prospects of Asymmetric Decentralisation in South Africa’, in Isaac Khambule, ed., The State and Development in South Africa: Impasse, Prospects and Challenges. London, Routledge, 2026.

    • ‘The end of ANC electoral dominance: Inexorable decline, or just a poor campaign?’, in Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall, eds, Election 2024. Auckland Park, Jacana, 2024.

    • ‘Unpacking political party dynamics in post-apartheid South Africa’, in Raymond Parsons, ed., Tipping Point. Auckland Park, Jacana, 2024. 

    • 2022, ‘Cyril Ramaphosa’, in Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of African History. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022.

    • ‘The hazards that confront a political biographer’, Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 73,2, 130-37, 2019.

    • ‘A campaign born of desperation’, in Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall, eds, Election 2019, Jacana, 2019.
    • ‘The Politics of Numbers: National membership growth and subnational power in the African National Congress’, Transformation 87, 2015.
    • ‘Understanding the ANC at sub-national level’, Transformation 87, 2015 (with Roger Southall).
    • ‘Contemporary issues in political party funding and sustainability’, in Ebrahim Fakir and Tom Lodge, eds, Political Parties in Africa, Auckland Park, Jacana, 2015.
    • ‘Mandela’s Middle Course’, China Policy Review, January. Beijing, Development Research Centre of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2014 (in Mandarin).
    • ‘The African National Congress of South Africa: Experiences of party management’, in Catrina Schlager and Judith Christ eds, Modern Party Management: What can be learned from international practices? Shanghai: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Shanghai Administration Institute of the Chinese Communist Party, 2014. (Also published in Mandarin.)
    • Trollip, H., Butler, A., Burton, J., Caetano, T., & Godinho, C., ‘Energy Security in South Africa’. Cape Town, Mitigation Action Plans & Scenarios (MAPS) Research Paper, Issue 17, 2014.
    • ‘Resource nationalism and the African National Congress’, Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 113, 2013.