Dissertation Award

Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in the field of comparative politics

Recipient: Joséphine Lechartre, Tulane University

Title: “Genocide and Cultural Change: Civilian Survival Strategies and the Reinvention of Political Culture During Guatemala’s Mayan Genocide”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Kelly McMann of Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Mareike Kleine of the London School of Economics, and Dr. Kyle Marquardt of the University of Bergen

Award Citation: After reviewing a large number of excellent dissertations, the committee has unanimously selected for the Gabriel A. Almond Award Joséphine Lechartre’s exceptional work, “Genocide and Cultural Change: Civilian Survival Strategies and the Reinvention of Political Culture During Guatemala’s Mayan Genocide.”

This dissertation provides an answer to the question of how mass political violence affects post-conflict political engagement. Dr. Lechartre develops a novel theory that explains how civilians’ different survival strategies during genocide reshape communities’ political cultures, resulting in either sustained political engagement or demobilization post-conflict. Different survival strategies—exit, voice, and loyalty—place civilians in new cultural environments. These strategies and environments result in diverse post-conflict political cultures.

Dr. Lechartre also shifts our understanding of political culture, from “orientations towards the political system” (Almond and Verba 1965) to “cultural representations that individuals activate to make the political system intelligible.” Her conceptualization improves upon past approaches by allowing for political subcultures within a country and lending itself to clear measures. She uses her definition of political culture to show that it can change rapidly, rather than always being a “slow-moving variable.”

Dr. Lechartre supports her argument with methodological rigor and impressive original data. She uses a wide range of identification techniques to demonstrate the effect of survival strategies on political culture. These range from detailed historical analyses of each survival strategy—exit to refugee camps in Mexico, voiced by joining the guerrilla movement in the jungle, or loyalty by remaining in villages under Guatemalan military control—to an examination of an as-if random-assignment of a subset of survivors to two refugee camps with different cultures. Investigating variation in experiences and their impact both across survival strategies and within one (the exit option) is a powerful approach. Dr. Lechartre’s data collection methods included interviews with genocide survivors, representatives of nongovernmental and religious organizations, and former combatants; community surveys; participant observation; and research in both Guatemalan and Mexican archives. Equally important as the scope and power of her research methods are her well-articulated awareness and understanding of the ethical risks of research in indigenous communities that survived genocide and, accordingly, the precautions she took.

Dr. Lechartre’s dissertation contributes to our understanding of many key topics in comparative politics: political culture; political repression, trauma, and resilience; political legacies of mass violence, and democracy after atrocity. Her dissertation is well-deserving of the Almond Award.

William Anderson Award for the best dissertation in the general field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, state, and local politics

Recipient: Julian Michel, Hong Kong Baptist University

Title: “The Subnational Roots of Democratic Stability”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Sarah Anzia of the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Justin Phillips of Columbia University, Dr. Tracy Fenwick of Australian National University, and Dr. Zoltan Hajnal of the University of California, San Diego

Award Citation: The winner of the 2025 William Anderson Award is “The Subnational Roots of Democratic Stability” by Julian Michel (UCLA). In this dissertation, Michel takes on a timely and important question: How can the politics of subnational governments serve to bolster democracy in countries around the world? Michel advances a theory of how subnational governments that are controlled by the opposition party can effectively check a national executive’s efforts to expand power, including by increasing the competitiveness of the opposition party in subsequent national elections. To test this theory, Michel collected a dataset of subnational election outcomes impressive in scope, covering 84 democracies from 1990 to 2021. The quantitative empirical analysis features country-level analysis of these panel data, an extensive set of robustness checks to explore alternative explanations, as well as a regression discontinuity design estimating the effects of the opposition party winning close races for subnational offices in Latin America. Paired with recent important political science research on how subnational governments can potentially weaken democracy, Michel’s dissertation offers a compelling counterpoint and adds considerable nuance, showing that subnational governments offer opposition parties leverage to reduce national executive aggrandizement. This well written, carefully researched dissertation is most deserving of the 2025 Anderson Award.

Edward S. Corwin Award for the best dissertation in the field of public law

Recipient: Benjamin Garcia Holgado, University of Delaware

Title: “The Judicial Bulwark: Courts and the Populist Erosion of Democracy”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Wendy Martinek of Binghamton University, SUNY, Dr. Alyx Mark of Wesleyan University, and Dr. Rachel Stern of University of California, Berkeley

Award Citation: Benjamin Garcia-Holgado’s “The Judicial Bulwark: Courts and the Populist Erosion of Democracy” is an ambitious examination of the conditions under which courts can promote or prevent the process of autocratization by populist executives. The central argument is that populist executives who are able to co-opt or neutralize apex courts early on possess an advantage in undermining other components of liberal democracy. In contrast, when apex courts maintain their autonomy, they can foster resistance to democratic erosion by building coalitions with others, including both state and non-state actors. The judges on such courts are pivotal players in those coalitions because they possess the legal authority to establish that an executive is compromising liberal democracy.

Garcia-Holgado carefully develops their theoretical argument and then evaluates it with the use of rigorous analyses of Ecuador under the presidency of Rafael Correa (as a case study of democratic erosion) and of Argentina under the presidency of Cristina Kirchner (as a case study of democratic resilience). The thorough attention to issues of generalizability and scope conditions and rich detail regarding the case studies contribute to making “The Judicial Bulwark” an engrossing and thought-provoking read about a topic of great contemporary relevance.

Harold D. Lasswell Award for the best dissertation in the field of public policy

Recipient: Shir Raviv, Columbia University

Title: “The Evolving Politics of Using AI Algorithms in Public Policy Implementation”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Christopher Bosso of Northeastern University, Dr. Ashley Fox of University at Albany, SUNY, and Dr. Dorothy Daley of The University of Kansas

Award Citation:

“The Evolving Politics of Using AI Algorithms” makes novel and groundbreaking theoretical and empirical observations on a rapidly emerging – and high-stakes – issue area: the use of artificial intelligence in public services. Through a series of sophisticated empirical experiments, Raviv finds that people’s evaluations of AI-based algorithmic decision-making (ADS) in the public sector largely depend on two considerations: their perceived accuracy and fairness. In this regard, respondents express aversion to using ADS in decisions that are seen as designed to sanction target populations (rather than assist them) and under conditions when decision-makers are required to make inferences about individuals rather than collectives. Raviv also shows how public attitudes toward the use of ADS in public services evolve with increased engagement or personal experience with them. These insights can assist in determining under what circumstances the use of AI in public services may be appropriate.

E.E. Schattschneider Award for the best dissertation in the field of American government

Recipient: Roxanne Rahnama, Stanford University

Title: “Myths and Monuments: Ideological Tools of Dominance and Symbolic Change”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Srinivas C. Parinandi of University of Colorado at Boulder, Dr. Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University, and Dr. Mackenzie Israel-Trummel of The College of William & Mary

Award Citation:

We are delighted to present the E.E. Schattschneider Award to Roxanne Rahnama for her brilliant dissertation, “Myths and Monuments: Ideological Tools of Dominance and Symbolic Change.” This dissertation explores how ideology—defined to include symbols, rhetoric, and ideas, contributes to the preservation of social hierarchy in periods of institutional and political change. Focusing on the Lost Cause movement in the US South following the Civil War, Rahnama finds that the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) organization deployed the hagiography of the Lost Cause to preserve white male (and planter) status. She also links the potency of UDC mobilization to Confederate battle losses. In a powerful final twist, Rahnama applies her theory to the contemporary era, arguing that the removal of Confederate monuments in recent years has reduced racial animosity in nearby areas. The dissertation stands out for its willingness to take on a “big picture” topic, its theoretical richness and historical scope, its creative use of data and meticulous empirical analysis, its sensitive attention to potential alternative explanations, and elegant writing. It represents a significant contribution to scholarship on American politics, political economy, race and politics, and gender and politics.

Kenneth Sherrill Prize for the best dissertation proposal for an empirical study of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) topics in political science

Recipient: Nicholas D’Amico, Syracuse University

Title: “Rainbow Participation? Assessing the Forces Motivating the LGBTQ Participation and Political Identity in the United States”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Ellen Andersen of the University of Vermont, Dr. Gabriele Magni of Loyola Marymount University, and Dr. Carly Thomsen of Rice University

Award Citation:

Nicholas D’Amico (Syracuse University) is the winner of the 2025 Kenneth Sherrill Prize, which recognizes the best doctoral dissertation proposal for an empirical study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender topics in political science. D’Amico’s project seeks to explain the puzzle of LGBTQ political behavior in the United States: LGBTQ Americans are both more politically active and more consistent in their political preferences than dominant models of political participation would predict. Drawing from literature on social identity and intersectionality, he theorizes that group consciousness plays a key role in shaping the political identities and behaviors of LGBTQ people and that the development of this consciousness is in turn shaped by the intersectionally divergent experiences of LGBTQ people. He lays out an ambitious, mixed-methods approach to testing his claims, beginning with secondary analysis of existing surveys of LGBTQ Americans, followed by qualitative interviews to explore the types of experiences that LGBTQ respondents indicate have affected their own sense of group consciousness. He then plans to field an original survey of LGBTQ Americans, with one or more embedded experiments testing the causal relationship between group consciousness and specific political behaviors.

The Ken Sherrill Prize Committee is impressed with D’Amico’s project and its potential contribution to the literature on LGBTQ politics, group consciousness, and American political behavior. Given the scarcity of survey data on LGBTQ respondents, D’Amico’s work has the potential to be an important data contribution to the discipline.

Leo Strauss Award for best dissertation in the field of political philosophy

Recipient: David Guerrero, University of Barcelona and University of Groningen

Title: “Reframing Expressive Freedom: Free Speech Libertarianism, Republicanism, and the Political Economy of Communication”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Sankar Muthu of the University of Chicago, Dr. Barbara Allen of Carleton College, and Dr. Douglas Casson of St. Olaf College

Award Citation: David Guerrero’s dissertation, “Reframing Expressive Freedom: Free Speech Libertarianism, Republicanism, and The Political Economy of Communication,” offers an incisively argued and carefully crafted analysis of multiple twentieth-century and contemporary debates about free speech. The award committee appreciated both the breadth and depth of the research and scholarship, which ranges from the legal, political, and philosophical writings of the early twentieth-century to recent writings about the relationship between free expression and the public sphere. Guerrero’s arguments about the twentieth-century intellectual construction of a modern canon and ideology of free speech, a kind of “free speech libertarianism” that reads such a perspective into writings from John Milton to Oliver Wendell Holmes, sets the stage for an alternative approach. Guerrero argues that a more robust conception of expressive liberties would prioritize the diagnosis of various forms of domination of expression and communication, both private and public. The award committee was impressed by the setting of these issues in an institutional context that is alert to the contemporary political economy of speech. Along these lines, the dissertation offers a revision of neo-republican theories of speech that stresses both democratic decision-making at many levels and reformed regulation of contemporary media and advertising markets. This deeply insightful scholarship has the potential to shape ongoing discussions about freedom of expression in a manner that is richly informed by historical reflection, theoretical argumentation, and institutional analysis.

Merze Tate Award for the best dissertation in the field of international relations, law and politics

Recipient: Jan Eijking, University of Oxford

Title: “A World From Nowhere: Nineteenth-Century Expert Politics and the Technocratic International”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Marybeth Peterson Ulrich of the United States Naval War College, Dr. Jonas Tallberg of Stockholm University, and Dr. Adam Lerner of the University of Massachusetts Lowell

Award Citation: Jan Eijking’s dissertation, “A World from Nowhere: Nineteenth-Century Expert Politics and the Technocratic International,” examines the 19th century rise of expert-driven international projects and institutions. The author theorizes processes of ‘domain differentiation’—the delineation of a sphere of political action to be driven by technical expertise—and focuses on how key differentiators shielded international projects from political oversight. The dissertation begins with careful theory building, before moving to an examination of political thinkers arguing for domain differentiation (Bentham, Mill, Saint-Simon, and Chevalier), and, finally, turns to three historical cases. From the first World Fairs in the 1850s to the construction of the Suez Canal from 1834-1869 and the International Telegraph Conference of 1865, the author persuasively demonstrates how domain differentiation justified unprecedented cross-border engineering projects that were made unaccountable to concerns about dispossession and informal empire. The committee noted the richness of the historical investigation and the deep relevance of the author’s theory. In an era of profound policy debates over AI governance and increased populist backlash to expert-based institutions like the WHO and UNFCCC, “A World from Nowhere” offers historically grounded insights relevant to both scholars and practitioners.

Leonard D. White Award for the best dissertation in the field of public administration

Recipient: David Froomkin, Yale University

Title: “Structuring Democracy”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Thomas Birkland of North Carolina State University, Dr. Shelly Arsneault of California State University, Fullerton, and Dr. Tim Johnson of Willamette University

Award Citation: The 2025 Leonard D. White Award for the best dissertation in public administration is given to “Structuring Democracy.” “Structuring Democracy” follows in the tradition of canonical public administration texts, such as Frederick Mosher’s “Democracy and Public Service,” by providing a theoretical foundation for the role of administration in US democracy.

Focusing on the separation of powers in the US federal system, “Structuring Democracy” posits that a genuine manifestation of Madison’s vision of the separation of powers transcends checks-and-balances. Rather, the dissertation argues for a conception of the separation of powers that rests on the idea “that the legislature is supreme in government” (pp. 76-77) and that independent administrative bodies enhance democratic accountability by deliberating in the process of policy implementation. Such deliberation involves publicly interpreting legislative decisions so as to expose the reasoning that executive agencies use when implementing legislation, thereby allowing the voting public to better understand and assess past legislative performance in their future voting decisions.

This vision of the separation of powers carries important implications for public administration. It emboldens a constitutionally grounded critique of presidential managerialism, pointing out that such efforts prioritize efficiency at the expense of the Constitution’s emphasis on articulating and acting upon an understanding of legislative intent. Executive branch agencies should engage in “deliberative reason-giving” that reveals the logic of policy execution, enhancing fidelity to the legislative mandate under which the executive branch acts. It also emphasizes due process, suggesting that judicial review of administrative activity ought to focus on whether the execution of legislative decisions transparently considered and adhered to the factors underlying legislation.

“Structuring Democracy” makes a bold challenge to popular conceptions of the separation of powers and the expansive assertion of executive branch power. Through this argument, the dissertation connects with issues in public administration that date back a century. In his “Introduction to the Study of Administration,” Leonard D. White wrote that “Administration must be correlated with other branches of government, as well as adjusted to the immense amount of private effort which in America far more than elsewhere supplements public enterprise” (1926 [1992], p.59). “Structuring Democracy” illuminates this “correlation” in the US federal system through a distinctive contribution to public administration scholarship. “Structuring Democracy” is therefore a worthy recipient of the Leonard D. White Dissertation Award.

Paper, Article and Poster Awards

APSA Best Poster Award for the best poster presented by a graduate student and/or early career scholar at the previous year’s APSA Annual Meeting

Recipient: Jerry Min, Harvard University

Title: “Do Left Governments Tax More? How States Tax Global Capital with Tax Treaties”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Cameron Arnzen of Brown University, Dr. Abigail Dym of Providence College, Dr. Enrique Quezada-Llanes of Agnes Scott College, Dr. Markie McBrayer of the University of Idaho, Dr. Steven Sylvester of Utah Valley University and Dr. Prerna Singh of Brown University

Award Citation: Jerry Jie Min (Harvard University) has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 APSA Best Poster Award for his poster, “Left Governments Offer More Tax Incentives to Foreign Investors Through International Treaties.” Chosen from among over 200 eligible posters presented by graduate students and early-career scholars at the APSA Annual Meeting, Min’s poster exemplified excellence across all four of our evaluation criteria: clarity and organization; research quality and rigor; relevance and impact; and presentation and engagement. The poster was exceptionally well-structured, with a clear research question—whether left-leaning governments concede more taxing rights in bilateral tax treaties—framed in a timely and globally significant context. It featured a novel dataset coding over 4,000 treaties, a sophisticated empirical design with transparent, well-explained coding strategies. The poster’s visuals were clean, interpretable, and well-integrated with the narrative. This work offers important theoretical contributions to debates on globalization’s effect on the political left, articulating mechanisms like democratic obfuscation and investment attraction. The committee was especially impressed by the combination of innovative data collection, policy-relevant insight, and clear exposition.

Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the previous year’s APSA Annual Meeting

Recipients: Matt Brundage, University of California, Berkeley

Title: “How Income Segregation Leads Americans to Underestimate Racial Inequality, Reducing Support to Address It”

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Sarah Bruch of the University of Delaware, Dr. Sarah Pralle of Syracuse University, and Dr. Hans Noel of Georgetown University

Award Citation: The 2025 Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award is given to Matt Brundage for “How Income Segregation Leads Americans to Underestimate Racial Inequality, Reducing Support for Addressing It.”

Brundage’s paper argues that white Americans’ perceptions of racial income inequality are based on their local circumstances, and not the inequality at the national level. Local inequality is often less than national inequality, because of income segregation on top of racial segregation. Residents misapply what they observe in low inequality environments to their perceptions of national level. This misapprehension in turn shapes attitudes about policies aimed at reducing inequality at the national level.

The idea that the local environment would affect perceptions is not novel, but it is also not always easy to demonstrate. Brundage systematically measures racial income inequality at both the county and zip code level, and there is considerable variation. For a significant slice of the white population, Black household income in their county is higher than white household income, so respondents in those areas presumably have little direct experience with the inequality that exists nationally. Perceptions of income inequality are lower in low-inequality counties and zip codes. Brundage further shows that this effect is larger where racial groups are more integrated, suggesting that it is exposure to the local context that matters.

Brundage then turns to the effect of these misperceptions, first showing that support for policies aimed at addressing racial inequality is lower for those who underestimate that inequality, and that correcting that underestimate increases support.

The paper is notable for its mix of methods and its thoughtful robustness checks. While an ideal study might randomly assign respondents to communities with varying income inequality, that is not possible. Brundage is clear about the limitations of his observational data, demonstrating the effect across multiple surveys, multiple outcome measures and multiple definitions of local. It is a model for what can be done with the kinds of data that social scientists usually have available.

Heinz L. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review and Perspectives on Politics in the previous calendar year

Recipient (APSR): Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University

Title: “Tilly Goes to Church: The Religious and Medieval Roots of European State Fragmentation.” Volume 118, Issue 1

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Kevin Arceneaux of SciencesPo, Dr. Benjamin Lauderdale of University College London, and Dr. Thad Dunning of University of California, Berkeley

Award Citation: Anna Grzymala-Busse’s “Tilly Goes to Church: The Religious and Medieval Roots of European State Fragmentation” challenges paradigmatic understandings of state development, according to which centralizing European states overcame fragmentation in the early modern era by consolidating strong states through warfare. Critics of this bellicist account have noted several empirical challenges: namely, the fragmentation of Europe was in fact highly persistent; concomitant institutions such as taxation and courts, which were supposedly consequents of mobilization for conflict, arose prior to warfare; and war did not lead uniformly to state consolidation. In this paper, Gzrymala-Busse proposes a new explanation for these discordant patterns. She focuses on a critical but often ignored actor: the Catholic Church. Fragmentation, she argues, was a direct and intended consequence of concerted papal effort, especially starting in the eleventh century, to weaken the authority of those rulers the Church saw as a threat to its autonomy. Thus, where states became relatively consolidated, including medieval England, France, and Spain, this was due to alliances between secular rulers and popes; while fragmentation was a function of Church-secular conflict, as in especially the Holy Roman Empire. Where states consolidated, institutions such as courts, parliaments and administrations arose often in mimicry of the Church, and appeared substantially earlier than required by early modern warfare. The paper leverages rich argumentation and information drawn from a wealth of secondary sources, as well as original data on state boundaries, the timing of institutional innovations, the presences of proxy wars funded by popes, and indicators of secular conflict to test the association between papal conflict and fragmentation. It adds up to a compelling account, underscoring not only the drawbacks for the paradigmatic understanding of European state development but also providing a novel and convincing empirical explanation for patterns of state consolidation and fragmentation.

Recipient (Perspectives): Hannah S. Chapman, University of Oklahoma; Margaret C. Hanson, Middlebury College; Paul DeBell, Fort Lewis College; Valery Dzutsati, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Title: “Under the Veil of Democracy: What Do People Mean When They Say They Support Democracy.” Volume 22, Issue 1 Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Kevin Arceneaux of SciencesPo, Dr. Simone Dietrich of University of Geneva, and Dr. Melissa Michelson of Menlo College

Award Citation: Hannah S. Chapman, Margaret C. Hanson, Valery Dzutsati, and Paul DeBell’s “Under the Veil of Democracy: What Do People Mean When They Say They Support Democracy” delve beyond the usual survey question that asks whether respondents support democracy to ask what conceptualizations of democracy people in various countries are referencing when they answer those questions. In other words, they explore the reality that individuals often have multiple, conflicting associations with the abstract concept of democracy. Using the World Values Survey, they find that greater conceptual complexity predicts greater support. They also find that conceptualizations that emphasize procedures such as elections and the protection of rights and liberties increase the likelihood of support for democracy, while conceptualizations that emphasize redistribution or with military or religious rule decrease support. Their analysis generates multiple findings of interest, such as the fact that gender equality is the measure most strongly considered as an essential feature of democracy, even more so than elections. They construct three substantive conceptualizations of democracy: electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and redistributive democracy, as well as an antidemocratic indicator for those who associate army rule and religious rule with democracy. Finally, looking across time and across countries, they find that the content of democratic conceptualizations affects people’s support for democracy, regardless of the regime type in which respondents live (i.e., even under highly repressive regimes). Building on these findings, the authors note that authoritarian regimes continue to rise around the world, and that there has been substantial democratic backsliding and a global democratic recession that threatens even the most established democracies. A better understanding of what people understand democracy to be, and how the public can be educated to better understand what democracy entails, may increase support for democratic rule and push back against the current global trend toward authoritarianism.

Book Awards

Ralph J. Bunche Award for the best scholarly work in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism

Recipient: Kevin D. Pham, University of Amsterdam

Title: The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization. (Oxford University Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Kanchan Chandra of New York University, Dr. Amy Liu of University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Gbemende E. Johnson of University of Georgia, and Dr. Dan Tichenor of University of Oregon

Award Citation: In The Architects of Dignity, Kevin Pham effectively weaves a complex, compelling, and accessible narrative of how six Vietnamese intellectuals conceptualized dignity in their anticolonial struggle.

This is a stubbornly original work that makes a significant contribution to many fields, including the literature on nationalism, social movements, race and politics, post-colonial theory, and comparative political theory.

From a theoretical standpoint, The Architects of Dignity rebuilds our understanding of the emotional foundations of nationalism by rethinking the role of shame and its role in the assertion of dignity. The book makes four arguments: (1) that dignity is a property of nations and not only individuals or groups (2) that it can be found in the actions and ideas of a nation’s people rather than the circumstances imposed on them (3) that it can therefore be asserted through these actions and ideas rather than being dependent on recognition and (4) shame, when self-consciously and collectively experienced, can be a catalyst in the search for, and the assertion of, collective dignity.

These arguments require the reader to grapple with the possibility that the feelings of shame that emerge in those subjected to the brutality of colonization or other forms of oppression emerge not only from outside but also from within. However, Pham points out that such shame can in fact be self-affirming: it need not lead to violence or scapegoating or the internalization of a sense of inferiority but can instead have a humanizing and dignifying effect.

Also, while focused on Vietnam, Pham’s work speaks to the experiences of victims of colonization in multiple contexts and makes contemporary connections to the social movements that followed events such as the murder of George Floyd in 2020, or sentiments echoed even earlier in the messages of Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey.

From an empirical standpoint, The Architects of Dignity breaks new ground by bringing Vietnam into the study of nationalism and political theory, by drawing on new primary sources in Vietnamese and French, and by showing how the Vietnamese figures it focuses on can be approached, not only as political actors but as theorists whose writings contribute to political and postcolonial theory.

Robert A. Dahl Award for untenured scholar who has produced scholarship of the highest quality on democracy

Recipient: Vicente Valentim, IE University

Title: The Normalization of the Radical Right: A Norms Theory of Political Supply and Demand. (Oxford University Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Rachel Riedl of Cornell University, Dr. Andy Harris of New York University Abu Dhabi, and Dr. Noam Lupu of Vanderbilt University

Award Citation: The Robert A. Dahl Award honors an untenured scholar whose work makes an outstanding contribution to the study of democracy and broadens our understanding of how democracies function. This year, the committee is delighted to present the award to Vicente Valentim for his book, The Normalization of the Radical Right: A Norms Theory of Political Supply and Demand.

In this book, Valentim addresses a pressing question for contemporary democracies: why and how does the radical right become accepted in mainstream politics? Valentim’s central argument is that the recent rise in radical right behavior is not driven by a change in underlying preferences, but by a transformation in social norms that reduces the perceived costs of expressing pre-existing radical right views. Drawing on diverse evidence —including case studies, survey experiments, and elite analyses— Valentim demonstrates how shifts in norms enable private attitudes to manifest publicly, reshaping political behavior at both the citizen and elite levels. This work raises important questions about the emergence of new parties and highlights the crucial role that norm enforcement plays in either stemming or amplifying the spread of non-democratic attitudes.

While this book is the central focus of the award, Valentim’s broader contributions to the study of democracy are equally noteworthy. Since earning his PhD in 2021, he has published more than ten articles that explore elite signaling, public tolerance of authoritarianism, and the dynamics of political norms, reflecting sustained and rigorous engagement with the foundations of democratic life. The Dahl Award celebrates early-career scholars whose research transforms our understanding of democracy, and Vicente Valentim exemplifies this standard. APSA and the award committee congratulate Dr. Valentim for his timely and influential scholarship and anticipate his continued leadership in the field.

Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published during the previous calendar year in the field of US national policy

Recipient: Anthony Grasso, Rutgers University-Camden

Title: Dual Justice: America’s Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime. (The University of Chicago Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Brendan J. Doherty of United States Naval Academy, Dr. Audrey Haynes of University of Georgia, and Dr. Sarah Niebler of Dickinson College

Award Citation: In Dual Justice: America’s Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime, Anthony Grasso explores how the United States came to treat various categories of crime quite differently. Grasso employs a historical institutionalist approach in arguing that powerful political ideas led reformers during the progressive era to develop a carceral approach for some types of crime, while defining corporate crimes as offenses that merited regulatory instead of criminal consequences. In this sweeping study of American political development, Grasso draws upon an impressive amount of historical evidence to shed light on not only the ways in which political ideologies shaped public policy about who should be considered a criminal in the late 1800s, but also on how these unequal dynamics have played out in the subsequent decades and how they shape the contours of our criminal justice and regulatory systems in the current day. Grasso’s rich historical analysis, his clear prose, and the ongoing relevance of the dynamics he incisively analyzes make this important book valuable to scholars, policy makers, and concerned citizens alike who have an interest in how these consequential policies came to be and how they might be reformed going forward.

Benjamin E. Lippincott Award for exceptional work by a living political theorist that is still considered significant after a time span of at least 15 years since the original publication

Recipient: Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins University

Title: Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. (Duke University Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Catherine Zuckert of Notre Dame University, Dr. Roxanne Euben of the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Stefan Dolgert, Brock University

Award Citation: A decade before the Covid-19 pandemic radically reshaped the political landscape in ways that are still unfolding, Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter urged us to recognize the “curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle” that transform our world. In the fifteen years since its publication, Vibrant Matter has itself wrought dramatic and subtle shifts in thinking across an array of disciplines, quietly becoming one of the most influential works of political theory in the twenty-first century. A work of foresight and insight that at once calls for and models a rare humility, this founding text of “New Materialism” seeks to upend two dominant trends in how we think about the nature of the world along with the politics that follow from these tendencies. First, Bennett invites her readers to return to the intuitive anthropomorphic stance of childhood, that moment when the material world appears not as passive “stuff” awaiting a human imprint, but as a cosmos of animated things. Instead of assuming a firm demarcation between life and matter, Bennett’s “horizontal ontology” recalls us to a time in our lives when toys had names and stuffed animals could speak, allowing us to see the vitality inherent within matter that needs no human to activate.

Second, building on this insight, Bennett asks us to consider whether the most dire political problems in our world, from public health to consumerism to climate change, stem from a failure to appreciate that agency is “distributed” across living and nonliving beings, and that metals, garbage, electricity, and hurricanes do not simply impede human designs, but have trajectories and propensities of their own. “How would political responses to public problems change were we to take seriously the vitality of (nonhuman) bodies?” Her answer is at once critical, imaginative, rigorous, disorienting, inspiring and elegant, a tour de force that seeks to re-enchant our myriad relations with the material world and renew our political ecology. Bennett highlights the nonhuman forces at work within the human body that belie its supposed autonomy (e.g. the effect of dietary fats on human moods), and the many ways that the inorganic world outside us is agentic rather than passive (e.g. electricity’s role in the 2003 North American Blackout). Vibrant Matter brings these seemingly abstract matters of ontology to our attention, because democracy cannot address its most serious challenges without radically rethinking the entanglements that traverse and comprise its membership.

The two trends Bennett questions have a common root, the hubris of a kind of humanism that denigrates the capacities of the nonhuman world; elevates human exceptionalism out of fear of its own impotence; and wreaks destruction in its path. In challenging the fantasies of human omnipotence, she draws upon a minoritarian or subaltern tradition in the history of “Western” thought, an anti-anthropocentric pathway she traces as far back as Democritus and Epicurus, and which includes Spinoza, Diderot, Emerson, Thoreau, Darwin, Deleuze, and Guattari. In so doing, Bennett reworks not only our relationship to the “stuff” of the world but also to our dominant intellectual tradition, allowing us to see that the project of human mastery is culturally constructed rather than inherent in our nature, and that we are heir to alternative political ecologies if we engage in more sustained cultural self-reflection.

Vibrant Matter’s remarkable influence spans more than 50academic disciplines and subfields, extending outward from political theory to embrace philosophy, sociology, history, ecology, communication, education, geography, informatics, critical-race, -animal, and -disability studies, and even reaching all the way to (perhaps ironically) management, marketing, and industrial design. That Bennett’s text has left such an unruly wake in its passing is, of course, an example of the vital materiality she celebrates. The book continues to morph as its reception reverberates in unpredictable ways that defy merely human intention, a shapeshifting that will likely only intensify with the increasing prominence of artificial intelligence and algorithmic governance.

Bennett closes with what she calls a “Nicene Creed” for vital materialists: “I believe in one matter-energy, the maker of things seen and unseen…I believe that encounters with lively matter can chasten my fantasies of human mastery, highlight the common materiality of all that is, expose a wider distribution of agency, and reshape the self and its interests.” In a time of pandemic, war, and ecosystem collapse, where our ability to form a public sufficient to these problems is vitiated by the resurgence of post-truth authoritarianism, Vibrant Matter reminds us that our ability to respond to the world is enriched by the acknowledgment that the world, too, responds.

APSA-IPSA Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award for the best first book in any field of political science, showing promise of having substantive impact on the overall discipline

Recipient: Max Gallien, Institute of Development Studies and the International Centre for Tax and Development

Title: Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb at Its Margins. (Columbia University Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Serge Granger of the University of Sherbrooke, Dr. Emilia Palonen of the University of Helsinki, Dr. Gail McElroy of Trinity College Dublin, Dr. José Antonio Cheibub of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Francesca Longo at the University of Catania

Award Citation: The committee selected Professor Max Gallien’s book, Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb at Its Margins. The book reveals how governments tacitly permit illicit cross-border trade and devise informal arrangements to regulate it. Gallien examines the peripheral regions of Morocco and Tunisia where State presence is weak. As the driving force of the cross-border economy, smuggling acts as a job creator and social regulator. Gallien’s theory on smuggling adaptation reveals how groups reorganize to maintain their position in the local economy.

With rich empirical detail, this study innovates in the regulation of cross-border crime in addition to initiating an original reflection on the withdrawal, substitution or maintenance of the State. Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb provides insights in regions where economic inclusion of many livelihoods exist outside the law. The book represents an important contribution to cross-borders studies in the context of greater control, political pressure and securitization.

Sage/CQ Press Award for research-based projects and those that may involve activism that has focused on advancing social justice and addressing inequality and inequity in society

Recipients: Phillip Ayoub, University College London and Kristina Stoeckl, Luiss University

Title: The Global Fight Against LGBTI Rights. (New York University Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Jyl Josephson of Rutgers University – Newark, Dr. Nancy Love of Appalachian State University, and Dr. Dara Strolovitch of Yale University

Award Citation: This is a scholarly intervention in the literature on LGBTQI rights that is on the level of the contributions of scholars such as Barrington Moore and Theda Skocpol. The scale of the work and its implications for international human rights law are remarkable, and we see this work as both an effort to contribute to the movement as well as to scholarship on the movement. Importantly, this work makes gender a throughline in the analysis of international politics and is a very timely book for the current political moment. The co-authors bring a great depth of analysis to both the pro and anti LGBTI rights movements. We note that a further contribution to the social movement literature is the double helix metaphor, which is a really interesting way of characterizing the tension in the movements, and could be useful for analyzing other movements.

Victoria Schuck Award for the best book published on women and politics

Recipient: Cecilia Josefsson, Uppsala University

Title: Defending the Status Quo: On Adaptive Resistance to Electoral Gender Quotas. (Oxford University Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Melody Valdini of Portland State University, Dr. Kristen Williams of Clark University, and Dr. Young-Im Lee of California State University, Sacramento

Award Citation: Cecilia Josefsson’s book, Defending the Status Quo: On Adaptive Resistance to Electoral Gender Quotas, engages the important yet under-studied subject of the strategic resistance to legislative gender quotas by party elites. In it, Josefsson develops a resistance stage framework to better understand techniques of quota resistance and, drawing on feminist institutionalism, offers a unique theoretical perspective on how status quo defenders adapt their resistance strategies at both quota adoption and implementation points. This book makes an important and unique contribution to our understanding of gender quotas, as Josefsson urges us to look beyond contextual factors when analyzing quota failure, and to instead take status quo defenders’ agency and resistance seriously. In addition, Josefsson offers a historical analysis of quota reform attempts and successes in Uruguay, which includes elite interviews with key actors in Uruguayan quota reform as well as process tracing through transcripts of three parliamentary debates. This detailed and precise case analysis includes repeated reform attempts and prolonged conflict between quota advocates and status quo defenders, and is thus an incredibly valuable resource for understanding quota reform and resistance. In sum, while there is substantial existing research on gender quotas, Josefsson’s book offers an entirely new angle on this important subject, thereby providing us with both a better scholarly understanding of the dynamics of gender quota adoption and implementation as well as broader, practical knowledge of how gendered institutional change can occur in the face of strong and persistent resistance.

Merze Tate – Elinor Ostrom Outstanding Book Award for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs

Recipient: Volha Charnysh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Title: Uprooted: How Post-WWII Population Transfers Remade Europe. (Cambridge University Press).

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Keesha Middlemass of Howard University, Dr. Jessica Rich of Marquette University, Dr. Matt Winters of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Steven Heydemann of Smith College and Dr. Thad Kousser of the University of California, San Diego

Award Citation: In Uprooted: How Post-WWII Population Transfers Remade Europe, Volha Charnysh draws on vast and varied sources of evidence to support the strikingly original hypothesis that mass migration flows of diverse populations at first pull communities apart but then, over decades, make those communities significantly more resilient, entrepreneurial, and wealthy. Using data from Poland and West Germany and studying both within-case and across-case variation, Charnysh reexamines existing theories about the consequences of mass migration and ethnic diversity for state building, goods provision, and economic development. She shows that heterogeneous communities –because of the challenges that they have in cooperating– appeal to the state to provide collective and private goods, which helps to build state capacity. Increased state capacity, and the skills and knowledge that come with heterogeneous migrant populations, support long-run economic performance. To conduct the analysis, Charnysh collected and georeferenced original data for over a thousand historical municipalities. She also studied the memoirs of migrants in order to understand narratives of nationhood and boundary-making during the period that she explores. Over the course of the book, she studies outcomes ranging from the formation of volunteer fire brigades to municipal tax rates, to entrepreneurship, to the acceptance of economic reforms, to voting patterns. This provocative and deeply researched book will undoubtedly spur new thinking on ethnic politics, collective action, migration, state capacity, taxation, and other core questions in political science, economics, and sociology.

Career Awards

APSA Distinguished Award for Civic and Community Engagement for significant civic or community engagement activity by a political scientist that merges knowledge and practice and has an impact outside of the profession or the academy

Recipient: Alison Rios Millett McCartney, Towson University

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Richard Battistoni of Providence College, Dr. Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut, Dr. Katherine Robiadek of Xavier University, Dr. Kenneth Meier of American University, and Dr. Zoe Nemerever of Auburn University

Award Citation: The APSA Distinguished Award for Civic and Community Engagement Committee has unanimously selected Alison Rios Millett McCartney as this year’s winner of the Distinguished Award for Civic and Community Engagement. The significant singular contribution that was the basis of Dr. McCartney’s nomination, the Towson University-Baltimore County Public Schools Model United Nations (TU-BCPS Model UN) is impressive on so many different levels. Through the TU-BCPS Model UN, Dr. McCartney works with multiple constituencies at the university and in the public schools: administrators, faculty, staff, and most importantly, students. The work she leads beautifully enhances and complements conventional classroom instruction, for both college and high school students, as the students learn about global issues and the role of citizens in addressing them, as well as important research, speaking, deliberation, and negotiation skills as they train, prepare for, and participate in the Model UN conference each year. The project exemplifies democratic civic and community engagement, as college and high school students deliberate about the role of citizens in democracies, and at the United Nations, as well as in addressing current global dilemmas. Moreover, it is democratically engaging in its inclusivity: it is free to its participants and enrolls a majority of students—at both the college and high school level—who are economically or socially disadvantaged. The committee was particularly impressed by the many “downstream effects” of Dr. McCartney’s work: as college students act as trainers, coaches, and mentors for the high school students, the high school students design outcomes for the nations they represent at the Model UN conference and learn about college readiness and accessibility. And while this award is meant to recognize a singular contribution rather than the cumulative work of a career, this fully institutionalized partnership led by Dr. McCartney is the definition of enduring and cumulative, as the project has been ongoing—and growing—for over 20 years and has served over 5,500 high schoolers and hundreds of Towson University students. Our committee could not imagine a more worthy recipient of the APSA Distinguished Award for Civic and Community Engagement than Alison Rios Millett McCartney.

APSA Community College Faculty Award for excellence in teaching, mentoring, community engagement, governance, and/or research by a community college faculty member in the profession

Recipient: Randy Villegas, College of the Sequoias

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Matt Evans of Northwest Arkansas Community College, Dr. Helen Chang of Hostos Community College, Dr. Christina Sciabarra of Bellevue College, and Dr. Deborah Leonie Toscano of The University of New Orleans

Award Citation: Randy Villegas has made exceptional contributions to the lives of students, faculty, and their broader communities. He organized different events (like Know Your Rights forums) and notable public speakers (like Jim Acosta and Dolores Huerta); and volunteered for a drumline instructor for a local high school and two independent percussion groups, El Ritmo Percussion, and Valley Independent Percussion. He also developed an important teaching guide on immigration politics through an APSA grant. In total, his work reinforces the classroom as a porous category that stretches beyond physical space into the lives, practices, and thoughts of those who inhabit it.

APSA Distinguished Teaching Award for outstanding contributions to undergraduate and graduate teaching political science at two- or four-year institutions

Recipient: Monti Datta, University of Richmond

Award Committee: Dr. Lauren Bell of Randolph-Macon College, Dr. Kenneth Rodman of Colby College, and Dr. Matthew Wilson of the University of South Carolina

Award Citation: This year’s Distinguished Teaching Award recipient is the University of Richmond’s Dr. Monti Datta, in recognition of his outstanding teaching career thus far.

The selection committee was impressed with Dr. Datta’s commitment to his students through his regular and enthusiastic participation in several student-centered programs at the University of Richmond. For example, Dr. Datta regularly teaches a course on human trafficking in Richmond’s Sophomore Scholars in Residence, or SSIR, program, which allows students to take innovative coursework and participate in cutting-edge undergraduate research while being a part of a living and learning community. Dr. Datta’s course on human trafficking pushes his students far outside their comfort zones, requiring them to engage with marginalized communities at home in Richmond, Virginia, and taking them further afield to places like civil rights landmarks in Alabama, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, and the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking in Los Angeles to make real to them just how widespread and pervasive human rights challenges are, even in the United States. One of his former students describes the experience of Dr. Datta’s human trafficking course, saying: “He taught us to think from a variety of perspectives that I would never have considered. The connections that he took advantage of to present the material in different forms to us was something that was very valuable to me and something that I will always remember.”

In addition to the SSRI program, Dr. Datta supports students with financial challenges to study abroad through the University of Richmond’s EnCompass program, and he incorporates support for mental health and well-being in his classes. He begins his classes with breathing exercises, which is part of his effort to “help find ways for students to deal with the growing amount of stress they face.” This practice has led to international recognition for his work to incorporate mindfulness and meditation with classroom pedagogy and has made a tangible impact on the well-being of the students in Dr. Datta’s classroom.

In short, as Dr. Datta’s nominator notes: “Dr. Datta has made a lifetime impact on many of his students…” This was apparent to the selection committee from his regular and consistent efforts to craft thought-provoking and creative experiences both inside and outside the classroom, from his extensive work to mentor undergraduate students—both as they arrive on campus as new students and as they progress through the political science major and become active and engaged researchers in their own right—and from his extensive efforts to provide holistic care for his students.

For all these reasons, the selection committee for the 2025 APSA Distinguished Teaching Award could not be more pleased to recognize Dr. Monti Datta.

APSA-PSA International Partnerships Award for political scientists engaged in collaborative and productive cross-national partnerships that make a significant contribution to the discipline in the areas of teaching, research, or civic engagement

Recipients: Akshay Mangla, University of Oxford; Sandip Sukhtankar, University of Virginia; Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, University of Virginia

Award Committee: Co-Chair: Dr. John Berg of Suffolk University; Co-Chair: Dr. Donna Smith of the Open University, John Craig of the University of Hull, and Karen Beckwith of Case Western Reserve University

Award Citation: The APSA/PSA International Partnership Award Entry has been awarded to Akshay Mangla (Associate Professor of International Business, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford) and Sandip Sukhtankar and Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner (University of Virginia), for ‘Policing the patriarchy – an experimental evaluation of reforms to improve police responsiveness to women in India.’ We were very impressed by the high level of scholarship, the public policy results, the impact on actual practice, and the excellent example of international cooperation with others to create change.

APSA Award for Teaching Innovation for a political scientist who has developed an effective new approach to teaching in the discipline

Recipient: Shamira Gelbman, Wabash College

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Laura Roost of Creighton University, Dr. Charles Turner of California State University, Chico, and Dr. Liz Norell of the University of Mississippi

Award Citation: Dr. Shamira Gelbman’s commitment to centering how students engage with the subject matter appears across her teaching in the variety of assignments and experiential learning embedded throughout her courses. Her innovation in teaching is exemplified in her Caught Up in a Crisis of Victory Project with students in her Politics of the Civil Rights Movement course. The Caught Up in a Crisis of Victory Project started with Dr. Gelbman’s own research at the Library of Congress where she found a program and participant list for a conference of 45 Black leaders in January 1965–after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. From this beginning, and additional archival documents, such as A. Philip Randolph’s calls for meetings of Black leaders to plan a course forward at the risk of losing momentum to the victory of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (or being “caught up in a crisis of victory,” in Randolph’s words), Dr. Gelbman created an in-depth process of preparation, simulation, and debrief that saw students deeply engage with the material. The depth of the activity went beyond most simulations, took students on a deep dive of the material, and helped them see the full complexity of a period in the movement’s history–and understand the full complexity of political movements that occur across people, organizations, and conflicting priorities. This in-depth project is a creative way of engaging students in the political and organizing aspects of the civil rights movement specific to the time period, but also illuminates for students what political processes look like on the part of political advocates. This deep exploration was made possible by the amount of work Dr. Gelbman took to develop materials for the Caught Up in a Crisis of Victory Project. The project connected students to archival work as a source of political science research and learning, and helped students have an engaged stake in learning more. This building and reinforcement of intellectual curiosity first modeled for students what active political science research can look like, and got students engaged in a way that permitted deep learning of political processes. The innovation of this approach illuminated the best of what political science education can do for students as learners and as engaged community members. It is a fantastic example of what political science can offer to undergraduate education broadly.

Michael Brintnall Teaching and Learning Award supports faculty attendance at the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference

Recipient: Intae Choi, University of Missouri

Award Committee: Dr. Terry Gilmour of Midland College, Dr. John Ishiyama of University of North Texas, and Dr. Lanethea Mathews-Schultz of Muhlenberg College

John Gaus Award for a career of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration

Recipient: Aseem Prakash, University of Washington

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. John Bryson of the University of Minnesota, Dr. Shana Gadarian of Syracuse University, and Dr. Stephen Page of the University of Washington

Award Citation: Our committee has met and has unanimously chosen Professor Aseem Prakash for the 2025 John Gaus Award and Lectureship. Professor Prakash has had an outstanding career devoted to “exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.” He is a professor in the department of political science and the Walker Family professor for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. Professor Prakash has published eight scholarly books and over 130 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Google Scholar lists well over 18,000 citations to his work.

His nomination letter says the following about his research: “Professor Prakash is best known for his path-breaking research on the role that private actors, including firms and non-governmental organizations, can play in promoting more stringent environmental standards even in the absence of effective state intervention. John Gaus traced the ‘ecology’ of public administration to the rise of the administrative state. An important implication of the rise of the administrative state, which manages a wide portfolio of activities, is the fiscal, technical, and political demands on state capacity. This has created governance shortfalls. While such shortfalls can cause state failure, they can also create space for the emergence of non-traditional forms of governance. Professor Prakash’s research, especially on environmental issues, has helped to bring ‘environment’ into public administration in a variety of ways, including how businesses and NGOs can fill governance gaps. At the same time, his research has explored how these nontraditional governance mechanisms could lead to issues such as regulatory capture and accountability deficits.

“More recently, has explored different dimensions of both climate mitigation and adaptation… In addition to studying the role of governments and businesses in the policy process, he has written extensively on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), especially about the issue of NGO accountability…”

All this work is of very high quality.

In addition, Professor Prakash has actively contributed to graduate education by chairing 21 PhD committees and served as an active member in 19 other doctoral committees. His advisees have secured faculty positions at very good universities across the globe.

He has made major service contributions to his university and to the world. For example, at the University of Washington he is the founding director of the Center for Environmental Politics, which has over 45 faculty associates and over 60 graduate and undergraduate fellows. At the global level, he founded the Environmental Politics and Governance (EPG) network.

Finally, the committee notes Professor Prakash’s remarkable 180 published op-eds and commentaries in such venues as Forbes.com, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Slate, Huffington Post, The Conversation, and The Hill.

To summarize, Professor Aseem Prakash is an eminent scholar who, like John Gaus, has devoted his career to outstanding scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration. We are pleased to recommend Professor Prakash for this well-deserved award.

Frank J. Goodnow Award to honor the outstanding contributions of individuals, groups, and public and private organizations to both the development of the political science profession and the building of the American Political Science Association

Recipient: Steven Rathgeb Smith, Georgetown University

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Virginia Sapiro of Boston University, Dr. Jennifer Hochschild of Harvard University, and Dr. Gary Segura of the University of California, Los Angeles

Award Citation: Steven Rathgeb Smith has had a distinguished career as a teacher, scholar, and active contributor to his professional communities, but it is his superb work as Executive Director of the American Political Science Association from 2013 to 2024 that made his selection as the 2025 recipient of the Frank J. Goodnow Award easy and obvious.

Managing such a large and complex organization of more than 11,000 members with such wide-ranging and diverse interests stretching across more than 100 countries would be challenging enough. But Steve did not manage the organization through business as usual, whatever that is. He has skillfully and deftly led it in cooperation with the active members of the Association, the changing leadership, and the staff in Washington, DC to make a real difference in the life and future of APSA. These past 11 years have been a challenging time, and Steve bears heavy responsibility for the success with which the Association navigated those challenges and recreated itself to sustain its goals and mission through the future.

Just a few of the highlights of his service include:

• • Steve improved the financial health of the Association, including paying off the mortgage on our Washington headquarters.

• • He led the staff and engaged the Council in strategic planning for the Association, helping to set mission-driven priorities and goals for the future, and encouraging the updating of the Association’s goals, priorities, and procedures.

• • With APSA President David Lake, he led the Association in governance reform that led to the updated by laws and updates in the structure of the Council and the engagement of Council members.

• • He worked with the Ethics Committee to make sure our out-of-date Guide to Professional Ethics was seriously and thoughtfully updated and encouraged drawing more attention to issues of sexual harassment and the need for real solutions.

• • He supported the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the profession and supported staff projects that sought to advance scholars from all backgrounds, professional interests, and scholarly approaches.

• • He expanded the size of the annual meeting by increasing the number of panel slots and creating more opportunities for scholars to present.

• • He encouraged the expansion of teaching and learning resources.

• • He supported professional development and mentoring and participated on numerous professional development panels while he was Executive Director.

• • He served on countless leadership boards, committees across the discipline, and within public administration. He convened a regular meeting with other political science association leaders to discuss common issues, challenges, and solutions.

• • He led the association, with the help of the staff, through the COVID pandemic.

As the three members of the Goodnow Award committee are personally aware, Steve navigated the Association through some very thorny challenges, drawing on his considerable personal and professional understanding of nonprofits, as well as his extraordinary patience, equanimity, discretion, thoughtfulness, commitment to the collective good, and his great listening skills. Each of us felt more confident in our own leadership tasks with Steve walking beside us, and each of us thoroughly enjoyed working with him. It was a personal and professional pleasure to select Steve Smith for this year’s Goodnow Award.

Hubert H. Humphrey Award for notable public service by a political scientist

Recipient: Joseph Nye, Harvard University (posthumously)

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Martha Joynt Kumar of The White House Transition Project, Dr. Danny Hayes of George Washington University, Dr. Lauren Young of the University of California, Davis, Dr. Michael Tesler of the University of California, Irvine, and Dr. Ronald Mitchell of the University of Oregon

Award Citation:

The American Political Science Association 2025 Hubert H. Humphrey Award Committee is pleased to honor Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (1937 – 2025) with its career service award. Nye’s career is distinguished by his stellar government service and academic accomplishments. He was Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus and former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government (1995 to 2004) as well as one of the founders of the school’s Belfer Center. Nye was a Princeton University undergraduate (1958), a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University and earned his PhD in political science from Harvard University (1964). That same year, he became a Harvard professor where he remained until his death in May. Nicholas Burns, former ambassador to China, described Nye as a “servant leader” in the many academic and governmental communities he served. “What really stood out for me was Joe’s commitment to be a servant leader in everything he did.” He was a thought leader in both his teaching and his public service.

Over six decades, Nye had a major impact on national and international institutions through his contributions to scholarship on international relations, national security, and to the practice of foreign policy. His concept of “soft power” brings together his important academic and public service work. Domestic and foreign leaders recognized his concept of “soft power” as a key resource in a country’s foreign policy tool chest. “Power,” he explained in a posthumous published article, “is the ability to get others to do what you want. That can be accomplished by coercion (“sticks”), payment (“carrots”) and attraction (“honey”). The first two methods are forms of hard power; whereas attraction is soft power. Soft power grows out of a country’s culture, its political values, and its foreign policies.” The ultimate strength of soft power can be observed in the fall of the Berlin Wall. “The Berlin Wall did not succumb to an artillery barrage; it was felled by hammers and bulldozers wielded by people who had lost faith in Communism and were drawn to Western Values.” Whether it was in his dealings with foreign leaders or in the classroom, Nye linked the need to promote a country’s values through dialogue with supporting institutions such as the Peace Corps, US Agency for International Development, the Voice of America as well as cultural and student exchange programs. Together, these and similar institutions represent a country’s often unappreciated strengths.

Professor Nye worked in government on a variety of consequential foreign and intelligence policies. Current Japanese Prime Minister, Ishiba Shigeru, pointed to the importance of Nye’s work with foreign leaders. “Professor Nye possessed profound insight into the Japan–US Alliance and made significant contributions to its strengthening through his dialogues and policy recommendations.” Nye’s involvement in the development of the Japanese–American alliance ultimately led in 1996 to the US–Japan Joint Declaration of Security. In his work furthering a strong US–Japanese relationship, Nye worked across the aisle. In this case, he worked with former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage Jr (2001-2005). Additionally, he joined with George H. W. Bush National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and William Perry, Clinton Defense Secretary, to form the nonpartisan Aspen Institute’s Aspen Strategy Group.

He served in national security and foreign policy positions during the Carter and Clinton administrations. In 1977-1979 he served as Deputy to the Undersecretary Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. He also chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In 1993-1994 during the Clinton years, he chaired the National Intelligence Council and served in 1994-1995 as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Among his many public service awards, Nye received the Department of State Distinguished Honor Award (1979) and the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster.

Antony Blinken, former Secretary of State, described Nye’s intellectual impact, “Few contributed as much to our intellectual capital, our understanding of the world and America’s place in it.” His scholarship, including Power and Interdependence (1977, with Robert O. Keohane), Bound to Lead (1990), and Do Morals Matter ? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (2019) shaped scholars’ and policymakers’ thinking about international relations and how leaders’ foreign policy choices influence the likelihood of conflict and cooperation. His scores of books and hundreds of articles have been cited more than any other international relations scholar. In its appreciation, the Kennedy School notes that a recent survey conducted with international relations scholars found Joe Nye “was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy.” For his part, Nye was most satisfied with his work deescalating tensions in a nuclear world. Graham Allison, his long-time colleague and friend, commented: “Joe grew up in the nuclear age under the shadow of the threat of nuclear annihilation of us all. Both in the academy and in government, he was proudest of his opportunities to do whatever he could to minimize that risk.”

Joe Nye’s influence came through the way he combined his teaching with public service, and a positive personal approach to considering issues. Roger Porter, IBM Professor of Business and Government at the Kennedy School and who served in senior White House economic and policy positions, knew Nye well through their years at Harvard. He commented, “Joe Nye’s influence inspired thousands of his students to follow his example of embracing public service as a part of their career.” He did so, Porter continued, “by using illustrations from his service to teach others that lasting achievements are most frequently accomplished by building bridges, finding common ground, and persuading through ideas rather than through threats or force.” Nye’s style, he observed, was “not to disparage others but to help them see possibilities. His calm and measured demeanor contributed to his reputation in the academy and in governments around the world. He earned the trust that extended his influence and the admiration he enjoyed.” Nye’s notion of soft power, Porter commented, “was a product of his heart as well as his mind.”

Both as a scholar and public servant, Joe Nye made a difference in the functioning of institutions in the many positions he served. He developed intellectually complex and morally sophisticated views of international relations and foreign policy that influenced the policies of American presidents, foreign policy officials and foreign leaders. It is a pleasure to award Joe Nye the 2025 Hubert H. Humphrey career service award, despite the sadness of awarding it posthumously.

Carey McWilliams Award for a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics

Recipient: Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Jonathan Ladd of Georgetown University, Dr. Jessica Feezell of the University of New Mexico, and Dr. John Lapinski of the University of Pennsylvania

Award Citation:

The American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award honors “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” This year’s winner is Jamelle Bouie. Since joining the New York Times as a columnist in 2019, Jamelle Bouie has consistently worked to redefine what a newspaper opinion column can be. Newspaper columns can sometimes run the risk of merely trying to improve on (or worse, simply restating) the political arguments being made by one side or the other in the most prominent political debates of the day. Bouie has consistently rejected this model. His columns stand out by offering readers historical and academic context for what is currently happening in the United States. His work connects readers to scholarship in political science, history, sociology, African American studies and other academic disciplines. Like any columnist, not all readers will agree with Bouie’s theses and academic interpretations all of the time. But readers consistently come away much more informed about the history and the major academic research on the topics he covers.

As an example, Bouie columns in recent years have covered the_history_of_political_violence_in_post-Reconstruction_America, John_Dewey_and_the_American_culture_of_democracy, Kevin_Phillips_and_the_history_of_the_“Southern_strategy,” the_concept_of_minority_veto_points_in_US_history_and_in_political_theory, federalism_as_it_has_historically_applied_to_slavery_and_abortion_policy, the_ideology_of_the_leaders_of_the_1963_march_on_Washington, the_history_of_how_US_schools_have_depicted_slavery (see_also), and an_analysis_of_Abraham_Lincoln’s_1838_Lyceum_Address. These are just a few representative examples.

As you can see, these are not typical topics for an op-ed columnist. Bouie is reinventing the role of the newspaper political columnist. He has elevated the form, making it more intellectual, encompassing a longer historical sweep, while keeping it accessible to readers. For these reasons, we are happy to recognize him with the 2025 Carey McWilliams Award.

Charles Merriam Award for an individual whose published work and career represent a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research

Recipient: Mona Lena Krook, Rutgers University

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Kathryn Sikkink of Harvard University, Dr. Elizabeth Saunders of Columbia University, and Dr. John Griffin of Georgetown University

Award Citation:

We are pleased to present Dr. Mona Lena Krook with the 2025 Charles E. Merriam Award, recognizing “a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research.”

Her scholarly work uses a global comparative approach to the study of women, gender, and politics, with emphasis on representation and electoral systems, in particular electoral quotas for women. Krook’s first book, Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide (2009) won the APSA’s Victoria Schuck Award in 2010 for the best book on women and politics. In 2019, it was further honored with a George H. Hallett Award from the APSA Representation and Electoral Systems Section, recognizing a book published in the previous 10 years ago that has made a lasting contribution to the literature on representation and electoral systems. In 2015, she also received the 2015 Emerging Scholar Award from the APSA section on Elections, Public Opinion and Voting. Most recently, Krook has initiated major new research on violence against women, with special attention to attacks, intimidation and harassment of women active in politics, as discussed in her 2020 book, Violence against Women in Politics.

In addition to her scholarly contributions, Professor Krook has used her expertise to advance and inform policy related to women and politics, with special emphasis on gender quotas and violence against women. Krook has been actively involved in helping disseminate her research findings and contributing to the art of government and public policy making throughout the world, by writing policy reports, providing public testimony and training. Krook consults widely, with women’s organizations, national governments/legislatures, and with regional and international organizations. Krook has used her research on gender quotas, for example, to discuss on consult with governments and organizations on the possibility and effectiveness of other forms of electoral quotas, such as disability quotas in politics, as well as other supportive measures to advance the political representation of people with disabilities. The Merriam Award is a particularly fitting tribute to Professor Krook given her extensive contributions to real-world governance. We are delighted to be able to recognize Professor Krook’s outstanding work with this year’s Charles E. Merriam Award.

Ithiel de Sola Pool Award is presented triennially by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor a scholar whose research explores a broad range of fields pursued by Ithiel de Sola Pool; including political theory, political behavior, political communication, science and technology policy, and international affairs

Recipient: Donald Kinder, University of Michigan

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Darrell West of the Brookings Institution, Dr. Jennifer Clark of the University of Houston, and Dr. John Owen of the University of Virginia

Award Citation:

We are delighted to select Professor Donald Kinder for the 2025 Ithiel de Sola Pool Award.

The triennial Pool Award honors a scholar whose research, like that of the late Professor Pool himself, “explores a broad range of fields including political theory, political behavior, political communication, science and technology policy, and international affairs.” Several of this year’s nominees have produced work over many years that meet that criterion. Professor Kinder wins the prize because, in our judgment, his contributions are so broad and deep, so seminal, and so enduring.

He is an established expert in political psychology, elections, public opinion, voting behavior, media and politics, and racial politics. His work has set the standard for theoretically rigorous, politically relevant research in American political behavior.

Kinder’s most wide-reaching intellectual contribution is probably methodological. The use of experimental methods in political psychology has grown massively over in the last several decades. Kinder stands out as one of those early pioneers who nurtured the growth of this methodology in political science. News that Matters (Iyengar and Kinder 1987) and Experimental Foundations of Political Science (Kinder and Palfrey 1993) have played a role equaled by none in establishing the case for experimental research in the field. Importantly, Kinder has made the case for experimental methods to be used alongside, not instead of, other methods (Kinder 2011), and he has argued for the intentional crafting of experiments that shed light upon contemporary politics (Kinder 2007). Anyone doing experiments in political psychology, political communication, and political behavior owes a tremendous intellectual debt to Donald Kinder, who paved the way for this innovative method to become a standard tool in a behavioralist’s methodological toolkit.

Substantively, Kinder has contributed to knowledge across a range of important topics. Political communication is certainly one. News that Matters was Kinder’s first book, co- authored with Shanto Iyengar, helped revive what was a moribund political science literature on media effects and political communication. Their framework for investigating media effects (priming, agenda-setting, and framing) has become a standard one for the field and has inspired numerous investigations into the ways in which the media and political campaigns affect citizens. News that Matters received the 2004 Converse Book Award from EPOVB and the 2009 AAPOR Book Award, was republished as an updated edition in 2010, and has been cited more than 2,500 times, according to Google Scholar. Kinder’s impact on political communication and the study of it continue to this day.

Kinder has also established a lasting influence on the study of intergroup relations. He published important and influential work on symbolic racism and racial resentment, from his early work with David Sears (Sears and Kinder 1971; Kinder and Sears 1981; Sears and Kinder 1985) to his work with Lynn Sanders (Kinder and Sanders 1990, 1996), to his book with Allison Dale-Riddle on the 2008 election, to his current project, which confronts Gunnar Myrdal’s prediction that racial prejudice would dissipate in American society and the American Creed would prevail (e.g., Kinder and Drake 2009). This corpus of work argues for the role of symbolic racism/racial resentment in policy opinions and candidate evaluations. Moreover, Kinder has continued to contribute to the intellectual project, as his work addresses the intersection of race and contemporary politics (Kinder and Dale-Riddle 2012; Kinder and Chudy 2016) as well as innovations in psychological theory and measurement (Kinder and Ryan 2017). Kinder has also broadened his engagement with intergroup relations beyond race, as evidenced in his book and articles with Kam (Kinder and Kam 2009; Kam and Kinder 2007, 2013) on ethnocentrism and his ongoing collaboration on gender with Nancy Burns (Burns et al. 2016).

In addition, we also note contributions in many other domains. Consider Kinder’s work on economic voting, particularly in the development of the concept of sociotropic voting Kinder and Kiewiet 1979, 1981; Kinder and Mebane 1983). This concept has become the standard account of economic voting in elections, both in the United States and abroad. Kinder’s work on political person perception (Kinder 1978; Kinder et al. 1980; Abelson et al. 1982) has established the accepted typology of how individuals perceive and evaluate political candidates. And finally, consider Kinder’s work on belief systems, encapsulated most recently in his book with Kalmoe (Kinder and Kalmoe 2017) and also on display in a number of masterfully crafted review pieces including “Diversity and complexity in American public opinion” (1983 Political Science: The State of the Discipline), “Public opinion and political action” (1985 Handbook of Social Psychology), “Communication and opinion” (1998 Annual Review of Political Science), “Opinion and action in the realm of politics” (1998 Handbook of Social Psychology), and “Communication and politics” (2003 Handbook of Political Psychology).

These are only some of the many scholarly contributions Kinder has made thus far in his career. We say “thus far” intentionally, as he is still working away, with at least two book manuscripts currently in progress, even after moving to emeritus status. In addition to this significant body of research, Kinder has contributed to the discipline at large. He served on the American National Election Studies Board of Overseers for many years and took on the duty of Co-Principal Investigator of the ANES for 13 years. Kinder has been a generous and supportive mentor to a long list of successful and diverse graduate students, many of whom have had the pleasure and privilege of co-authoring with him.

In a field of strong nominees, Professor Donald Kinder stood out. We join a large number of scholars in gratitude to him for his many profound contributions to our discipline.

Barbara Sinclair Lecture for achievement in promoting the understanding of the US Congress and legislative politics

Recipient: Matthew Green, The Catholic University of America

Award Committee: Co-chair: Dr. Frances Lee of Princeton University, Co-Chair: Dr. Ruth Bloch Rubin of the University of Chicago, Dr. Adam Ramey of New York University Abu Dhabi, Ann Burke of the American Political Science Association, and Ronald Elving of American University

Award Citation:

Professor Green has a distinct knack for bringing scholarly rigor to topics of contemporary importance. With his many contributions to the study of parties and leaders in Congress, it is especially appropriate to recognize Professor Green with an award honoring the legacy of Barbara Sinclair, who made so many vital contributions of her own on these topics.

In addition to his academic work, Professor Green has made a particular point to engage with legislative practitioners and the public. He is a frequent commentator in prominent media outlets like as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and C-SPAN. He is also a staff writer for Mischiefs of Faction, a Substack newsletter on political parties.

APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Frances E. Lee, Ruth Bloch Rubin, Adam Ramey, Ann Burke and Ron Elving.

Hanes Walton Jr. Career Award honors a political scientist whose lifetime of distinguished scholarship has made significant contributions to our understanding of racial and ethnic politics and illuminates the conditions under which diversity and intergroup tolerance thrive in democratic societies

Recipient: Katherine Tate, Brown University

Award Committee: Chair: Dr. Danielle Clealand of the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Michael Minta of University of Minnesota, Dr. Camille Burge of Villanova University, and Dr. Ray Block of Pennsylvania State University

Award Citation:

Professor Tate is the country’s leading scholar on African Americans in the US Congress and Black Public Opinion and Political Behavior. Her career and publications have expanded the discipline’s understanding of race and racial politics, especially in the United States. Professor Tate’s pioneering book, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections (Harvard University Press, 1993) is a classic examination of Black voter behavior after the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Professor Tate was a co-principal investigator on the landmark 1988 and 1996 National Black Election Survey, one of the nation’s most comprehensive public opinion polls of Black Voters in the United States. She also co-authored the fourth edition of African Americans and the American Political System with Lucius Barker and Mack Jones.

Dr. Tate’s work represents pathbreaking books that examine the evolution and maturation of Black politics in the US congress. From Protest to Politics and Black Faces in the Mirror, African Americans and Their Representatives in the US Congress have long been considered part of the canon in political science and especially in race and ethnicity politics. These two works in particular have been cited widely: From Protest to Politics has nearly 1400 citations and Black Face in the Mirror has nearly 1000.

Dr. Tate’s contribution to the field is further represented by her 2023 Barbara Sinclair Legacy Award bestowed by APSA Legislative Studies Section. The Sinclair Award honors the work of a scholar or set of scholars who have contributed to a lifetime of significant scholarship to the study of legislative politics. Professor Tate is quite deserving of this award and has followed in the legacy of Hanes Walton, Jr. We award Dr. Tate this honor with great enthusiasm.