Gabriel A. Almond Award ($750)

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

Award Committee: David S. Brown, University of Colorado; Carol J. Hager, Bryn Mawr College, chair; and Kaare Strom, University of California, San Diego.

Recipient: Emmanuel J. Teitelbaum, George Washington University

Dissertation: “Mobilizing Restraint: Unions and Politics of Economic Development in South Asia”

Dissertation Chairs: Ronald Herring, Cornell University

Citation: We are very pleased to present the Gabriel A. Almond Award for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics completed in 2006 and 2007 to Emmanuel J. Teitelbaum for “Mobilizing Restraint: Unions and the Politics of Economic Development in South Asia.” Teitelbaum makes an original contribution on an issue of unquestionable importance in the political economy of development. His thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that labor repression is necessary for successful economic development. He examines the relationship between political incorporation and union behavior in several South Asian cases. He finds that unions that are affiliated with major political parties are more restrained in their behavior than non-affiliated unions. They respond to the effects of market competitions by discouraging protest and encouraging institutionalized forms of grievance resolution. Non-affiliated unions, on the other hand, tend to favor greater militancy against employers and more extreme and violent forms of protest. Teitelbaum concludes that voluntary party-union ties may facilitate economic reform and over time stabilize labor-capital relations in what one of his advisors calls “a virtuous spiral ending in social peace.” This finding could have a profound effect on the way we think about issues of participation and economic reform in the developing world.

The members of the award committee are particularly impressed with Teitelbaum's research design, which highlights his impressive quantitative and qualitative skills. Teitelbaum successfully combines game-theoretic analysis with multi-method empirical research in four regions of South Asia: Sri Lanka and the Indian states of Maharshtra, Kerala and West Bengal. As his nominating letter notes, these data were largely unavailable from any other source; thus, Teitelbaum is making an original contribution to knowledge. The combination of sophisticated theoretical argument and expertly executed empirical analysis makes this dissertation stand out. Teitelbaum has made us think in a new way about a crucially important issue in comparative politics. He is a most deserving recipient of the Almond Award.

William Anderson Award ($750)

For the best doctoral dissertation completed and accepted in 2005 or 2006 in the general field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, or state and local politics.

Award Committee: Michael Berkman, Pennsylvania State University; Thomas M. Carsey, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, chair; and David L. Leal, University of Texas, Austin

Recipient: Ronald S. Smith, Hanover College

Dissertation: “Discerning Differences in Social Capital”

Dissertation Chair: Robert Huckfeldt, Indiana University

Citation: We are pleased to award the 2007 William Anderson award for the best dissertation in the area of intergovernmental relations, federalism, state, or local politics to Ronald S. Smith. Smith's dissertation is a well-written study of how local context, including local neighborhood associations and other institutions, shape political participation. Smith's work addresses a number of empirical and theoretical literatures revolving around the question of participation, including how both institutional and social/contextual influences shape citizen behavior. Smith weaves together a number of interesting theoretical threads from the public choice literature to de Tocquville and Madison with modern scholarship on social capital to provide a well-rounded picture of how the local environment influences participation. Smith goes a step further, however, by examining how the geographic concentration of a person's larger social network conditions the impact of that network on that person's subsequent political behavior. Similarly, the institutional arrangements within neighborhood associations affect how individuals living within them behave. Thus, Smith does not pit institutional, geographic, and social/contextual explanations against each other, but rather integrates these factors into a more complete and nuanced study of how the local environment operates on those living there. While Smith's dissertation will interest scholars of sub-national, particularly local, politics, scholars interested in political participation and the role of social capital more broadly will be equally drawn to this work.

Edward S. Corwin Award ($750)

Awarded for the best dissertation completed in the field of public law.

Award Committee: Matthew C. McCubbins, University of California, San Diego, chair; Nancy S. Mandel, Institute of International Trade Law; and Isaac Unah, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Recipient: Maria Dimitrova Popova, Harvard University

Dissertation: “Judicial Independence and Political Competition: Electoral and Defamation Disputes in Russia and Ukraine”

Dissertation Chair: Timothy Colton, Harvard University

Citation: The committee received many outstanding nominations this year. Several of those nominated applied advanced statistical analyses to novel data sets on judicial decisions. Several other nominations explored classic questions regarding judicial independence, the rule of law and a separation of powers. Many of the nominees studied the issues of the rule of law, justice and judicial independence in countries other than the United States, implicitly extending the legacy of Edward S. Corwin to countries outside the Anglo American legal tradition.

In “Judicial Independence and Political Competition: Electoral and Defamation Disputes in Russia and Ukraine,” Maria Dimitrova Popova shows that judicial independence and the rule of law is a product of political necessity not institutional design. In particular, Popova shows that in unconsolidated democracies, political competition actually hinders judicial independence. She shows that weak incumbents derive greater benefit from dependent courts and are thus more likely to politicize the judiciary than are strong incumbents. Dr. Popova tests this proposition by examining trial win-rates, at various trial levels, of plaintiffs according to their political affiliations. She uses her multi-stage win-rates to test her proposition in two similar cases, Russia and the Ukraine. She looks across different plaintiff groups in both countries sorted by institutional and party affiliation and shows that these win-rates, for a class of cases, are more responsive to the preferences of incumbent politicians in the Ukraine than in Russia. The central irony of Dr. Popova finding is that corruption in an unconsolidated democracy can actually lead to the conditions for judicial independence, questioning the very basic relationship, so often assumed, between judicial independence and the rule of law.

Harold D. Lasswell Award ($1,000)

Awarded for best dissertation in the field of policy studies.

Award Committee: Bruce E. Cain, University of California, Berkeley, chair; Cheryl M. Miller, University of Maryland Baltimore County; and Mark Carl Rom, Georgetown University

Recipient: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Georgetown University and The Brookings Institution

Dissertation: “Shooting Up: The Impact of Illicit Economies on Military Conflict”

Dissertation Chair: Kenneth A. Oye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citation: Vanda Felbab-Brown has written a nuanced, thoughtful study of the role that illicit economies play in sustaining military conflicts. The conventional view holds that the nexus between insurgencies and these illicit economies must be broken in order to deny belligerents the critical resources that sustain their rebellion. Dr. Felbab-Brown argues that one of the many problems with the conventional wisdom is that it ignores the political capitol that insurgents gain when attempts to suppress the illicit economies alienate farmers. Drawing on observations from three countries—Peru, Columbia, and Afghanistan—Dr. Felbab-Brown's study reveals the futility of the current strategy and recommends a new approach that exploits the inherent tensions between belligerents and those who traffic in illegal markets. This dissertation brilliantly demonstrates how a skilled comparative and historical study can better inform military policy-making.

Helen Dwight Reid Award ($750)

For the best doctoral dissertation completed and accepted in the previous two years (2005 or 2006) in the field of international relations, law, and politics.

Award Committee: Michael N. Barnett, chair, University of Minnesota; Lars-Erik Cederman, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH); Errol A. Henderson, Pennsylvania State University

Recipient: Jason M.K. Lyall, Princeton University

Dissertation: “Paths of Ruin: Why Revisionist States Arise and Die in World Politics”

Dissertation Chair: Peter Katzenstein, Cornell University

Citation: We have selected Jason Lyall (PhD, Cornell University) as the winner of this year's Helen Dwight Reid Award. His dissertation, Paths to Ruin, provides a fresh exploration of a longstanding debate: how to explain the causes and consequences of revisionist states. Whereas many existing accounts, largely deriving from a realist framework, focus on opportunities generated by the international distribution of power, Lyall argues that the roots of revisionism lie in the regime's search for domestic legitimacy and its appropriation of a particular collective identity. In order to try and legitimate its rule, the regime will engage in an “identity project,” that is, attempt to fix a particular identity portfolio and identify itself with that conception. Once the regime casts its lot with a particular construction of the collective identity, however, it will soon discover that its own latitude for action will be severely circumscribed. Importantly, not all collective identities will increase the probability that the regime will engage in a risky strategy of revisionism. Lyall argues that collective identities vary along two dimensions—exclusivity, the extent to which the regime mobilizes against or scapegoats foreign and domestic enemies, and coherence, the extent to which different constituent elements of the identity have an integrity. Those regimes that attempt to legitimate their regimes through identity projects that are both exclusive and incoherent will be more likely to engage in revisionist behavior—and more likely to suffer the costs of risky action. A principal reason why an exclusivist identity project that has different fragments will increase the chances of risky and self-destructive behavior is because it: increases the degree of domestic counter mobilization; intensifies the security dilemma; and ties regime's political fortunes to an exclusivist identity, thus raising the political costs if it retreats or compromises in the face of international opposition. The state's security is sacrificed for regime stability.

In order to test the strength and robustness of his argument, Lyall uses two paired comparisons that control for the variables favored by neorealist and rationalist explanations. Drawing from a survey of revisionist and status quo states since 1815, Lyall offers two pair-wise comparisons: adopting the method of agreement, he compares two revisionist states, France (1848–71) and Pakistan (1947–71); and using the method of difference he examines the divergent cases of France (1816–48) and the Soviet Union (1917–53). The bulk of the empirical argument, though, focuses on postcommunist Russia, which neorealist theories suggest would be a prime candidate for revisionism but nevertheless has bounced between status quo and revisionist status. Imaginatively and systematically using computer-aided content analysis to measure the consistency and content of the Russia governments' identity project, Lyall explores the contested nature of Russia's search for a post-communist identity.

This ambitious dissertation makes several important contributions to the fields of international relations theory and international security. It provides an important alternative explanation for our understanding of the causes of revisionist states. It demonstrates that the strategic appropriation and manipulation of identity by government leaders can have lasting and disastrous consequences. It identifies the causal mechanisms and the conditions under which we are more likely to see a relationship between regime, collective identity, revisionism, and failure. The argument nicely synthesizes elements of constructivist and rationalist international relations theory, and thus shows the possibility and benefits of theoretical eclecticism, and international relations and comparative politics, and thus reinforces the inclination to build theories from these two domains.

It is clearly written; the logic of the argument is nicely laid out and the cases are nicely tied to the theoretical framework. It utilizes new methods for assessing debates over collective identity, and multiple methods, including case methods, statistical analysis, and content analysis, for testing the argument. In short, Lyall has produced a dissertation of high distinction that successfully tackles a big and important question, that makes a valuable contribution to various literatures, and that demonstrates considerable originality in theory development and testing.

Runner Up: Susan Hyde, Yale University Title: “Observing Norms: Explaining the Causes and Consequences of Internationally Monitored Elections” PhD Granting Institution: University of California, San Diego Dissertation Chair: David Lake, University of California, San Diego

E. E. Schattschneider Award ($750)

Awarded for the best doctoral dissertation submitted in calendar years 2005 and 2006 in the field of American government and politics.

Award Committee: Amy Fried, University of Maine; Byron Shafer, chair, University of Wisconsin; and Laura Stoker, University of California.

Recipient: Michael M. Franz, Bowdoin College

Dissertation: “Choices and Changes: Interest Groups in the Electoral Process”

Dissertation Chair: Kenneth Goldstein, University of Wisconsin

Citation: We are delighted to award the 2007 E.E. Schattschneider Prize to Michael M. Franz for “Choices and Changes: Interest Groups in the Electoral Process.” In the dissertation, Franz tackles a major (and recurrently controversial) aspect of American politics, the raising and spending of campaign cash. Why, he asks specifically, was there an unprecedented surge in unregulated campaign expenditures in the 1990s, even though the statutes governing such spending had been unchanged since the 1970s? Under what conditions, he asks generally, do interest groups adopt or change spending strategies? In pursuit of answers, Franz mobilizes an impressive array of cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets, including a major one that is entirely new. As a result, he has things to say about both strategy and structure in American politics.

Building on the files of the Federal Election Commission—and anyone who has ever worked with these data knows how much further transformation is required to make them speak accurately to political questions—Franz argues that interest groups changed electioneering tactics as the ideological and partisan make-up of Congress changed, as they learned via FEC advisory opinions just what did and did not amount to a legal violation, and as the ability to shape election outcomes using “hard” money declined. As Congress became more ideologically polarized, as party control of each chamber increasingly became seen as “up for grabs,” as FEC advisory opinions surged, and as campaigns costs and inflation made hard-money contributions less effective tools, interest groups tactics shifted in clear and important ways.

Franz's dissertation contains a wealth of descriptive findings. For example, he confirms that the Political Action Committees that are major players in one area of campaign finance, as with so-called “hard” money, tend to be major players in the others, as with “soft” money, and indeed that they tend to move quickly into whole new areas, like the “527” organizations of 2004.

More strategically, Franz shows that most such organizations tend to be drawn, in their contributions, to more competitive rather than less competitive races. In general, money follows the real level of partisan competition. Though not for every group: there are organized interests for whom the continuity of incumbents, of whichever party, is more important than the fate even of attractive challengers. Thus the specific nature of the policy arena at issue also matters.

Lastly, Franz demonstrates a remarkable pattern of organized giving, in which strategic incentives end up by creating a different overall structure to American politics. In this, as groups have shifted, in a closely divided partisan world, from bipartisan to single-party patterns of giving, they have simultaneously sharpened the partisanship and polarization that originally began to elicit this pattern of giving. In the process, a strategic response has become instead a crucial underpinning to the current political order.

Along the way, the creation of an essentially new dataset, involving the rulings, court challenges, but especially advisory opinions of the FEC—and the reactions of Political Action Committees to them—permit a systematic picture of a very different aspect of the relationship between PACs and politics, in which the PACs both respond to FEC rules but also labor to shape them, and then react quickly to any reshaping.

We think that the combination is the best available examination of organized interests in the electoral process, and richly deserves the Schattschneider Prize for 2007.

Leo Strauss Award ($750)

For the best dissertation completed and accepted during 2005 or 2006 in the field of political philosophy.

Award Committee: Bonnie Honig, Northwestern University; Andrew Sabl, Harvard University; and John E. Seery, chair, Pomona College.

Recipient: Lars Tønder, The Johns Hopkins University

Dissertation: “Experiences of tolerance: Immanence, transcendence, hilaritus”

Dissertation Chair: William E. Connolly, The Johns Hopkins University

Citation: Lars Tønder's dissertation explores the ethical dispositions that inform the institutional practices of toleration under democratic liberalism. Tønder stresses a link that, he argues, current theories efface: toleration as a policy or principle versus tolerance as an experience linked to suffering and pain. For Tønder, toleration is rendered potentially uncomfortable due to these links with tolerance. Drawing upon Merleau-Ponty's notion of bodily sense-perception, Tønder proposes a phenomenological account of the experience of tolerance. He turns to Spinoza's conception of hilaritas as one way of extending or deepening political, constitutional, and religious practices of tolerance beyond formal proceduralism. The committee recognized the dissertation's innovative contribution and its potential for turning the literature on liberal tolerance in a new direction.

Leonard D. White Award ($750)

For the best doctoral dissertation completed and accepted in 2005 or 2006 in the field of public administration.

Award Committee: Mark Cassell, Kent State University, chair; Robert C. Lieberman, Columbia University; and Marissa Martino Golden, Bryn Mawr College

Recipient: Daniel W. Gingerich, Harvard University

Dissertation: “Corruption in General Equilibrium: Political Institutions and Bureaucratic Performance in South America”

Dissertation Chair: Jorge Dominguez, Harvard University

Citation: Daniel Gingerich's dissertation, “Corruption in General Equilibrium: Political Institutions and Bureaucratic Performance in South America,” stood out from a strong field in terms of its breadth and richness. In its theoretical structure, empirical methods, and data collection it is a remarkably sophisticated piece of work that displays a level of scholarly maturity not often evident in a dissertation.

In this work, Gingerich explores the link between the design of democratic institutions and political corruption in the bureaucracies of three South American countries. Typical accounts of corruption portray it as a cost of the principal-agent relations between political officials (the principals) and civil servants (the agents). These approaches generally predict that as democratic political institutions take hold, corruption among civil servants should decline because elections place limits on the opportunistic, self-seeking behavior of both elected officials and bureaucrats. But such a clear-cut empirical link between democracy and declining corruption has been hard to find.

Gingerich argues, however, that not all democracies are alike in their propensity to dampen political corruption. He shows that an important distinction between electoral systems accounts for variation in the level of corruption in democratic systems. In open-list systems, in which voters choose individual candidates from a party list system, the potential demand for corruption is relatively high because of the need for electoral resources by individual candidates; these individual candidates, however, are relatively less able to extract resources from state officials because they have little to offer civil servants in return. By contrast, in closed-list systems, in which voters choose among lists of candidates selected by party leaders, parties are more able to deliver career-enhancing benefits to politically-minded civil servants, thus loosening the potential flow of corruption. Gingerich derives this relationship through a general-equilibrium model of political corruption, in which the electoral and bureaucratic arenas are linked by a network of incentives and behavioral feedback effects, so that institutional change in one arena can affect the behavior of actors in the other. He shows this relationship empirically through a careful study of corruption in the public sectors of Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile.

In essence, what Gingerich has done in this work is to “bring bureaucracy back in” to the study of the state in Latin America. He argues that we cannot understand electoral reforms or their impact without acknowledging the role played by civil servants as the on-the-ground actors who either behave corruptly or professionally. Based on both a unique empirical data set and the application of a variety of formal methods, Gingerich makes a convincing case that the type of electoral reform enacted affects the amount of corruption observed among career civil servants. He also finds that the degree of professionalism in the bureaucracy varies not only across countries but across agencies within the same country. Thus the nature of electoral institutions influences not only the behavior of parties and politicians, as previous scholars have observed, but also the development (or nondevelopment, as the case may be) of Weberian bureaucracies and professional as opposed to corrupt bureaucrats. Moreover, New Public Management reforms seem to have the opposite effect—without other types of institutional reforms they may make state bureaucracies more, not less, susceptible to corruption.

This dissertation thus has implications beyond the Latin American context. It has implications both for newly developing democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and for adherents of the New Public Management everywhere, and it makes a strong case for the importance of the link between bureaucracy and political processes and institutions.

Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award ($750)

The Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award is awarded annually for the best paper presented at the previous year's annual meeting. Supported by Pi Sigma Alpha.

Award Committee: Thomas Hammond, Michigan State University, Chair; Joanne Gowa, Princeton University; and Gary M. Segura, University of Washington

Co-Recipients: Dennis Chong with James Druckman, Northwestern University

Title: “Democratic Competition and Public Opinion”

Citation: In their original, insightful, and comprehensive effort, Professors Chong and Druckman use experimental data collected from two disparate populations to examine the effects of elite issue framing on mass public opinion.

Since the mid 1980s, but echoing concerns Walter Lippmann and others expressed long ago, political scientists have grown increasingly concerned that asymmetries in political communication between elites and masses undermine democracy. In this view, political elites offer frames that shape the understanding of policy issues and influence the preferences of the mass public. Thus, political elites may drive mass opinion.

The authors ask whether competition among different frames can attenuate the impact of any single frame, as well as whether it is the persuasive content of the frame itself or merely its repetition that exerts a stronger effect on the views of the mass public. To examine these issues, the authors devised an experiment that manipulates the impact of frame content, strength, frequency, and the existence of alternative frames.

Their results are both impressive and provocative. Using two distinct issues—urban growth regulation and extremist or hate-group protests—the paper shows that frame strength matters more than its repetition. Most importantly, the paper shows that if political elites are competing with each other, mass opinion is not easily manipulated. There appear to be important constraints on the success of elite framing efforts: subjects did not change their views easily, they seldom responded to weak frames, and they responded to competing strong frames deliberately and carefully. In sum, competition clearly diluted the framing effect, thereby preserving an independent role for the mass public in democratic deliberation.

This outstanding paper is a wonderful model of how experimental research can illuminate our understanding of the age-old problem of the extent to which political elites can control or manipulate mass behavior.

Co-Recipients: Kenneth Scheve, Yale University with David Stasavage, New York University Title: “Political Institutions, Partisanship, and Inequality in the Long Run”

Citation: In their provocative and extremely well-written paper, Professors Scheve and Stasavage use newly-collected data on the income share of the top 10 percent of the population in 13 advanced industrialized countries to test conventional wisdom about the determinants of income inequality.

The authors argue persuasively that the existing literature rests on tenuous foundations. Prominent among its findings are that centralized systems of wage bargaining, leftist governments, and proportional-representation systems depress inequalities in the distribution of income. As the authors point out, however, these studies typically examine data that begin only in the early 1970s. Thus, they cannot adequately test whether institutional changes actually led to changes in the distribution of income.

The authors use new data about income inequality that begin in 1900. They straightforwardly explain that these data only allow them to construct an indicator of the income share of the top 10 percent of the population and that they cannot separate out wage and capital income for all countries. They are also, however, careful to show that limiting their analyses to the years since 1970 produces results that are very similar to those in the existing literature.

In sharp contrast to that literature, however, the authors show that a marked downward trend in income inequality actually began after the Great Depression. They also show that the introduction of more centralized wage bargaining in several countries had no significant effect on inequality over the long run. The same is true of government partisanship and proportional-representation systems.

This paper is a crystal-clear analysis of a very important issue that has been long debated in the comparative politics literature. In bringing historical data to bear on a question of great contemporary relevance, it reverses the conventional wisdom about the causes of inequality. It is a model of social science research that promises to begin a highly productive debate about whether we can only understand income inequality if we are willing to rethink its most basic causes.

Heinz Eulau Award ($750)

The Heinz Eulau Award is for the best article published in the American Political Science Review and Perspectives on Politics during the previous calendar year. Two Eulau Awards are made, one for each journal.

Award Committee: John D. Huber, chair; Louise K. Comfort, University of Pittsburgh; James D. Fearon, Stanford University, Bernard N. Grofman, University of California, Irvine; and Stathis N. Kalyvas, Yale University; Bernard N. Grofman, University of California, Irvine and Stathis N. Kalyvas, Yale University

Co-Recipient: Jonas Pontusson, Princeton University

Title: “The American Welfare State in Comparative Perspective: Reflections on Alberto Alesina and Edward L. Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe,” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 4, no. 2 (June 2006).

Citation: Jonas Pontusson's critical essay on Alberto Alesina and Edward L. Glaeser's Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Europe, while ostensibly an extended book review, is in fact a brilliant exposition on how comparative historical analysis can shape our understanding of long standing issues such as claims about the nature and causes of U.S. exceptionalism. Drawing on quantitative data, along with outstanding command of the historical terrain, Pontusson uses his essay to question core arguments in the literature about how cross-national differences in welfare state efforts are explained by factors such as electoral laws, the strength of socialist parties, and, in the U.S., by additional factors such as large geographic area, immunity from foreign occupation, and ethnic heterogeneity. By highlighting historical differences in relative levels of welfare state efforts, he forces scholars to think carefully about the micro-foundations of their arguments. He also makes a powerful argument for the careful consideration of historical dynamics in understanding the politics of the welfare state, and about the need to more carefully disentangle complex threads of causality and interaction effects by identifying mechanisms through which outcomes are produced.

Co-Recipients: Daron Acemoglu, MIT and James A. Robinson, Harvard University Title: “Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective,” American Political Science Review, vol. 100, no. 1 (February 2006).

Citation: Why do some political elites adopt policies that seem clearly designed to impede economic growth? For years, political scientists have answered this question by arguing that political elites often pursue bad economic policies in order to stay in power. Acemoglu and Robinson provide a fresh perspective on this argument in at least two important respects.

First, Acemoglu and Robinson provide a novel perspective on the question itself by highlighting a “Coasian puzzle” that is inherent to the claim that politicians pursue bad economic policy to stay in power. Coase famously argues that any social investment that increases overall societal well-being will be carried out if nothing prevents the parties involved from bargaining and making side payments over the distribution of the gains. Or, put differently, political elites should adopt growth-oriented reforms because doing so will allow them to reap the benefits of a bigger tax base. That they do not implies an interesting failure of the Coase logic, one that demands a theoretical response.

Second, Acemoglu and Robinson's theory demonstrates how a commitment problem inherent to political competition can help explain incentives to block policy innovation. Economic reforms can be risky because they often have the unintended consequence of empowering new groups in society, thereby putting at risk the political survival of incumbent elites. If the groups that are so empowered could commit not to punish or replace the incumbent elites, there would be no problem. But such commitment is impossible, and so incumbent politicians may block reforms that risk increasing the power of potential opponents. The nature of political competition is therefore crucial to understanding the severity of the commitment problem. At the extremes, when elites are either highly vulnerable or highly invulnerable to replacement, policy innovations will pose the least risk. But at intermediate levels of competition, blocking innovation will often be sufficient to ensure survival. Acemoglu and Robinson's theory therefore provides clear theoretical predictions about when politics is most likely to impede economic development.

This article should become a new point of departure in theorizing and empirical research on the politics of economic development. And given the deep and seemingly intractable problem of uneven prosperity around the world, the article should be of broad interest to all political scientists concerned about growing inequalities between nations.

Ralph J. Bunche Award ($1,000)

The Ralph J. Bunche Award is for the best scholarly work in political science published in the previous calendar year that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism.

Award Committee: Manuel Avalos, Arizona State University, West Campus, chair; John G. Bretting, University of Texas, El Paso; Carol M. Swain, Vanderbilt University

Co-Recipients: Fredrick C. Harris, Columbia University and Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, University of Rochester, with Brian D. McKenzie, Texas A&M University

Title: Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (Cambridge, 2006)

Citation: Countervailing Forces is a sophisticated longitudinal study of black political activism during the post-civil rights era. The succinct and easily readable book combines a rich set of historical and empirical analyses, interpreted through the eyes of cultural insiders, to produce a major contribution to the study of black politics and to American politics more broadly conceptualized. The authors demonstrate the complex interplay between economics and the ability of African Americans to effectively engage in the kinds of political and civic activities that give power and voice to historically disenfranchised groups.

Co-Recipient: Mark Q. Sawyer, University of California, Los Angeles

Title: Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (Cambridge, 2006)

Citation: Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba brings an uniquely nuanced interdisciplinary and transnational approach to the study of racial politics by combining ethnographic, interpretive and quantitative methods to examine the persistence of racial inequality in post revolutionary Cuba. The book makes a major contribution to the growing literature on race by developing a race cycles perspective which builds on the work of social science scholars such as Klinkner and Smith, Omi and Winant, Sidney Tarrow, Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly Ada Ferrer, Aline Helg, and Alejandro de la Fuente. The author demonstrates a complex process in which Cuba, the United States and Africa have played important roles in each other's racial histories and that an understanding of international flows of people and ideology increases our understand the historical evolution of racial politics in Cuba.

Gladys M. Kammerer Award ($1,000)

Awarded for best political science publication in 2006 in the field of U.S. national policy.

Award Committee: Richard E. Foglesong, Rollins College; Gary C. Jacobson, University of California, San Diego, chair; and Glenn R. Parker, Purdue University

Recipients: Benjamin I. Page, Northwestern University, with Marshall M. Bouton, Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Title: The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want from Our Leaders But Don't Get (University of Chicago Press, 2006)

Citation: Reviewing and analyzing a wide array of survey data on Americans' views regarding diverse aspects of American foreign policy, Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton show “that contrary to the assertions of many scholars, pundits, and political elites collective public opinion about foreign policy is not inconsistent, capricious, fluctuating, or unreasonable. Instead, Americans' collective responses to hundreds of different survey questions over the years have, for the most part, been coherent and mutually consistent, durable over time, and (given the information available to the citizenry) sensible.” They also show that on important topics including the domestic impact of foreign trade and competition and support for U.S. participation in international institutions the aggregate views of ordinary citizens are often at odds with leaders who make national policy. The issues they address are both enduring and timely. The book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the possibilities and shortcomings of American democracy in the domain of foreign policy, even as it enriches the literature on aggregate public opinion in the United States.

Victoria Schuck Award ($1,000)

For the best book published in the previous calendar year on women and politics.

Award Committee: R. Amy Elman, chair, Kalamazoo College; Joshua S. Goldstein, American University; and Laura R. Woliver, University of South Carolina

Co-Recipients: Shireen Hassim, University of Witwatersand and Kathrin S. Zippel, Northeastern University

Titles: Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) and The Politics of Sexual Harassment: A Comparative Study of the United States, the European Union, and Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Citation: It is our pleasure to extend the Victoria Schuck award to both Shireen Hassim and Kathrin S. Zippel. This year marks a record in the number of nominations for this coveted prize for scholarship on women and politics. Notably, both of these works not only unite several sub-fields within the discipline but also move beyond political science into interdisciplinary scholarship.

In a remarkable examination of decades of mobilization—in country, in exile, and within transnational social movements—Shireen Hassim's Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority illuminates the dynamics of gender, race, social class, and citizenship within that country's freedom movements. She draws on a vast multidisciplinary knowledge of the literature on social movements, dissent, gender politics, and democratic theory to help us appreciate the generations of people who struggled for justice and democracy in South Africa. Her multi-layered methods examine regime and insurgent levels of activity and the often-overlooked power dynamics of “motherism.” As women in beleaguered townships demanded everyday necessities, often “unspectacular concerns” such as drinking water, sewage systems, schools, and public transportation, they pressured government officials, maintained community ties, and challenged the notion that the women and their children and elderly relatives could simply be ignored, forgotten, and kept oppressed. The women and their entire families redefined what a citizen was and transformed South Africa. Hassim's study unites several sub-fields of political science including social movements, comparative politics, women and politics, and democratic theory.

Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award ($5,000)

For the best book published in the U.S. during the previous calendar year on government, politics, or international affairs. The award is supported by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

Award Committee: Gary C. Cox, University of California, San Diego; William R Keech, Carnegie Mellon University, chair; and Richard Ned Lebow, Dartmouth College.

Co-Recipient: Stathis Kalyvas, Yale University

Title: The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Citation: Kalyvas poses four puzzles at the outset of his book. Why are civil wars particularly savage in comparison to foreign wars? Why is there such striking variation in violence within individual civil wars? Observers point to paired villages, seemingly identical in relevant ways, but one is victimized by massacres, often with internal participation, and the other untouched. Why do macrohistorical accounts explain the outcome of civil wars in terms preexisting popular loyalties, while allegiances and loyalties are almost invariably transformed during the course of such war? And finally, why is there such a disconnect between macrolevel causes of war and microlevel patterns of violence?

The author distinguishes and decouples civil violence from civil war. He offers a macro theory of “irregular war” and a microfoundational theory of violence. The theory of violence links the two because it is based on the interactions of actors at the central and local levels, and between combatants and non-combatants. Their interaction is shaped by the demands of irregular war, the logic of asymmetric information and the dynamics of local rivalries. In combination, they produce particular patterns of interaction and associated levels of civil violence. The author tests the theory in the Greek civil war (1944–1949). His data are drawn from archives in Britain and Greece and from interviews with former participants. In the conclusions, he examines some of the implications of his theory for the study of problems where national-local or center-periphery cleavages, and the interactions between actors on either side of these divides, are critical.

The core of the theory of civil violence derives from the central proposition of Kalyvas' theory of war: political actors maximize territorial control subject to the local military balance. Territorial control requires cooperation from local inhabitants, who may seek maximize certain benefits through cooperation. Most people prefer to collaborate with the side that can best guarantee their survival, irrespective of their sympathies. Collaboration is more difficult in areas of contested control, and in these zones conflicting actors see the benefits of using selective violence to consolidate their control and weaken that of their adversary. Selective violence requires private information, which is asymmetrically distributed among the principal contestants and local populations. The latter know who collaborators and defectors are, and can choose to reveal this information or not. Individuals want to denounce only when it is safe for them to do so, in situations that is where their victims cannot counter-denounce them. Thus, the higher degree of control an actor has in an area, the safer individuals feel and the more likely they are to denounce. Denunciation is most likely, not where control is most contested, but where violence is least needed to maintain that control. Strategic individuals will be least likely to get rid of their enemies in conditions where they are most safe in denouncing them. It is in the between areas, where control is partially effective, giving citizens some degree of protection, that denunciation, while somewhat less likely, will lead to the most violence.

The Logic of Violence in Civil War is impressive in its framing of the problem: (separating civil violence from civil war) and in its construction of a theory that takes into account macro- and micro-level perspectives. It builds on their interaction, makes rich use of primary data, performs quantitative and qualitative analysis of that data, and brings awareness of the implications of the theory for a wider range of phenomena. The theory stands in sharp contrast to understandings of civil war and violence derived from both Thucydides and Hobbes that explain civil violence solely in terms of the anarchy created by civil war. It makes a substantial substantive contribution to our understanding of civil violence and of the importance of interactions between central authorities and local populations for understanding the behavior of both. We believe it will be extremely well-received by relevant research communities in comparative politics and international relations. It also has great relevance to historians of civil wars.

Co-Recipients: Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology with James A. Robinson, Harvard University.

Title: Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Citation: In a unified and coherent framework, Acemoglu and Robinson provide an economic theory of the creation, consolidation and breakdown of democracy. Isolating one part of what they freely admit to be a larger and more complex whole, they focus on the rich minority's fear of redistribution by the poor majority. In their model, moves to democratize a regime occur when the rich minority, facing a looming or latent threat of revolution, seeks to defuse that threat—and finds that only institutional reforms offer sufficiently credible improvements in the majority's welfare to induce them to step back from the precipice. This spare analytic model generates predictions that map surprisingly well onto prominent features of democratization around the world—e.g., the especially strong opposition of landed elites to democratization; the strong correlation between income level and democracy; and the more debatable correlation between income inequality and democratization.

One might describe Acemoglu and Robinson as articulating a pure “domestic threat” model of democratization, to go alongside earlier “international threat” models (e.g., Tilly, Bates, North and Weingast). Key to the international threat models of democratization is the notion that rulers need help from other domestic actors, in order to defend or expand the state's boundaries. In these models, there are gains to be had (e.g., in the form of lower interest rates on sovereign debt), if domestic actors can better trust one another. Concessions that limit the power of the ruler and broaden the representative basis of the polity emerge as credible commitments to secure those gains. Acemoglu and Robinson focus, not on the possible efficiency gains, but instead on the redistributive consequences, that democratization might bring, in this sense falling closer to Dahl or Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens. While the international threat models better help us understand the vaunted fighting ability of democracies or the existence of international waves of democratization, Acemoglu and Robinson provide a systematic compendium of how domestic elites' fear of redistribution plays through the processes of democratization and either consolidation or breakdown.

Forty years ago this year, the Wilson Prize was won by a book with a very similar title: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, by Barrington Moore, Jr. One finds echoes of Moore in the Acemoglu and Robinson book, such as a shared view of domestic polities as involving balances of power between competing groups or the positive role of the middle class and the negative role of a landed aristocracy in the emergence of democracy. The first has been and the latter will surely become a major landmark in the scholarship about regimes and regime change.

John Gaus Award ($2,000)

The John Gaus award is to honor the recipient's lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration and to recognize achievement and encourage scholarship in public administration.

Award Committee: Barbara J. Nelson, University of California, Los Angeles; David H. Rosenbloom, American University, chair; and David L. Weimer, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Recipient: Laurence Lynn, Jr., Texas A&M University

Award Address: “The New Frontiers of Public Administration: The Practice of Theory and the Theory of Practice”

Citation: The American Political Science Association confers the 2007 John Gaus award on Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. in recognition of a “lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.” Dr. Lynn holds the George H. W. Bush Chair and is Professor of Public Affairs at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, and the Sydney Stein, Jr., Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Chicago where he taught for many years. In outstanding ways, Laurence Lynn has enriched both the practice and the scholarship of political science and public administration. His work in the public service has earned him the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Medal and a Presidential Certificate of Distinguished Achievement. His scholarship has helped shape, and critique, four decades of development in public administration, public policy and social services administration. And his leadership has advanced the quality of teaching and research as Dean of the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, as Chair of the Public Policy program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and in numerous programs and Associations.

In his recent scholarship, including the book Public Management as Art, Science, and Profession (Chatham House, 1996) and a shorter article in the Public Administration Review on “The Myth of the Bureaucratic Paradigm: What Traditional Public Administration Really Stood For” Dr. Lynn grounded contemporary developments in public administration rediscovery of the richness of the history of public administration thought—drawing from earlier scholars central to political science and public administration such as John Gaus himself, WF Willoughby, Leonard White, Luther Gulick, (all former presidents of APSA) and many others—and finding much to learn from in these “traditional” scholars: “traditional habits of thought exhibited far more respect for law, politics, citizens, and values than customer-oriented managerialism or civic philosophies that, in promoting community and citizen empowerment, barely acknowledge the constitutional role of legislatures, courts, and executive departments.”

Dr. Lynn's background is eclectic and broad. He has held senior positions with the U.S. federal government, including deputy assistant secretary of defense; director of program analysis at the National Security Council; assistant secretary, Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and assistant secretary, Department of the Interior. He has also chaired National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committees on Child Development Research and Public Policy and on National Urban Policy and was a member of the NRC Committee on Education Finance: Equity, Adequacy and Productivity. He has published extensively, including books on public management, public policy, and the presidency, and in academic journals addressing his continuing interests include public choice and institutional theories as applied to the management of public bureaucracies, the executive function in government, and the government's role in human service provision.

Honors include the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management's Vernon Prize. He has been a “teacher of the year” at both the Harris School and the Bush School. He is the first recipient of the H. George Frederickson award for career contributions to public management scholarship from the Public Management Research Association (2005). He is also the recipient of the American Society for Public Administration's Dwight Waldo Award (2006) and Paul Van Riper Award (2007). In the spirit of the theme of the Annual Conference in which this award is made, Political Science and Beyond, it is well worth note as well, that Dr. Lynn holds a Ph.D. in economics, from Yale University, and has a professional record of distinction in interdisciplinary. He is past president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Hubert H. Humphrey Award ($1,000)

Presented each year in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist.

Award Committee: David Adamany, Temple University; Lisa Anderson, Columbia University, Chair; and Jeffrey A. Frieden, Harvard University

Recipient: Representative David Obey, Wisconsin House of Representatives

Citation: The 2007 Humphrey Award recognizes a respected and influential voice in American political life: David Obey, Representative of Wisconsin's 7^th District and Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

The Humphrey Award typically recognizes the achievements of an outstanding academic political scientist who has been unusually active and influential in the public policy debates of American political life. Today we reverse the priority, and recognize a politician and policy-maker who has been unusually active and influential in bringing the skills and standards of political science to the practice of politics.

Representative Obey had completed his graduate coursework in Soviet politics at the University of Wisconsin, expecting to teach Russian and Chinese politics, when he decided to put his skills to the practice rather than the study of politics and ran for the Wisconsin State Assembly at age 24. He won by a 1,000-vote margin and headed to the statehouse in Madison. In 1969, when then Representative Melvin Laird was nominated as secretary of defense, Obey was tapped to fill his seat and he soon found himself the youngest House member in Washington. Shortly after he arrived on Capitol Hill, he found his way into even more rarified circles as a member of the Appropriations Committee and, as his official web site puts it, “he's been there ever since.”

What may have been a loss for political science was certainly a gain for Wisconsin and for the United States. We can hope, however, that his forthcoming memoir, Raising Hell for Justice: The Washington Battles of a Heartland Progressive, appears on the reading lists of thousands of American politics courses across the country.

Even in the early days, in the Wisconsin State Legislature, Dave Obey was widely admired, even (perhaps especially!) by those who disagreed with him, for the well honed analytical skills and solid factual grounding that he brought to whatever he did. He served three terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly and played a key role in creating Wisconsin's Technical College Districts and the state's public broadcasting network. Both there and in Congress, he has been a consistent and articulate advocate for a principled liberalism that believes that government can do a great deal of good and is a viable instrument for collective action in society. His style of leadership has been very much in the model of congressional committee leadership that we know in the congressional literature, exercising strong direction on the minority side as well as in the majority, all the while maintaining the collegial relations needed to get things done. Now chair of the Appropriations Committee, he holds one of the most powerful positions in American government and, as such, he is deeply involved in one of the great policy debates of the moment—the role Congress plays in the pursuit of a war already underway.

Now a 38-year veteran of Congress and the House's third-most-senior member, Representative Obey is well known for his candor but also his wit, intelligence and good preparation: the hallmarks of a political science education. He is a model for our students—not least because he exhibits skills even those of us who stayed in the academy cannot aspire to: in his spare time, Representative Obey plays the harmonica and performs with his two sons and some friends in a bluegrass band, “The Capitol Offenses,” which has recorded several albums.

In celebrating the accomplishments of Representative David Obey, the 2007 Humphrey Award highlights the contributions of political science in informing responsible public policy.

Benjamin E. Lippincott Award ($1,500)

Biennially awarded in recognition of a work of exceptional quality by a living political theorist that is considered significant after a time span of at least 15 years since the original date of publication. Supported by the University of Minnesota.

Award Committee: Michael R. Alvarez, chair, California Institute of Technology; Michael J. Hiscox, Harvard University; and Ronald J. Schmidt, Sr., California State University, Long Beach.

Recipient: Anthony Downs, The Brookings Institution

Title: An Economic Theory of Democracy (Harper and Brothers, 1957)

Citation: Since it's publication in 1957, Anthony Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy has had enormous impact in political science, with a contribution that continues to grow today. An Economic Theory of Democracy led to the development of new theoretical perspectives into individual voting behavior, about the dynamics of party systems and party strategies, and the meaning of political ideology. It also was one of the original and foundational works that helped launch the positive political theory and rational choice theoretical perspectives in political science, and today remains one of the key reference works in those fields. Today Downs' An Economy Theory of Democracy is a staple in graduate reading lists, and continues to spark the development of new theoretical perspectives in diverse areas of political science. Widely read and widely cited, An Economic Theory of Democracy has been, and will continue to be, a key work in political theory and political science.

Carey McWilliams Award ($750)

Awarded to honor a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.

Award Committee: Donald C. Baumer, Smith College; Merle Black, Emory University; and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, University of Pennsylvania, chair

Recipient: Ronald Brownstein, The Los Angeles Times

Citation: The Carey McWilliams Award is presented each year in recognition of “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” The 2007 award recognizes the career achievements of Ronald Brownstein of The Los Angeles Times. A superb journalist and commentator upon American politics, Brownstein's intelligence, experience, creativity, judgment, and stylistic lucidity have made him one of the most respected and influential journalistic voices in modern American political life. We honor the quality and breadth of his political journalism, the hundreds of stories and columns he has written that have illuminated American politics.

Brownstein has taken special interest in using national polls to interpret political life. He has often made use of political scientists to go beyond the news story of the hour to provide readers with a richer understanding of political trends and processes. Just as he often turns to political scientists for their expertise, so do many political scientists look to his insightful and creative reporting to learn about consequential trends in the society and politics of the United States. In addition to his superb reporting, Brownstein has become an outstanding columnist who is deeply interested in educating readers about matters of public affairs.

Brownstein was born in New York City on April 6, 1958. He graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1979. He is the author or editor of five books (with a new book, The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America, to be published in the fall of 2007) as well as scores of articles and columns about American politics and public policy.

Charles E. Merriam Award ($500)

Presented biennially to “a person whose published work and career represent a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research.”

Award Committee: Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania; Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution; and Joseph Nye, Harvard University, chair

Recipient: Robert D. Putnam, Malkin Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University

Dissertation: “Experiences of Tolerance: Affect, Perception, and the Law”

Dissertation Chair: William E. Connolly, The Johns Hopkins University

Citation: Few scholars have left a larger mark on the art of government through their research, teaching, and outreach as a public intellectual than Robert Putnam. No social scientist of our time has done more to develop the concepts of social capital, civic engagement, and civil society, and to demonstrate their importance in supporting and sustaining the lives of both democracies and democratic citizens. Putnam has explored the associational preconditions of democracy in the contrasting histories of different regions in Italy. He then extended this investigation of the democratic importance of associational life to other countries, including the United States. The over arching theme of Putnam's social scientific inquiry is captured by a frequently-cited phrase, “bowling alone,” which is also the title of his best-selling book on the importance of social capital to American democracy. The thesis of bowling alone has become an essential touchstone for both scholars and practitioners of the art of democratic government. Putnam also developed a theory of two level games that relates international agreements to domestic audiences.

Bob Putnam is currently the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. In 2006, Putnam received the Skytte Prize, one of the world's highest accolades for a political scientist. Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised in a small town in the Midwest and educated at Swarthmore, Oxford, and Yale. From 1990–1992, he served as Dean of the Kennedy School of Government.

He has written a dozen books, translated into 17 languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness. His previous book, Making Democracy Work, was praised by the Economist as “a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville, Pareto and Weber.” Both Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone rank high among the most cited publications in the social sciences worldwide in the last several decades. Putnam has worked on these themes with both the Clinton and Bush White Houses, as well as with the Blair Government, the Irish Taoiseach, and other political leaders and grassroots civic activists around the world. He founded the Saguaro Seminar, bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners to develop actionable ideas for civic renewal.

His earlier work included research on comparative political elites, Italian politics, and globalization. Before coming to Harvard in 1979, he taught at the University of Michigan and served on the staff of the National Security Council. He is currently working on three major empirical projects: (1) the changing role of religion in contemporary America, (2) the effects of workplace practices on family and community life, and (3) practical strategies for civic renewal in the United States in the context of immigration and social and ethnic diversity.

Bob has been also been a shepherd and critic of the political science profession, particularly when he has felt that it was straying too far away from relevance to the art of government. He expressed these concerns clearly in his APSR presidential address when he urged us to remember what he called “mother-in-law questions:” “Simple questions about major real-world events have driven great research. Worrying about the same ‘big’ issues as our fellow citizens is not a distraction from our best professional work, but often a goad to it.” Or to use another of his pithy phrases, “Better an approximate answer to an important question than an exact answer to a trivial question.” One thing that is clear from Bob's work and career is that he has practiced what he preaches. His work is a great contribution to the art of government in the tradition of Charles Merriam, and he amply deserves this award.

Ithiel de Sola Pool Award ($2,000)

Presented triennially to a scholar selected to explore the implications of research on issues of politics in a global society.

Award Committee: Samuel L. Popkin, Chair, University of California, W. Lance Bennett, University of Washington, Devesh Kapur, University of Pennsylvania

Recipient: Lawrence Lessig, Stanford University Law School

Citation: As a scholar and activist, Professor Lessig has addressed one of the most critical public policy issues in the area of technological change and new media: how to update intellectual property laws without stifling creativity and innovation. His books include Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, and The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (since revised as Code 2.0).

Lessig is known worldwide as a leader in the effort to prevent corporate interests from defining and controlling intellectual property rights at the expense of the common good. Wired magazine calls him “the Elvis of cyberlaw” and The New York Times says “nobody has done more than Lawrence Lessig to help people understand the ways technology affects the laws governing intellectual property.” In 2002, he was named one of the “Scientific American 50,”—leaders honored for their contributions to understanding the world, making innovations available and shaping the policies guiding how society uses technology.

Professor Lessig is currently enlarging his research focus; whereas he had previous explored the ways in which money shapes intellectual property law, he is now moving to a broader focus on the role of money in politics generally.