Gabriel A. Almond Award

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

Award Committee: M. Anne Pitcher, chair, Colgate University; Nancy Bermeo, Princeton University; and Gerardo L. Munck, University of Southern California.

Recipient: Rafaela Mirjam Dancygier, Princeton University

Dissertation: “Immigration and Conflict”

Dissertation Chair: Frances Rosenbluth, Yale University

Citation: We are extremely pleased to present the 2008 Gabriel A. Almond award for the best dissertation in comparative politics completed in 2006 or 2007 to Rafaela Mirjam Dancygier for “Immigration and Conflict.” The dissertation is an elegantly crafted, comparative study of the conditions under which conflict occurs among immigrant groups in Great Britain and Germany. It explains not only variation in the incidence of conflict, but also whether such confrontations take place between immigrants and the state or between native and immigrant populations. Under conditions of economic scarcity where goods are desired by both native and immigrant populations, conflict is more likely to arise argues Dancygier. National institutions, however, influence the nature of conflict because they shape the responses of immigrants and natives to shortages of economic resources. Where the state, rather than the market, is responsible for allocating goods such as housing, employment, and public services, and immigrants lack political leverage, they are likely to direct their grievances regarding shortages against the state. Alternatively, where immigrants can influence politically the state's distribution of goods, anti-immigrant conflicts by native populations are likely to occur, contributing to a pattern of violence between natives and immigrants rather than immigrants and the state.

The thesis makes an original contribution to an extensive scholarly literature on institutions as well as on ethnic conflict. It skillfully combines multiple methodological approaches including quantitative analysis, fieldwork, and archival research in order to engage in rigorous subnational and cross-national comparisons of immigrant regimes, incidences, and characteristics of conflict in Great Britain and Germany from the 1950s to the contemporary period. The theoretical framework has cross-national applicability as well as significant policy implications. The dissertation exemplifies both the versatility and vitality of comparative politics and we are honored to present Rafaela Dancygier with the Gabriel A. Almond award for 2008.

William Anderson Award

The William Anderson Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of state and local government, federalism, or intergovernmental relations.

Award Committee: Robert T. Nakamura, chair, SUNY-University at Albany; Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Syracuse University; and Kathleen A. Bratton, Louisiana State University

Recipient: Traci Renee Burch, Northwestern University

Dissertation: “Punishment and Participation”

Dissertation Chair: Jennifer Hochschild, Harvard University

Citation: We are pleased to award the William Anderson award for the best dissertation in the area of intergovernmental relations, federalism, state, or local politics to Traci Renee Burch. Burch's dissertation is an exploration into the political impact of our country's increased reliance on prisons to deal with crime. While others have explored the benefits of this strategy, in declining crime rates, Burch examines the potential costs. Those costs, she argues, are in the form of lessons that diminish participation not only for those convicted of crimes but also for those who are close to them as families, neighbors, and communities. The greatest impact, she argues, comes with concentration effects in black communities that see participation depressed in small but potentially significant ways as elections grown more competitive. While developing this broad argument, Burch tackles a series of more specific issues including the impact of disenfranchisement laws that she finds to have less of a partisan impact than previously assumed largely due to the preponderance of white over black disenfranchised felons. These and other arguments are tested against a large data set that permits her to disentangle the effects of conviction from the other attributes of race, age, education, and other factors.

Edward S. Corwin Award

The Edward S. Corwin Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public law.

Award Committee: Ira H. Carmen, chair, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Gregory A. Caldeira, Ohio State University; and Ellen Ann Anderson, Indiana and Purdue University, Indianapolis.

Recipient: Diana Kapiszewski, University of California, Irvine

Title: “Challenging Decisions: High Courts and Economic Governance in Argentina and Brazil”

Dissertation Chair: Paul Pierson, University of California at Berkeley

Citation: The 2008 Corwin Award Committee, believing strongly in the notion that Professor Corwin's writings in public law extend far beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American tradition, selects as “best dissertation” Diana Kapiszewski's outstanding scholarly achievement “Challenging Decisions: High Courts and Economic Governance in Argentina and Brazil.” This remarkable study was directed by co-chairs David Collier and Robert Kagan.

As a student of comparative politics with special emphasis on Latin America, Dr. Kapiszewski addresses the key questions of whether and when courts of law are prepared to constrain governmental authority following the impetus toward democracy of the 1980s. Noting that this turbulent period has led to simultaneous economic and legal transformation, she focuses on the judicialization of economic governance in the region's two largest countries—Argentina and Brazil. She traces carefully the rather different roles of judicial politicization in Argentina and judicial professionalization in Brazil, and she shows how each in its own distinctive way orchestrates the manner in which judges employ tactical balancing in deciding politically volatile disputes. As a result of the play of these forces, Argentina's judicial profile is one of submission while in Brazil the spirit of compromise holds sway. The analysis is grounded on sound empirical footing including an objective, elaborate case selection process. Extraordinarily, Dr. Kapiszewski undertook 20 months of fieldwork abroad and conducted 250 interviews with various authorities. Without question, her research will take its place as a critical bridge linking the study of comparative politics and public law.

Harold D. Lasswell Award

The Harold D. Lasswell Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of policy studies. The award is supported by the Policy Studies Organization and the APSA Organized Section on Public Policy.

Award Committee: Robert F. Rich, chair, University of Illinois; Ann L. Schneider; and Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, University of Oklahoma

Recipient: Christian Breuing, Max Plank Institute for the Study of Societies, Germany

Dissertation: “Institutions, Attention Shifts, and Changes within National Budgets”

Dissertation Chair: Bryan Jones, University of Washington

Citation: This dissertation represents impressive state-of-the art empirical work with a strong qualitative component, consisting of interviews with budgetary officials in Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The study systematically compares budgetary policymaking in four western democracies; Breunig subjects three separate public policy theories to rigorous test: the policy process approach from American politics, the party control model from the study of parliamentary democracies an the “veto group model.” The results demonstrate that the policy process model represents the best fit for explaining budgetary policymaking. In effect, the institutional costs incurred in the budgetary system are better at explaining the stochastic distribution of outcomes than are the more political outcomes.

Underlying this study is an ambitious attempt to unify theories of comparative politics and policy process theories used to study American politics Most European work on policy processes is qualitative, and this is an exceptional piece of work in its successful attempt to unify this work with more quantitative American political process studies. Breunig's approach is an extension of stochastic process methods used to study budget changes by Bryan Jones and others. The approach makes a major contribution in addressing a shortcoming in the study of political decision making: the limitations of the incrementalist approach in which decision makers made only small steps from the status quo because of the role of uncertainty in the process.

This is an exceptional piece of work that makes contributions to the study of public policy processes generally and to issues of comparative politics, and it does so in a theoretically and statistically innovative manner.

Helen Dwight Reid Award

The Helen Dwight Reid Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of international relations, law, and politics. The award is supported by the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation.

Award Committee: Simon F. Reich, chair, University of Pittsburg; Dennis T. Yasutomo, Smith College; and Darlene L. Boroviak, Wheaton College

Recipient: Margarita Hristoforova Petrova, European University Institute

Dissertation: “Leadership Competition and the Creation of Norms”

Dissertation Chairs: Matthew Evangelista and Peter Katzenstein, Cornell University

Citation: We have unanimously selected Margarita Hristoforova Petrova (Ph.D., Cornell University) as the winner of this year's Helen Dwight Reid Award. Her dissertation, “Leadership Competition and the Creation of Norms: A Cross-national Study of Weapons Restrictions,” builds upon several subfields in international relations to explain the process of successful norm creation and diffusion. In a highly original analysis, that transparently specifies the conditions under which international norm adoption is likely, Dr. Petrova systematically examines and links two sets of dynamics. The first is the interaction between domestic, regional, and transnational levels of governance in the “scale shift” generally neglected in the norm literature with its focus on the transnational; the second is the interaction between NGOs, domestic militaries, public opinion, individual entrepreneurs, states, and intergovernmental organizations in the context of varied state structures.

Dr. Petrova's dissertation, consistent with prior analysis, “argues that the success of norm creation depends first on the initial framing of the problem by NGOs.” This framing must simplify the problem, offer a clear and easy solution, characterize the debate in humanitarian terms, and have the position adopted by a majority voting procedure. Yet she additionally brings a new perspective to the existing literature in her analysis of the subsequent ability of those same NGOs “to foster among states a dynamic called ‘leadership competition’ in which a number of countries consecutively adopt more progressive positions in support of weapons bans.” Beyond arguments that stress the importance of “tipping points” or “a bandwagon effect,” or that claim that new norms must be grafted on old ones, she judiciously lays out the processes by which norms are advocated by NGO representatives and nurtured by “rooted cosmopolitans” in the context of contrasting domestic structures (state-dominated, society-dominated, or corporatist). Such cosmopolitans serve as entrepreneurs and form a link between domestic and transnational coalitions, fomenting public support at home. These entrepreneurs, she notes, are as motivated by instrumental as they are moral reasons in a complex interwoven process—a key argument in the current dialogue regarding the relationship between rationalism and constructivism.

In order to analyze her argument empirically, Dr. Petrova considers the cases of landmines and cluster bombs. In both cases she focuses extensively on the domestic arena, where NGOs mobilize national support for such norms, through the ‘mobilization of pride’ in leadership, and not simply the “naming and shaming” tactics stressed in the existing literature under the rubric of the “mobilization of shame.” She argues that the interplay between national traditions favoring norms and the dominant strategic culture, including differing military cultures, explains the rise of “Middle States”—such as Norway and Canada—to positions of eminence on the humanitarian agenda as they engage in a competition for international leadership. Moral entrepreneurs assist in generating a domestic consensus of support in these countries that, she claims, is key to reinvigorating progress at higher levels of governance when transnational negotiations often stall.

Yet, in this ambitious dissertation, Dr. Petrova also manages to demonstrate the complexity of an interactive process where influences also flow “downwards.” Her formulation explains both the overall movement towards the generation of a norm and the variation in national level responses—the latter largely through the capacity to define the problem clearly and offer simple prescriptions. She links multiple actors at multiple levels subject to contrasting pressures in a coherent, manageable framework. In sum, this dissertation ties all these dimensions together into a clear explanation of why some norms are accepted—and by whom—and how her approach incorporates, expands, modifies, and enhances several existing literatures.

E. E. Schattschneider Award

The E. E. Schattschneider Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of American government.

Award Committee: William E. Nelson Jr., chair, Ohio State University, Louis DeSipio, University of California, Irvine; and Bruce E. Cain, University of California, Berkeley

Recipient: Daniel Jacob Hopkins, Harvard University

Dissertation: “When Differences Divide: How National Influences and Local Demographics Shape Politics Between Ethnic Groups”

Dissertation Chair: Robert Putnam, Harvard University

Citation: For the 2008 E.E. Schattschneider Award, the committee recommends Daniel J. Hopkins' “When Differences Divide: How National Influences and Local Demographics Shape Politics Between Ethnic Groups.” “When Differences Divide” analyzes how intergroup political tension varies over time and space. The committee was particularly impressed with its multi-method approach that relies on a range of historical and contemporary data sources. It was also impressed with its efforts to assess both race and ethnicity, particularly ethnicity driven by new immigration, in an effort to develop a comprehensive theory of national and local influences on intergroup relations.

Hopkins contends that local racial and ethnic cleavages are likely to be a source of political division when two conditions are present: (1) rapid local ethnic or racial demographic change, and (2) the introduction of frames that politicize this demographic change. These frames are often introduced from national politics or the media, but see their effect at the community level. In both cases, these conditions reflect the information environments of local residents in multi-racial/multi-ethnic communities.

To test his hypothesis, Hopkins looks at four case studies: the post-Katrina migration as an unanticipated shock to local demographics testing the differential effects of living near evacuees, communities with growing immigrant populations in the 1990s and early 2000s to test the prevalence of anti-immigrant ordinances, city spending from the 1960s to the 1990s to test spending on police and other local criminal justice activities, and votes on Massachusetts tax proposals to measure the relationship between community-level diversity and public investment. Each of these case studies highlights that ethnic and racial differences become politicized only under certain conditions. This finding, reinforced as it is across time and between native (non-Hispanic) whites and different racial, ethnic, and immigrant populations offers a caution to models of intergroup relations constructed primarily around notions of racial threat.

We are enthusiastic in our support for Daniel J. Hopkins' “When Differences Divide: How National Influences and Local Demographics Shape Politics Between Ethnic Groups” as the recipient of the 2008 E.E. Schattschneider Award. It offers contributions to scholarship about American politics broadly and more specifically to debates in urban politics, racial and ethnic politics, and political behavior.

Leo Strauss Award

The Leo Strauss Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political philosophy.

Award Committee: Melissa A. Orlie, chair, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Sharon R. Krause, Brown University; and Samuel A. Chambers, Swansea University

Recipient: Leigh Jenco, Brown University

Dissertation: “Individuals, Institutions, and Political Change: The Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao”

Dissertation Chair: Jacob Levy, University of Chicago

Citation: In this path-breaking dissertation, Leigh Jenco offers a study of the cross-cultural political theory of Zhang Shizhao (1880–1973) designed to illuminate central issues in contemporary political theory, above all political action. Previous studies of political action have tended to equate it with collective action, analyzing the ways that “action in concert” can transform the behavior of individuals and the communities they share. Jenco, following Zhang, focuses instead on individual action. She shows that Zhang creatively synthesizes British liberal thought and Confucian categories to demonstrate how individual effort can influence the social and political environment independently of prior agreement on common purposes—yet with the hope of creating democratic political community. Zhang wrote at a time of unprecedented social fragmentation and in a place that lacked indigenous political practices of democracy. He therefore theorizes action for times and places when collective effort is unavailable, explaining how individual action can be rendered politically meaningful and efficacious even as it remains embedded in circumstances and institutions beyond the capacity of any one individual to control.

The committee was impressed by the theoretical and methodological originality of Jenco's dissertation as well as by the theoretical and political significance of its conclusions. Methodologically, Jenco learns from what Zhang does as well as from what he says. Like him, she proffers a model of comparative political thought that does not simply aim to learn about “the other” but to take seriously what the political theory of the other has to teach us about our own circumstances. Theoretically and politically, Jenco draws upon Zhang to challenge reigning assumptions about democracy, about public and private, and about political action in ways which have the potential to turn contemporary political theory in significant new directions.

Leonard D. White Award

The Leonard D. White Award is given for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public administration.

Award Committee: Allan Rosenbaum, chair, Florida International University; Richard C. Feiock, Florida State University; and Lael R. Keiser, University of Missouri, Columbia.

Recipient: Matthew Dull, Virginia Tech University

Dissertation: “The Politics of Results: Comprehensive Reform and Institutional Choice.”

Dissertation Chair: David Canon, University of Wisconsin

Citation: The recipient of this year's Leonard D. White Award for the outstanding dissertation in the field of public administration is “The Politics of Results: Comprehensive Reform and Institutional Choice” by Matthew Dull, which was submitted by the department of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This dissertation is a fitting recipient of an award named in honor of Leonard White in that it focuses upon an issue that is of much significance for understanding the manner in which democratic government functions in the United States and utilizes a comprehensive, wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary approach to public administration scholarship to do so.

By examining from multiple perspectives the origin and implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act and the Program Assessment Rating Tool, Dr. Dull's research provides important new insights into not only issues of what motivates and facilitates or impedes governmental management reform, but also about the nature of human behavior in complex bureaucratic situations. Finally, it should be noted that the selection of Dr. Dull's dissertation provides ample evidence that the future of research in the field of public administration is in excellent hands. Not only is it a superb effort, but it was selected from among a very strong group of nominees.

Franklin L. Burdette / Pi Sigma Alpha Award

The Franklin L. Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award is given for the best paper presented at the previous annual meeting.

Award Committee: Frederick C. Harris, chair, Columbia University; William T. Bernhard, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia.

Recipients: Alastair Smith, New York University, and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, New York University/Stanford University

Title: “Political Survival and Institutional Change”

Citation: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith's paper “Political Survival and Endogenous Institutional Change” addresses an important question in comparative politics about regime choice: when will authoritarian countries democratize and when will they turn to more repression?

Classic works by Barrington Moore and Sam Huntington to more recent works by Charles Boix has tackled this question. The paper makes a contribution in a number of ways. First, it recognizes that regime change is not unidirectional and seeks to account for both movements toward and away from democracy. Second, the analysis extends the simple strategic choice models common in the literature on democratization. The model involves a wider menu of choices than simply repression and liberalization. It shows how the starting conditions can provide incentives for leaders to choose different paths in the face of similar stimuli. In addition to addressing an important question, the authors deploy a unique methodological approach, developing both a formal model and an empirical model to assess their claims. The use of the formal model highlights a number of different mechanisms and produces a set of conditional hypotheses about the impact of revolutionary threat, resources, and institutional change. This is an important and wide-ranging study. At its core, this paper builds on the idea that politics is coalition building. By adding some institutional features to coalition models, it extends the classic work of William Riker and others. It helps us think about how leaders can form and build coalitions under different types of political and economic constraints.

Heinz Eulau Award

The Heinz Eulau Award is given 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. Committee members are asked to help make the selection from one journal or the other, and the chair is asked to participate in both decisions.

Award Committee: Harvey Starr, chair, University of South Carolina

American Political Science Review: Larry M. Bartels, Princeton University; Claudine Gay, Harvard University

Perspectives on Politics: Elaine B. Sharp, University of Kansas; Marc Blecher, Oberlin College

Co-Recipients: James Habyarimana, Georgetown University; Macartan Humphreys, Columbia University; Daniel N. Posner, University of California, Los Angeles; Jeremy Weinstein, Stanford University.

Title: “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?” American Political Science Review November 2007

Ciation: The article by Habyarimana et al., “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?” is a creative and sophisticated analysis of the psychology and sociology of ethnic politics. Using an innovative and multi-method research design, including an ambitious array of experiments conducted in a multiethnic Ugandan slum neighborhood, they shed new light on how ethnic identities promote or inhibit cooperation.

Habyarimana et al. explore a variety of possible explanations for the greater ability of co-ethnics to cooperate and unpack why the provision of collective goods has been hindered by community-level ethnic diversity. They find no support for a set of plausible explanations, including shared preferences and group-specific altruism. In contrast, they find considerable support for the importance of norms and social networks in promoting cooperation. The authors' carefully designed and occasionally ingenious experiments allow them to trace with unusual clarity how cooperation is achieved within ethnic communities. For example, they show not only that co-ethnics are especially likely to choose cooperative strategies in Prisoners' Dilemma games, but also that defectors are especially likely to be punished by third parties in situations where all participants are from the same ethnic group. As Habyarimana et al. put it, “subjects in our sample anticipate punishment; they engage in sanctioning even at a cost to themselves; and they are most likely to punish players that fail to contribute to public goods when the non-contributors are co-ethnics.”

In addition to representing a significant empirical contribution to the study of cooperation, “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?” is a pioneering application of experimental methods in the field of comparative politics. The authors employ a variety of familiar and unfamiliar experiments to explore the bases of cooperation, including Prisoners' Dilemma, Dictator, puzzle games, and a large-scale scavenger hunt testing subjects' ability to locate randomly selected strangers in unfamiliar neighborhoods. (Subjects were significantly more likely to succeed in locating co-ethnics than members of other ethnic groups, suggesting that greater “findability” may contribute to the maintenance of cooperation within ethnic groups.) We believe that scholars for many years to come will find methodological inspiration as well as theoretical and empirical richness in this important work.

Co-Recipients: Jack Citrin, University of California, Berkeley; Amy Lerman, Princeton University; Michael Murakami, University of California, Berkeley; and Kathryn Pearson, University of Minnesota

Title: “Testing Huntington: Is Hispanic Immigration a Threat to American Identity?” Perspectives on Politics March 2007

Citation: Citrin et al.'s article tackles the extraordinarily important and timely issue of the consequences of Hispanic immigration for the U.S. The paper uses Huntington's controversial and high-profile work on the ways in which Hispanic immigration constitutes a challenge to American identity as a springboard for the analysis. But the paper does not simply engage Huntington's thesis via counter-argumentation. Rather, it carefully and creatively translates Huntington's thesis into potentially falsifiable propositions that allow the authors to bring social science evidence to bear on the controversy. The authors present a creative research design, paying careful attention to theory specification, conceptual issues, controls, case selection, and comparisons among relevant groups, employing multiple measures of concepts, and multiple data sets.

Drawing upon a comprehensive set of survey data sets ranging from the Pew Hispanic Center's Latino Surveys to the Los Angeles County Social Surveys as well as the American National Election Studies and the General Social Survey, the article provides evidence about generational patterns of bilingualism, identity choice, patriotism, and ethnic identification. The data provide both sophisticated grounds for minimizing some aspects of the alleged threat to American national identity from Mexican immigration and important grounds for further pursuing other aspects of Huntington's thesis. This article exemplified the qualities of a “best” article, which include the importance and breadth of the question addressed, boundary crossing between subfields (here, minimally between American and comparative politics), and imaginative research design.

Ralph J. Bunche Award

The Ralph J. Bunche Award is given 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: Ashutosh Varshney, chair, University of Michigan; Amrita Basu, Amherst College; and Merle L. Bowen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Co-Recipient: Victoria Hattam, New School University

Title: In The Shadow of Race: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States (The University of Chicago Press, 2007)

Citation: Victoria Hattam's book seeks to resolve a puzzle that scholars of comparative ethnicity and nationalism have often identified in American discourse and history. Unlike most parts of the world, a strong distinction is drawn between race and ethnicity in the United States. Why is that so?

To answer the question, Hattam plunges into American political history, noting that the term ethnicity rarely appeared in the American political discussions of the nineteenth century. It is during the two decades between 1915 and 1935 that a public discourse about classifying Jews and Mexicans as ethnic groups and Blacks as a race became the institutionalized common sense of American politics and society.

Hattam argues that regardless of what these terms mean elsewhere in the world, in American history race has been repeatedly tied to “body and blood” and perceived as “fixed, singular and hierarchical.” Ethnicity, in contrast, has been defined in terms of language and religion, and is viewed as “malleable, plural and equal.” The latter concept, moreover, emerged historically as a way to distinguish the newly arriving immigrants from the former slaves. Hattam, finally, suggests that some major political actors and grass roots mobilizers have of late increasingly questioned the contrast between race and ethnicity. The distinction may not last.

Hattam's intellectual style is politically engaged, an attribute increasingly uncommon among political scientists and eminently worthy of our admiration; her scholarship is historically erudite; and her argument highly persuasive. She will not only inspire, or provoke, scholars of American politics, but also those who study comparative politics of ethnicity and race.

Co-Recipient: Sarah Song, University of California, Berkeley

Title: Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Citation: Sarah Song's book deals with a familiar problem in an innovative way.

Whether multiculturalism is good for women is a problem scholars have debated for quite long. Song's basic theoretical innovation is that she brings in a constructivist understanding of culture, now the dominant mode of thinking about identity formation in the empirical literature, centrally into normative arguments about gender and multiculturalism. She claims that in different ways, the standard arguments of scholars like Susan Okin, Charles Taylor, and Will Kymlicka rely on a faulty dichotomy between egalitarian majority cultures and oppressive minority cultures. She argues that cultures are rarely so clearly bound and essentializable. Instead, cultures are constructed, interactive, and interdependent. In minority cultures, too, there is normally a great deal of contestation about what the right cultural practices are, or should be. Some of these contestations lead to reformulation of cultures, and sometimes, the state, using its power and majoritarian understanding, tends to freeze one practice or argument over the other alternatives. Her conclusion is that “culture is not the problem; oppressive practices are,” and a seamless, though wrong, association between the two only complicates efforts at cultural redefinition. Her examples, though primarily from the U.S., are not restricted to the U.S. The discussion about veiling of Muslim women is admirably even-handed, and shows a splendid curiosity about a major cultural issue beyond the borders of the U.S.

It will be impossible to ignore the arguments of this book in future discussions of multiculturalism and gender rights. Song will inspire a lot of scholars to look at multiculturalism and gender rights in a new way, and provoke others to sharpen their intellectual responses.

Gladys M. Kammerer Award

The Gladys M. Kammerer Award is given for the best political science publication in the previous calendar year in the field of U.S. national policy.

Award Committee: Hanes Walton, Jr., chair, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Ann O'M. Bowman, University of South Carolina; Margaret Weir, University of California, Berkeley

Co-Recipient: Dara Z. Stolovitch, University of Minnesota

Title: Affirmative Advocacy: Race, Class and Gender (The University of Chicago Press, 2007)

Citation: This is a superb and very distinguish new work in U.S. national policy. Dara Z. Strolovitch's pioneering study focuses on how advocacy interest groups with different marginalized populations within the same interest group organization prioritize both advocacy and representation of these different subgroups in their constituencies. To address this research problem, this study, using innovative theoretical and methodological techniques along with unique data generates the empirical finding “that organizations apply a double standard when it comes to the levels of energy that they devote to issues affecting differently situated subgroups in their own constituencies.” Put differently, “issues affecting advantaged subgroups are given disproportionately high levels of attention, whereas issues affecting disadvantaged subgroups are given disproportionately low levels.” Yet, the leaders and officers of these interest groups organizations conceive of advocacy as representation for those significantly disadvantaged subgroups within the organizations and speaks out quite forcefully for them while simultaneously giving the greatest effort to the “advantaged subgroups of their constituencies.” Simply put, this book offers a pathbreaking analysis and set of findings for the discipline and national public policy aimed at the intersectionally disadvantaged in affirmative advocacy interest group demands. It is bold, and rich as well as quite rewarding original research.

Co-Recipients: Frank R. Baumgartner, Suzanna L. DeBoef, and Amber E. Boydstun, Pennsylvania State University

Title: The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Citation: This brilliant study is about public opinion and national public policy. It shows how a change in the mass media “framing” of an issue changed public opinion and national public policy on the issue, of the death penalty. According to the authors, professors Frank Baumgarter, Suzanna DeBoef, and Amber Boydstun, “framing” is defining an issue along a particular dimension (e.g., fairness and innocence) at the exclusion of alternate dimensions (e.g., morality, constitutionality, or cost). Framing is a natural part of the political process, but rarely does framing result in a near-complete overhaul of an issue debate, as in the case of the death penalty over the last decade.” Using the “innocence” frame, these scholars with a very ingenious empirical methodology, data set, precise logical analysis, and a careful theoretical framework, generates a persuasive evidentiary case of how change occurred in mass public opinion and how that has altered change in the nation's public policy toward the death penalty. Beyond the topicality of this fine study, it is a very impressive study of public opinion in the mold of V.O. Key, Jr., now classic work. Such a work is an excellent contribution to the discipline and its literature. This is outstanding scholarship.

Victoria Schuck Award

The Victoria Schuck Award is given for the best book published in the previous calendar year on women and politics.

Award Committee: Vicki L. Hesli, chair, University of Iowa; Pei-te Lien, University of California, Santa Barbara; Martha A. Ackelsberg, Smith College

Co-Recipient: Georgina Waylen, University of Sheffield Title: Engendering Transitions: Women's Mobilization, Institutions, and Gender Outcomes (Oxford University Press, 2007)

Citation: Dr. Waylen's book, Engendering Transitions, was published by Oxford University Press in 2007. Its purpose, and its accomplishment, is to engender the study of democratization. Dr. Waylen examines the role of women in a range of transitions and she evaluates the impact of those transitions on gender relations measured in terms of women's descriptive and substantive representation. The book asks the important question: Why has pre-transition activism not translated into greater gains in the immediate post-transition setting? Using studies of 10 countries, the book analyzes the reasons for variation in the nature of gender outcomes. The framework for the broad range of case studies is a comparative macro-historical analysis. The book also draws on institutional approaches that explore relationships among actors and possibilities for political change. The book is extremely thorough, and does a terrific job of integrating three literatures (on gender in transitions, democratization, and gender and participation) that are rarely taken together.

The particular strengths of Dr. Waylen's macro-historical work are to be found in the scope of its research, its conceptualization of a new research framework, and its systematic and meticulous analysis to tease out the role of gender in various political, legal/constitutional, and institutional contexts and stages of a democratic transition. Her work represents one of the best and most comprehensive assessments of substantive representation for women available. In the context of her study, Dr. Waylen also offers a solid critique of embedded assumptions that democratization generally implies women's liberation and advancement. It carefully deconstructs actual transitions as well as transition paradigms and allows us to determine the conditions under which positive gender outcomes are either more or less likely.

Co-Recipient: Anna Marie Smith, Cornell University

Title: Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Citation: Anna Marie Smith's book, Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. Professor Smith provides an in-depth analysis of welfare reform policy from the perspective of sexual regulation politics. She has given us an incredibly carefully documented and well-written critique of the U.S. welfare system. Her book explores the scope and structure of the child support enforcement, family caps, marriage promotion, and abstinence education measures that are embedded within contemporary welfare policy, thereby demonstrating the manner in which existing policies demonize poor women and perpetuate injustices.

In conducting her in-depth study of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, Professor Smith makes a major theoretical contribution in exposing the neo-eugenics thinking in welfare reform politics and the complexities of translating feminist perspectives into public policy making. The activist commitments that underlie the razor-sharp analysis are clearly meant to energize her readers. In addition, this work contributes to debates within the academy and the public policy arena about precisely what an anti-racist feminism should look like. The analysis provokes deep thinking about what went wrong with our current system and what should be expected from women representatives.

In sum, Professor Smith's ambitious study makes a clear and compelling set of arguments that bridges public policy, constitutional law, and political theory, while offering an analysis that takes intersectional perspectives seriously.

Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award

The Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award is given 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: Raphael J. Sonenshein, chair, California State University, Fullerton; Arlene W. Saxonhouse, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Judith H. Stiehm, Florida State University

Recipient: Etel Solingen, University of California, Irvine

Title: Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2007)

Citation: Fifty years ago, Henry Kissinger won the APSA's Woodrow Wilson Award for Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (Harper & Row). Kissinger wrote at a time when only the great powers held nuclear weapons and the use or non-use of such monstrous force was a decision reserved to a few nations. Kissinger argued provocatively that the United States should not rule out the use of nuclear weapons in foreign policy.

This year's award winner, Etel Solingen, has written a book that is equally important for understanding the contemporary and horrifying prospect of proliferation of nuclear weapons to nations of all shapes and sizes. Decisions to hold and use these weapons are no longer in the hands of the great powers, as they were when Kissinger wrote his book. The need to understand “nuclear logics” is compelling.

In this deeply researched and carefully argued book, Solingen challenges conventional wisdom about how nations make critical decisions. Further, it provides clues that policy makers can use to draw nations away from a decision to develop and maintain nuclear weapons.

Solingen has examined how nations decide whether to develop nuclear weapons. She looks at nine cases in two regions: East Asia and the Middle East. In East Asia most nations have sworn off nuclear weapons, with North Korea standing as the exception. In the Middle East, by contrast, a number of nations have tried to go down the nuclear path, with Egypt standing as the exception.

Conventional theories about the behavior of nations would explain these differences in terms of the perception of threat from neighbors as the motive to adopt, or, conversely, would give credit to external, international pressure for a decision not to adopt. But, as Solingen shows, these theories poorly explain actual behavior. She finds that some states that would be expected to go nuclear to protect themselves from threats do not do so, while others whose borders are safe move ahead. Similarly external pressure is not as predictive as its proponents maintain.

If a perception of threat determined decisions to develop nuclear weapons, then the international community ought to seek to reduce perceptions of external threat and, perhaps, use the stick of sanctions to influence behavior. While these tactics may help, they have by no means been magic bullets.

Solingen argues that nuclear decisions are closely tied to domestic politics and especially to the extent that a nation's leaders value their nation's integration into the global economy. If national leaders see global economic integration as essential to their domestic political standing, they are likely to foreswear the nuclear option. Solingen provides a truly impressive and detailed analysis of the domestic politics of these nine nations. Anyone reading her chapters will be struck by the richness of the discussion of domestic politics and nuclear logics, and by the lack of sophistication that often characterizes current debates about proliferation. Solingen makes a forceful and challenging argument that in order to curtail proliferation we should focus on political struggles within nations. Our strategy should also entail linking nations to the global economy in a way that national leaders (both those currently in power and those on the horizon) will see non-proliferation as advantageous to themselves.

Solingen does not presume to have all the answers, and is careful to place limits on what her remarkable analysis can tell policymakers. But the cautions she offers about how sanctions can influence domestic politics either away from or toward the nuclear option, should be carefully examined. Clearly, she has made the case that an understanding of internal political dynamics, rather than a somewhat cartoonish portrait of misbehaving nations to be managed with carrots and sticks, can go a long way toward making the world safer. A model of thorough, creative and challenging research, Nuclear Logics is a book that should change how we think about an issue central to the world's survival. It is likely to hold its relevance for another 50 years.

John Gaus Award and Lectureship

The John Gaus Lecture is given 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: J. Edward Kellough, chair, University of Georgia; Michael J. Preston, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; and Barbara S. Romzek, University of Kansas.

Recipient: Donald F. Kettl, University of Pennsylvania

Citation: The American Political Science Association confers the 2008 John Gaus award on Donald F. Kettl in recognition of a “lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.” Dr. Kettl is the Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is on the faculty of the department of political acience. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Dr. Kettl is a prolific scholar whose work has significantly advanced the fields of political science and public administration. He has authored or edited 24 books or monographs and more than 60 refereed journal articles and book chapters. These works include The Politics of the Administrative Process with James Fesler (editions in 1991, 1996, 2005, and 2008), which provides a classic review of the interplay between politics and public administration, and The Transformation of Governance (2002) and System Under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics, both of which address recent issues associated with governmental reform. Other major books have tackled such important topics as the operation of our political institutions, the global phenomenon of the new public management movement, disaster management, civil service reform, deficit politics, environmental policy, and public leadership. The author of one letter nominating Dr. Kettl for the Gaus Award noted that “the nature of government and its institutions is indeed changing dramatically in response to both national and global pressures. The emergent implications of these changes are significant and complex. Don Kettl's analyses of these transformations provide some of the most trenchant perspectives for better understanding both the changes themselves and their likely impact.”

Dr. Kettl has consulted broadly for government organizations at all levels, in the United States and abroad. He was an advisor on the first Volcker Commission report, he was instrumental and active in the Brookings Institution's assessment of the Clinton administration's effort to reinvent government, he has worked with both major parties as they attempted to design reform legislation, and he has testified more than a dozen times before Congress on issues of administrative change and reform. He is also a regular columnist for Governing magazine, which is read by state and local government officials around the country.

He has served the American Political Science Association, the American Society for Public Administration, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, and the National Academy of Public Administration in numerous capacities with distinction. He has served also as program chair for national conferences and as a member of the Executive Committee of the American Political Science Association's Organized Section on Public Administration.

Previous honors include the Warner W. Stockberger Achievement Award of the International Public Management Association for Human Resources for outstanding contributions in the field of public sector personnel management (2007); the Donald C. Stone Award of the American Society for Public Administration for significant contributions to the field of intergovernmental management (2005); Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration for the best book published in public administration, for System Under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics (2006) and for The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for the 21st Century (2003); the Charles H. Levine Memorial Award of the American Society for Public Administration, in recognition of contributions to research, teaching, and outreach (1998); and the Marshall E. Dimock Award of the American Society for Public Administration, for the best lead article in Public Administration Review (1990). He is also a fellow with the National Academy of Public Administration and a Shareholder in the Green Bay Packers.

Dr. Kettl holds the Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. Prior to his appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, he taught at Columbia University, the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Hubert H. Humphrey Award

The Hubert H. Humphrey Award is given in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist.

Award Committee: Jack H. Knott, chair, University of Southern California; Ester Rachel Fuchs, Columbia University; and Charles P. Henry, University of California, Berkeley

Recipient: Henry G. Cisneros, CityView Corporation

Citation: The 2008 Humphrey Award recognizes a respected and influential voice in American political life. This year's award honors former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and four-term mayor of San Antonio, Texas, Henry G. Cisneros.

As a member of President Clinton's cabinet, Secretary Cisneros was assigned America's housing and community development portfolio. He is credited with initiating the revitalization of many of the nation's public housing developments and with formulating policies that contributed to a record homeownership rate.

Mr. Cisneros' political acumen, intellectual aplomb, and exceptional ability to work within the system were evident from the earliest days of his career. Upon earning his doctorate from George Washington University, he returned to San Antonio. There he found an increasingly disaffected west side of poor and mostly Hispanic communities chaffing under the white-dominated Good Government League (GGL) that had governed the city for two decades. Following a vigorous campaign, he was elected to the City council at age 27 as the CGL candidate

In 1981, Mr. Cisneros became the first Hispanic American mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, Texas. He was re-elected in 1983 with an unprecedented 93% of the vote. During his four terms in office, he was known for a bi-partisan approach to governance that helped rebuild the city's economic base and spurred the creation of jobs through massive infrastructure and downtown improvements.

Cisneros grew up in a middle-class community on the fringe of San Antonio's west side. He completed his bachelor of arts and a masters degree in urban and regional planning from Texas A&M University. He earned a masters degree in public administration from Harvard University and a doctorate from George Washington University in the present-day Trachtenberg School of Political Science and Public Administration,

He has served as president of the National League of Cities, chairman of the National Civic League, deputy chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, board member of the Rockefeller Foundation, and presently as national chairman of the After-School All-Stars, board member for Latino Public Broadcasting, and member of the U.S. Program Advisory Panel for the Gates Foundation. He has also been the author, editor, or collaborator of several books including: Interwoven Destinies: Cities and the Nation; Opportunity and Progress: A Bipartisan Platform for National Housing Policy; and Casa y Comunidad: Latino Home and Neighborhood Design. After leaving the Clinton administration and a three-year stint as president and chief operating officer for Univision, Cisneros launched City View, a national housing investor providing financing for urban in-fill housing. Here he continues to pursue a passion for addressing low-income housing needs in urban communities.

This year's Hubert H. Humphrey award recognizes the many achievements of an outstanding leader, whose talents and efforts have made him an influential voice in American public police debates.

James Madison Award

The James Madison Award is given to an American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science. It is one of the highest accolades of the profession.

Award Committee: Toni-Michelle Travis, chair, George Mason University; James L. Gibson, Washington University, St. Louis; and Rodney E. Hero, Princeton University

Recipient: Theodore J. Lowi, Cornell University

Citation: The Madison Award is among the most prestigious awards given to a political scientist. We are fortunate to live in an era in which many individuals legitimately contend for this recognition. This committee has decided that one political scientist—Theodore “Ted” Lowi—deserves this recognition more than all others.

Ted Lowi's contributions to political science are indeed numerous and distinguished. Elizabeth Sanders, also of Cornell University, in her article “The Contributions of Theodore Lowi to Political Analysis and Democratic Theory,” begins with the assertion that: “Lowi, like Gaul, can be divided into three parts:

(1) the policy analysis (arenas of power) scheme; (2) democratic theory (juridical democracy, the critique of pluralism, rule of law); and (3) constitutional advocacy centering on designs for parliamentary government” (574). Most political scientists, however, know Lowi by his book entitled The End of Liberalism (1969) and through such enduring concepts as “interest group liberalism” and “juridical democracy.” These concepts have changed the way that scholars view the deliberation and policy making process carried out by legislative bodies and groups.

Much of what we understand of interest group liberalism stems from Lowi's incisive analysis in The End of Liberalism. Lowi's work has long devoted considerable attention to what judicial scholars now refer to as the “separation-of-powers game.” As it turns out, the art of making statutes is typically insufficiently precise to ensure that the will of the legislature gets implemented. Lowi contends that by constructing vague legislation the legislature is delegating its powers to the president, the bureaucracy, and the courts. Moreover, poorly written laws provide ample opportunity for interest groups to assert their interests. Interest group liberalism was a critical issue at the time Lowi wrote the book; this concept remains one of the single most important problems of governance today. Indeed, The End of Liberalism may well be one of the most widely read books in the discipline of political science.

Lowi recognized the importance of the state well before many other political scientists. As one of the first “post-behavioral” political scientists, Lowi believes that institutions matter. In keeping with this belief, one of his numerous contributions to political science has been to convince many others that the structures of politics have much to do with political outputs and outcomes.

Professor Lowi holds high esteem for the study, use, and function of law in society, reflecting in part his training in judicial process and constitutional law. According to Lowi, law can limit the influence of self-interested groups, empower individuals by informing them of what is and is not legal action, and contribute to democratic accountability. For Lowi, law originates in the legislature, not in the executive office or the bureaucracy, and state dominated by the legislature is central to Lowi's view of democratic effectiveness.

The End of Liberalism stands on its own as sufficient grounds for awarding Professor Lowi the 2008 APSA Madison Award. Nonetheless, Lowi has made a variety of other contributions throughout his career as a scholar and political scientist. He has been a gifted and selfless teacher and a mentor to many. APSA President-Elect Peter Katzenstein, and fellow Cornell University faculty member, states that: “Through his teaching Ted has left an indelible imprint on Cornell's Government Department. Problem characterization and concept specification were paramount in his teaching. He also has a special gift of empowering students through the sheer excitement with which he listens to their ideas.” Lowi has also been an inspiring critic of disengaged, apolitical political science. During his 1991 APSA Presidential Address, Lowi challenged his fellow political scientists to “meet our own intellectual needs while serving the public interest” (APSR 86 [1]): 6). Over the course of his career, he has written nearly 200 articles and essays and at least 18 books—including his recurrent contributions to two American government textbooks. Indeed, his most recent work—Hyperpolitics, with Mauro Calise—is an interactive political science browser blending conceptual definition and theory development. One sees in the corpus of his work an unusual blend of political philosophy, democratic theory, policy analysis, and institutionalism. Surely these are among the themes that Lowi addresses in his forthcoming book, with colleague Isaac Kramnick, entitled The Norton Anthology of American Political Thought.

Professor Lowi is widely admired in the discipline for his scholarship, service, and dedication. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Professor Lowi has been recognized with some of the highest awards of our discipline, including the presidency of both the American Political Science Association (1990–1991) and the International Political Science Association (1997–2000; president emeritus, 2000–2003). An APSA survey found that Lowi was regarded as the single most significant political scientist in the 1970s. As IPSA president, Lowi was instrumental in getting the 2003 International Congress to meet in Africa for the first time. In 1996, The Women's Caucus for Political Science named Lowi an “Outstanding Mentor of Women in Political Science.” Throughout his entire career, Lowi has received numerous awards and accolades from colleagues, as befits a scholar of his caliber.

Finally, we note that, in addition to being a world-class political scientist, Ted Lowi is a kind, decent, and caring person. We can think of few individuals who combine such outstanding intellectual and personal qualities. Peter Katzenstein, states that: “As a colleague, Ted is always a source of inspiration—due to his accomplishments, intellectual ambition and impact, and, most importantly, for his generosity of spirit. It is deeply gratifying to see one of the Association's most prestigious honors bestowed upon our beloved friend and colleague.”

Therefore, it is with great honor that we award the American Political Science Association 2008 James Madison Award to Theodore Lowi, a scholar, mentor, and student of political science, whose service to the discipline and body of scholarship is unmatched in its influence and contribution.

Carey McWilliams Award

The Carey McWilliams Award honors a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.

Award Committee: Thomas E. Mann, chair, The Brookings Institution; Michael C. Dawson, University of Chicago; Robert Y. Shapiro, Columbia University Recipient: National Public Radio Citation: The Carey McWilliams

Award is presented each year to recognize “a major contribution to our understanding of politics.” The language of the award was carefully chosen to emphasize the ties between journalism and political science. The 2008 award recognizes not an individual journalist but an entire news organization.

National Public Radio (NPR) is an extraordinarily rich news resource for a large public audience. Morning Edition, the second most listened to national radio program, attracts 13 million listeners a week. All Things Considered ranks fourth. A panoply of other programs complement these blockbusters. NPR as a whole gets more than 30 million total listeners a week. Between 1996 and 2006, its audience doubled. During a time in which news budgets are being slashed and an international presence shrunk, NPR is investing additional resources to expand its news resources and add staff. Its increased focus on international news has been especially notable. NPR currently has 18 foreign bureaus, including nine that have opened since 2000 in Kabul and Baghdad. Fully one-third of its news coverage is devoted to international news. Recent stories from China hours after its devastating earthquake set a standard for excellence and timeliness.

Political scientists have found its coverage of politics, governance, and policymaking at home and abroad essential to their teaching, research, and engagement in public affairs. NPR's morning, evening, and weekend news programs are hosted by strikingly informed and articulate journalists; their news reports are thoroughly reported and produced by talented journalists; the range and depth of topics addressed by NPR is breathtaking; and their political analysis is blissfully free of the ideological and partisan rants so commonplace on talk radio and cable news programs.

NPR has also helped lead the way among so-called mainstream media organizations to tap the potential of the Internet. Recordings of full interviews, video supplements to stories, related historical and statistical materials, and links to related sources routinely appear on the NPR web site.

We are delighted to recognize the excellence and utility of one of (and possibly the) most valuable and respected media organizations in America.