Center for Political Studies
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan
P.O. Box 1248
Ann Arbor, MI
48106-1248
Voice: (734) 763-1348
Fax: (734) 764-3341
Announcements
Ron Inglehart named the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Professor in Democracy, Democratization and Human Rights
Ron Inglehart has been named the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Professor in Democracy, Democratization and Human Rights in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan.
John Jackson and Walter Mebane named members of first class of Fellows of the Society for Political Methodology
John Jackson and Walter Mebane have been named members of the first class of Fellows of the Society for Political Methodology. Selection "honors individuals who have made outstanding scholarly contributions to the development of political methodology, and whose methodological work has had a major international impact on subsequent scholarship in the field, in the discipline more broadly, and where appropriate in other areas."
Ted Brader wins the Emerging Scholar Award of the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior section of APSA
Ted Brader has been awarded the 2009 Emerging Scholar Award for the Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior section of the American Political Science Association. The Emerging Scholar Award is awarded to the "top scholar in the field who is within 10 years or her or his Ph.D."
Rob Franzese named Vice President of The Society for Political Methodology
Rob Franzese has been named Vice President of The Society for Political Methodology for the period 2009-2010. The Society for Political Methodology is the Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association.
Ron Inglehart named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Ron Inglehart has been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, "a prestigious society that recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in scholarly and professional fields".
Scott Page receives the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award
Scott Page has received the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, which is given to faculty members at the University of Michigan who have exhibited outstanding leadership in the area of cultural diversity. Much of Scott's current research has been on the topic of diversity; you can read more about this work on his website at "http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~spage/diversity.html".
Mark Tessler named a Carnegie Scholar
Mark Tessler has been named a Carnegie Scholar. His award from the Carnegie Corporation recognizes and supports "innovative individuals whose research will extend understanding of issues related to intellectual and policy developments in Islam and Muslim Communities."
John Jackson named a winner of the 2009 Rackham Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award
John Jackson has been named a winner of the 2009 Rackham Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award. This award "honors exceptional achievements in scholarly research and/or creative endeavors, teaching, service and other activities that have brought distinction to the University of Michigan."
An Evaluation of the Methdology of the 2008 Pre-Election Primary Polls
The AAPOR Ad Hoc Committee on the 2008 Presidential Primary Polling has released their report "An Evaluation of the Methdology of the 2008 Pre-Election Primary Polls." The committee was chaired by Michael W. Traugott
Announcement of 2009 Summer Institute on EITM (Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models) at the University of Michigan
The University of Michigan will host the eighth annual Summer Institute on EITM: Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models this June 15th through July 10th, 2009. Applications are now being accepted. The application deadline is February 15, 2009. See www.fordschool.umich.edu/eitm for application details and materials.
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), EITM is training a new generation of scholars to integrate theoretical models more closely, effectively, and productively with empirical evaluation of those models. The Summer Institutes are highly interactive training programs for advanced graduate students and junior faculty. They are led by teams of scholars from across the discipline who are working at the forefront of such empirical-theoretical integration.
Summer Institutes generally accept 25 participants - advanced graduate students and junior faculty - through a competitive selection process. Tuition, dormitory lodging, meals, and domestic travel are covered for participants through a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Graduate students will benefit most from the program if they are committed to using both theoretical models and empirical data in their dissertations. They should have some training in both formal methodology and quantitative analysis, and advanced training in at least one of these areas. We also welcome applications from junior faculty looking to improve their defended dissertation in a direction that incorporates EITM, or who are embarking on an EITM-style post-dissertation project.
A recent addition to the EITM Summer Institutes is the participation of a team of Mentoring Faculty-in-Residence (MFR). We expect that MFRs will be drawn from the ranks of tenure-track or recently tenured political science faculty who use EITM methods in their research. Each MFR will have a mentoring group, consisting of a small number of EITM participants. MFRs will work closely with his/her mentees, helping them integrate ideas and methods from the Institute into their own projects. MFRs will also work closely with lecturing faculty to supplement the classroom instruction, develop their own teaching materials, and make presentations of their own current research. Additional information and application materials for MFRs are also available at www.fordschool.umich.edu/eitm. The application deadline for MFRs is also February 15, 2009.
Please contact Elisabeth Gerber at eitm@fordschool.umich.edu if you have any questions.
Anna Grzymala-Busse Receives Ed A. Hewett Book Prize from AAASS
Anna Grzymala-Busse has received the Ed A. Hewett Book Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) for her book, Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies. The award is for an outstanding publication on the political economy of the centrally planned ecnomies of the former Soviet Union and East Central Europe and their transitional successors.
Jim Morrow Selected as President-Elect of The Peace Science Society International
Jim Morrow has been selected to be President-Elect of The Peace Science Society International, beginning in October 2008. The Peace Science Society describes itself on its website as "a scientific association of individuals developing theory and methods for the study of peace."
John Jackson Receives 2008 Political Methodology Career Achievement Award
John Jackson has received the 2008 Career Achievement Award from the Society for Political Methodology, a section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The APSA website describes the Political Methodology Career Achievement Award as honoring "an outstanding career of intellectual accomplishment and service to the profession in the Political Methodology field."
Anna Grzymala-Busse (with Keith Darden) Receives 2008 Luebbert Article Award
Anna Grzymala-Busse has received the Gregory Luebbert Article Award from the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The Luebbert Article Award is for the best article in the field of comparative politics published in the previous two years. The award, presented in 2008, was for her article "The Great Divide" with co-author Keith Darden of Yale, which appeared in the October 2006 issue of the journal World Politics.
Rob Salmond Receives 2008 Carl Albert Award
Rob Salmond has received the 2008 Carl Albert Dissertation Award from the Legislative Studies section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) for his dissertation "Parliamentary Question Times: How Legislative Accountability Mechanisms Affect Citizens and Politics." The Carl Albert Award is awarded annually to the best dissertation in the area of legislative studies.
Jim Morrow Awarded 2009 CICS International Development and Security Fellowship
Jim Morrow has been awarded a 2009 International Development and Security Fellowship from the University of Michigan Center for International and Comparative Studies (CICS). As indicated on the CICS website, Jim's research "addresses international relations theory, explanations for why conflict and cooperation occur in international politics, and the application of noncooperative game theory, drawn from economics, to explain international conflict."
John Jackson Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
John Jackson has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as part of its 2008 Class of Fellows. As described on its website (http://www.amacad.org/), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is "an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems" and its elected members are "leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs."
Hanes Walton (with Tasha Philpot) Receives the Best Paper Award from the American Journal of Political Science
Hanes Walton has received the 2008 Best Paper award from the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), for the best paper appearing in the journal in the previous year. Professor Walton received the award for his paper with Tasha Philpot of the University of Texas at Austin, titled "One of Our Own: Black Female Candidates and the Voters Who Support Them" and appearing in the January 2007 issue of AJPS. The award was presented at the 2008 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), with additional information appearing on the MPSA website.
2008 Organski Award Winners
The Center for Political Studies is pleased to announce the winners of the 2008 Kenneth Organski Scholars Fund award:
Papia Debroy and Barb Koremenos for their project, "Achieving Breadth and Depth in International Multilateral Agreements: The Strategic Design of Membership Provisions."
In this project, Papia and Barbara are trying to better understand the conditions under which states form and find success in multilateral agreements, especially those with both depth and breadth. They will test the fundamental hypothesis that due to the types of cooperation problems that states face, as well as different payoff structures for cooperation across issue areas, actors will design deliberate and strategic membership provisions to achieve deep cooperation. They plan to use case studies and large scale statistical analysis of economic and environmental agreements to test his hypothesis.
View the Koremenos/Debroy 2008 Winning Organski Proposal
Congratulations to Papia and Barb!
The Kenneth Organski Scholars Fund supports graduate students doing quantitative research in international politics and or political development. A.F.K. Organski was a distinguished scholar and a legendary teacher for many years at the University of Michigan. He is best known for his theoretical and empirical work on political capacity and demographic and power transitions. In prior years, Organski Scholar funds have also been used as matching funds allowing several graduate students to compete for funding to support their doctoral research.
2008 Pierce Award Winners
The Center for Political Studies is pleased to announce the 2008 Roy Pierce Scholars Fund award winners. Thanks to the generosity of the donors, we were able to make two awards this year.
The first award went to Kenichi Ariga and Rob Franzese. Their proposal is titled, "Empirical Estimation of the Electoral Value of the Party Label in Developed Democracies."
Most current research in comparative politics and political economy emphasizes the impact of political institutions (parliamentary vs. presidential, federal vs. unitary, etc.), but misses the critical roles that parties and the intensity of party identification play in the electoral process and on policies and policy outcomes. Kenichi is currently creating a complex dataset of district- and candidate- level election results across 18 countries over the post-war era. The Pierce Award will enable Kenichi to analyze the data and develop appropriate statistical models over the summer. Importantly, this project is central to his dissertation and the Pierce Award will enable him to complete his dissertation on a timely basis.
View the Franzese/Ariga 2008 Winning Organski Proposal
The second award goes to Johannes Urpelainen and Jana von Stein. Their proposal is titled "International Non-Governmental Organizations and Government Repression: When is Campaigning Effective?''
As you know, International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have become increasingly visible actors in world politics in recent years. Their activities blur the line between "domestic" and "international" in interesting ways. Indeed, NGOs lobby not only in Washington, but also in New York and Geneva; they monitor behaviors that have traditionally fallen within the purview of nation-states but now have important international implications; and they push both for the international creation of agreements and for domestic ratification.
Although NGOs are only now beginning to attract widespread interest in the International Relations literature, some research has for a number of years been interested in what these groups do and what effects they have. With few exceptions, these scholars concur that NGOs "matter" - i.e., they have an impact on important outcomes such as human rights, economic development, and/or environmental protection. Domestic activists can channel information and provide evidence of "bad behavior" to powerful NGOs such as Amnesty International. The latter, in turn, can exert pressure on powerful democracies to sanction the very governments that are engaging in "bad behavior."
Johannes and Jana will combine their substantive interests and respective methodological skills to produce research that sheds light on some of the most pressing questions about NGOs. They are both interested in how NGOs work and whether they "matter"; Johannes's comparative advantage is in game theory, whereas Jana's is in statistical methods. By collaborating on this project, they will: (1) develop game-theoretic models of NGO/state interactions, with observable empirical predictions; (2) test those predictions quantitatively. They will use the Pierce Award to support Johannes over the summer and to hire an undergraduate research assistant to assist with his research project.
View the von Stein/Urpelainen 2008 Winning Organski Proposal
Congratulations to these four scholars!
The Roy Pierce Scholars Fund provides summer support for two graduate students in the University of Michigan Political Science Department to work with a member of CPS faculty. The Pierce Fund honors Roy Pierce, who for almost 50 years was associated with Michigan's Department of Political Science. He became a researcher in the Center for Political Studies in the 1960s and remained active there until his death. Roy was a leading scholar of French politics and a creative practitioner of genuinely comparative research.