Organski Awards

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.

Application Process

The following link provides all the details about the competition. It includes the award amount, eligibility, and proposal instructions.

Application information and instructions   * Deadline is February 28, 2013.

If you have any questions about the award or the application process, please visit the Contact Us page.

 

Testimonials

 

Papia DebroyThe Organski Award allowed me to pursue a project of great interest. I noticed that international cooperative agreements with similar goals had very different criteria for membership. While some environmental agreements about clean air only have two participants, others have more than 100 members. Because the makeup and size of membership to an agreement is important to determining whether there will be successful cooperation, I wanted to know when countries created multi-lateral agreements, and how they designed the multilateral efforts to achieve deep cooperation. This experience has been extremely useful to me as a student: I've learned much more about how ideas in their formulation develop into larger research projects, how theoretical foundations lead to good research designs, and how to subject theoretical work to the scrutiny of empirical testing.
   - Papia Debroy, 2008

 

Michelle Allendoerfer The Organski Award provided me the opportunity to pursue an important research question -- why states sign human rights treaties and the role public opinion plays in these decisions. I learned about the process of developing an idea and seeing it through various stages: building a dataset, writing a literature review, conducting analysis, and presenting the paper. In addition, the project helped me polish my own dissertation idea and gave me the opportunity to become more familiar with the literature on human rights and available data resources. Thanks to the Organski Award, the experience of presenting at the International Studies Association Conference was also very valuable. I got helpful feedback and was able to make some important contacts.
   - Michelle Allendoerfer, 2007

 

Daniel Corstange The Organski Award was instrumental in helping me conduct a nationally-representative public opinion survey in Yemen, the first such survey in the country. The survey itself comprised face-to-face interviews with over 1,400 Yemenis of all walks of life, and included questions on their views on democracy and alternative government institutions, the proper role for religion in politics, and their views on tribalism and the use of tribal law to resolve conflicts in society. In part because the Organski Award enabled me to conduct this very rare and innovative field research, my dissertation won the American Political Science Association's Best Fieldwork Award in 2008. I could not have conducted this survey without the resources provided by the Organski Fund, for which I am extremely grateful.
   - Daniel Corstange, 2006

Donations

The Organski Awards are funded entirely through donations. If you would be interested in contributing financial support, you may do so by clicking the “Give Online” button below.

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