The APSA Nominating Committee met in February 2018, and has nominated the following candidates for APSA council positions. Each has agreed to serve if elected. The candidates, along with any additional nominations by petition, will be put to a vote by the full membership via electronic ballot in July.
The 2017–18 nominating committee consists of chair Jennifer Merolla, University of California, Riverside, Scott Gehlbach, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago, Lee Ann Fujii, University of Toronto, Alfred Montero, Carleton College, and Todd Shaw, University of South Carolina.
PRESIDENT-ELECT (2018–2019)
Paula D. McClain, Duke University
Paula D. McClain is professor of political science and professor of public policy at Duke University, where she also serves as dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education. She has also directed APSA’s Ralph Bunche Summer Institute at Duke for more than twenty years.
McClain studies racial minority group politics—particularly interminority political and social competition. She has published in numerous journals, including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, and Politics, Groups and Identities. She also has coauthored three books:
• American Government in Black and White: Diversity and Democracy, Third Edition (Oxford University Press, 2017) which won APSA’s Race, Ethnicity and Politics section Best Book Award for a book published in 2010;
• “Can’t We All Get Along?” Racial and Ethnic Minorities in American Politics, Seventh Edition (Westview Press 2017) which won the 1996 Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America Award for Outstanding Scholarship on the Subject of Intolerance; and
• Race, Place and Risk: Black Homicide in Urban America (SUNY Press 1990) which won the National Conference of Black Political Scientists’ 1995 Best Book Award for a previously published book that has made a substantial and continuing contribution.
McClain has served as president of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA), and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. She has also been vice president of APSA, MPSA, and SPSA, as well as program chair or cochair for the annual meetings of all three organizations. She was also a vice president and program cochair for the 2003 International Political Science Association World Congress.
In 2014, McClain was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her numerous honors include the Duke University Blue Ribbon Diversity Award (2012), the Graduate School Mentoring Award (2010), the Frank J. Goodnow Award for contributions to the profession of political science (2007), a Meta Mentoring Award from the Women’s Caucus for Political Science of the APSA (2007), the Manning Dauer Award from SPSA (2015), and the Midwest Women’s Caucus of Political Science Outstanding Professional Achievement Award (2017).
Statement of Views: If elected president, I would bring to APSA my longstanding commitment to diversifying our discipline. For instance, I have worked to help push race, ethnicity, and politics into the mainstream of our discipline because those areas of research reveal much about the historical and current environment and politics of the United States. Similarly, every subfield contributes important research topics and questions, so no area and its scholars should be considered on the margins. As political scientists, we must also be catholic in our methodological approaches, so as not to privilege one approach or technique over others. This approach is important for the vibrancy of the discipline writ-large.
VICE PRESIDENTS (2018–2019)
Cathy J. Cohen, University of Chicago
Cathy J. Cohen is the David and Mary Winton Green Professor at the University of Chicago. She formerly served in numerous administrative position at the university, including chair of the Department of Political Science, director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and deputy provost for graduate education. Cohen is the author of two books, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press) and Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford University Press). She is also coeditor of the anthology Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader (NYU Press) with Kathleen Jones and Joan Tronto. Her articles have been published in numerous journals and edited volumes including the American Political Science Review, NOMOS, GLQ, Social Text, and the DuBois Review. Cohen has been active in APSA serving on the council, committees, and in numerous other capacities.
Cohen created and currently oversees two major research and public-facing projects: the GenForward Survey and the Black Youth Project. She is the recipient of numerous awards and is coeditor with Frederick Harris of a book series at Oxford University Press entitled Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities. In addition to her academic work, Cohen has been politically active, helping to create organizations such as the Audre Lorde Project and Scholars for Social Justice.
Statement of Views: I believe that APSA is an important institution that must provide critical leadership on issues relevant to the future of not only the discipline, but the structure of higher education more broadly. If elected Vice President, I plan to support efforts that will advance equity and diversity within the discipline, paying special attention not only to the distribution of bodies, but also to the distribution of power within our ranks. Similarly, I will encourage APSA to hold forums for our members where we can explore and discuss issues that will define the future of higher education such as the expansion of adjunct faculty, the ability of graduate students to unionize and the rising debt that students take on in pursuit of undergraduate and graduate education.
Lisa L. Martin, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Lisa L. Martin is professor of political science and associate dean of graduate education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her work focuses primarily on international institutions, international political economy, and international cooperation. Her work has also recently branched off to study gender bias in student evaluations of teaching and the geography of political economy. Current research projects include understanding variation in the exercise of informal influence in international organizations; the spatial distribution of disputed maritime borders; and political influences on the geographical distribution of foreign assistance within recipient countries. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and is the author of Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation (Princeton University Press, 2000) and Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton University Press, 1992). She recently edited the Oxford Handbook of the Political Economy of International Trade (2015). She has recently published in International Theory, PS: Political Science & Politics, and Perspectives on Politics. She has served as editor in chief of International Organization and associate editor of Quarterly Journal of Political Science. She has served in numerous capacities for the APSA, including secretary, Annual Meeting program cochair, chair of the Publications Committee, and division chair for the Annual Meeting.
Statement of Views: The discipline of political science combines rigorous theory and empirics with a commitment to understanding political dynamics throughout American society and the world. It thus has a vibrant internal dialogue, combined with engagement with practitioners and the broader society. APSA, through its conferences, publications, awards, and organizing activities, plays a vital role in encouraging and structuring both these internal and external dialogues. In all of my service activities, I have been committed to the pursuit of excellence, inclusion, and transparency. I would bring these same core values to my position in the association.
Dvora Yanow, Wageningen University
A political ethnographer and interpretive methodologist, I explore the generation and communication of knowing and meaning in policy and organizational settings. I am guest professor in Wageningen University’s Department of Social Sciences’ Communication, Philosophy, and Technology Subdepartment and affiliated researcher with the “RaceFaceID” research group, University of Amsterdam. There I study state-created categories for race-ethnic identity, immigrant integration policies, and citizen-making practices. I also investigate research ethics and their regulation; practice studies; and science/technology museums and the idea of science. My publications include Constructing “Race” and “Ethnicity” in America (2003), winner of two awards; “Culture and Organizational Learning” (coauthored; Journal of Management Inquiry 1994), also an award-winner; Interpretive Research Design (2012), with Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, which launched our coedited Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods; and our coedited Interpretation and Method, Second Edition (2014). I have held fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center and the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Institute for Global Cooperation Research (University of Duisburg-Essen) and several visiting positions, including at the Danish Institute for International Studies, the University of Strasbourg’s Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Vienna’s Institute for Advanced Studies, the University of Paris-Dauphine, and Shenyang’s Northeastern University (China).
APSA activities have included serving as Executive Council secretary, APSR editorial board member, founding cochair of the Theory, Policy, and Society [now Critical Policy Studies] Conference Group, and cofounder, Executive Committee cochair, and program cochair of the Interpretive Methodologies and Methods Conference Group. At WPSA I have served as council member and founding cochair of two sections: Immigration and Citizenship, and Interpretation and Methods. I created The Methods Café at APSA (2006) and WPSA (2005) with Peri Schwartz-Shea; we codirected the 2009 NSF Workshop on Interpretive Methodologies and Methods. When not at work, I sing early music, folkdance, and try to practice the violin/fiddle. http://wu.academia.edu/DvoraYanow
Statement of Views: Diversity. Pluralism. These two terms—the one in reference to demographics, the other, to methodology and methods—lie at the heart of my concerns. Should I be elected Vice President, I will work to sustain and expand the efforts of previous APSA leadership to ensure that diversity, in all its aspects, and methodological pluralism continue to permeate the discipline and the association, and even to grow in spaces where they have not flourished. Many in the US and around the world are currently immersed in reflecting on the challenges facing us all. I would like to see the professional association of political scientists be similarly self-reflective—and proactive.
COUNCIL (2018–2021)
Adam J. Berinsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Adam J. Berinsky is the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT. Berinsky received his BA from Wesleyan University in 1992 and his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2000. He is a specialist in the fields of political behavior and public opinion. He is primarily concerned with questions of representation and the relationship between the mass public and political leaders.
Berinsky is the author of Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America (Princeton University Press, 2004), In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and the editor of New Directions in Public Opinion (Routledge, 2017). He has also published articles in many academic journals in political science and psychology.
Berinsky has won several scholarly awards, is the recipient of multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He currently edits the University of Chicago Press’s Chicago Studies in American Politics book series. He is also the founding director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab. In 2013 he was awarded the Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research. In 2016, Berinsky was appointed a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow to study how political rumors spread and how they can be effectively debunked.
Within APSA, Berinsky has served on the executive councils of the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior section and the Experimental Research section. He has also served on award committees for the Political Methodology, Political Psychology, Experimental Research, and Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior sections.
Statement of Views: It is a privilege to be nominated to serve on the APSA Council. If elected, I would be very interested in working to help increase the communication between APSA and government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and private organizations to maximize the impact of political science in society. Our members across all subfields are doing important work that can help benefit the larger policymaking community. I am eager to help foster communication and collaboration between political scientists and political practitioners.
Ann O’M. Bowman, Texas A&M University
Ann O’M. Bowman is professor and Hazel Davis and Robert Kennedy Endowed Chair in Government and Public Service at the Bush School at Texas A&M University. Prior to joining the Bush School faculty in 2008, she was the James F. and Maude B. Byrnes Professor of Government in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. She received her doctorate in political science from the University of Florida. Her areas of expertise include state and local politics and management, intergovernmental relations, public policy, especially the substantive areas of environment, economic development, and land use. She has published more than 50 articles in various scholarly journals; and coauthored or coedited six scholarly books and two textbooks.
She is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a past-president of the Southern Political Science Association. She has held a Lincoln Government Fellowship at the National League of Cities in Washington, DC and received a Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award to Denmark. She won the Donald C. Stone Award for Research, given by the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society for Public Administration, and in 2016, she received the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Scholar Award from APSA’s Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations section.
Currently, Bowman is a member of the editorial advisory council of Publius and the editorial board of Public Administration Review and is a member of the advisory committee for the ICPSR’s summer program at the University of Michigan. Previously she served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Urban Affairs Review, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Cityscape, and State and Local Government Review. She has been active in APSA for many years, serving at different times as president of three organized sections: Public Policy, Urban Politics, and Federalism & Intergovernmental Relations.
Statement of Views: I see APSA as a big tent, one that advances the interests of political scientists in traditional and emerging subfields, in large and small institutions, throughout their careers. To maintain organizational resilience (and relevance), APSA must be committed to pursuing a blend of stability and change. I support a diverse APSA that is pluralistic, welcoming, and engaged; an organization that supports research and teaching, and when appropriate, weighs in on public debate. These are the values and perspectives that, if elected, I would bring to the council.
Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, Providence College
Julia S. Jordan-Zachery is professor of public and community service (formerly professor of political science) and director of the Black Studies Program at Providence College. She received her BA (Economics) from Brooklyn College and her PhD from the University of Connecticut. Jordan-Zachery is a Black feminist whose work focuses on public policy, representation, and Black women’s political articulations. She published Shadow Bodies: Black Women, Ideology, Representation, and Politics (2017). A previous work, Black Women, Cultural Images And Social Policy (2009) was selected for the 2010 Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics Anna Julia Cooper Outstanding Book Publication Award and 2009 National Conference of Black Political Scientists W. E B Dubois Best Book Award. Her article “Am I A Black Woman Or A Woman Who Is Black? A Few Thoughts On The Meaning Of Intersectionality” was among the top 50 articles downloaded and top 10 most read articles in Politics & Gender (October 2015). Her work also appeared in a number of journals, including Politics, Gender and Identities, Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, and National Political Science Review, among others.
Jordan-Zachery has been awarded the Joseph R. Accinno Teaching Award. She is president of the Association for Ethnic Studies. Along with Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Sharon Wright Austin, Angela K. Lewis, and Duchess Harris, she edits the National Political Science Review. She is a member of the advisory board for the Race, Representation, and American Political Institutions series (Lexington Press).
Jordan-Zachery has been active in the association. She served on various committees: Race Ethnicity and Politics (treasurer), exploratory ad hoc committee for the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, and the Mentoring Task Force.
Statement of Views: As a member of the APSA I will work to create space. My efforts would include creating and supporting career development opportunities for parenting/caregiver members. I dedicate much of my career to mentoring and hope to continue these efforts with specific focus on women of color and immigrant women. Finally, I want to work to bridge APSA and the “community” by creating opportunities for scholars to share their work with our community members and vice versa. Creating space affords opportunities for pluralism—theoretical and methodological—and recognizes that we are more than the research we produce; we are members of diverse communities. Creating space is an opportunity and commitment to fostering an environment were we can all flourish and thrive. I am committed to working to achieve such.
Lori J. Marso, Union College
Lori J. Marso is a feminist political theorist engaging an eclectic field of objects (theory, film, literature) and academic disciplines (on gender, race, postcolonial studies, queer theory, history of political thought). She is the Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Modern Historical and Literary Studies, and professor of political science at Union College in Schenectady, NY. Marso is the author, coeditor, or editor of several books, most recently Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter (Duke 2017), Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier (coedited with Bonnie Honig, Oxford 2016), and Fifty-One Key Feminist Thinkers (editor, Routledge, 2016). Her articles have received the Iris Marion Young and Susan Okin Award for Feminist Political Theory, the Contemporary Political Theory Award, the Marion Iris Prize, and the Betty Nesvold Women and Politics Award, and Marso was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities year-long writing fellowship. She was the winner of Union College’s campus wide teaching award, the Stilman Prize, in 2011, and has been a finalist for the prize several times.
She worked with several colleagues in political science and political theory when she was the “Critical Exchanges” editor for Contemporary Political Theory from 2014 to 2017, and, with Jill Frank, she is now the consulting editor for Political Theory (editor Lawrie Balfour). Marso has been the chair of the Foundations section of the APSA for the past four years, and before that, was a member of the board. She is also a member of the editorial board of Theory and Event, and Simone de Beauvoir Studies.
Marso has a broad view of the experiences of scholars at several kinds of institutions as she received her undergraduate degree at the University of South Dakota, graduate degrees at London School of Economics and New York University, started her teaching career at University of Texas at San Antonio where she taught for three years, and then moved to Union College where she has taught for 21 years.
Statement of Views: APSA is changing, no longer completely dominated by men in suits, and I am encouraged by increasing participation by female and nonwhite scholars. I want to further encourage members at all institutions, and with all roles—adjuncts, visitors, graduate students, and postdocs—to participate more broadly. I am also interested in the ways the APSA might serve its members who are targeted on free speech violations and may or may not be adequately supported by their institutions and the AAUP.
Charles Smith, University of California, Irvine
Charles “Tony” Smith received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego (2004), his JD from the University of Florida (1987). He is a professor in political science at the University of California, Irvine and associate dean of DCE. His research is grounded in the American judiciary but encompasses work in both comparative and international frameworks using a variety of methodologies. The unifying theme of the research is how institutions and the strategic interaction of political actors relate to the contestation over rights, law and courts, and democracy. He has published The Rise and Fall of War Crimes Trials: from Charles I to Bush II (Cambridge University Press), Gerrymandering in America: The House of Representatives, The Supreme Court, and The Future of Popular Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press), articles in American Journal of Political Science, Law & Society Review, Political Research Quarterly, Justice Systems Journal, International Political Science Review, Judicature, Journal of Human Rights, Election Law Journal, Studies in Law, Politics & Society, Human Rights Review, Journal of International Relations & Development, and New Political Science, among other journals. He has published chapters in edited volumes with Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Columbia University Press, and University of Pennsylvania Press, among others. He has edited a volume for Routledge and served as guest editor for special issues of the Journal of Human Rights and Human Rights Review. He has served in a variety of roles in APSA including president of the Sexuality & Politics section, chair of the LGBT Status Committee, and chair of the LGBT Caucus.
Statement of Views: APSA plays a critical role in the advancement and development of the careers and research of its members from graduate students to emeriti. Along with the sections and related groups, I view the Council as one of the main conduits through which the members can help the APSA best serve its membership. APSA draws its strength from the methodological and topical diversity of the research of its members as well as the geographic and institutional diversity and the diversity of innate and chosen identities of its members. APSA does its best when all of its constituent parts are given voice and taken seriously. If elected, I will strive to ensure our terrific and broad diversity continues to be recognized as our greatest strength and the organization does its best for every member.
Alberto Simpser, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México
Alberto Simpser is associate professor of political science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in his native Mexico City. He has a PhD in political science from Stanford University. His research interests include the political economy of development, democracy, election fraud, corruption, political culture, and political methodology. Prior to joining ITAM in 2014 he served on the faculty of the University of Chicago’s political science department as assistant professor. He was National Fellow at Stanford in 2011 and Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center in 2006.
He is the author of Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections (Cambridge University Press 2013), coeditor (with Tom Ginsburg) of Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge University Press 2014), and has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Latin American Research Review, and Annual Review of Political Science, among others. His paper “The Intergenerational Transmission of Norms About Corruption” received the 2014 Sage Best Paper Award, and his ongoing work on elections and civic culture received a 2017 Governance Initiative Grant from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.
Simpser has served the association as cochair of the Political Economy Division for the 2016 Annual Meeting, committee member for the 2017 McGillivray Best Paper Award of the Political Economy section, and committee member for the 2015 Sage Best Paper Award of the Comparative Democratization section. He currently is a member of the Planning Committee for the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, and a member of ITAM’s Institutional Review Board.
Statement of Views: It would be a privilege to serve on the APSA Council. If elected, I will work to further the Association’s core objectives of promoting research and teaching, strengthening the professional environment, and representing the profession’s diversity. As a US-trained, foreign based political scientist, I believe that there exist opportunities for broadening APSA’s ties with our peers outside of the US, who constitute a community of growing size, importance, and diversity. Second, a growing body of evidence suggests that there is room for improving the professional environment of graduate students and junior faculty, both in terms of personal wellbeing and of relationships with superiors and peers. I would encourage a discipline-wide conversation about standards of conduct in advising, collaboration, and promotion. Relatedly, I would propose a review of existing avenues for airing and addressing interpersonal conflicts in our profession with a view to improving the practical effectiveness of such avenues.
Rocío Titiunik, University of Michigan
Rocío Titiunik is the James Orin Murfin Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. She specializes in quantitative methodology for the social sciences, with emphasis on quasi-experimental methods for causal inference and political methodology. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political science, political economy, and applied statistics, particularly on the development and application of quantitative methods to the study of political institutions. Her recent methodological research includes the development of statistical methods for the analysis and interpretation of treatment effects and program evaluation, with emphasis on regression discontinuity (RD) designs. Her recent substantive research centers on democratic accountability and the role of party systems in developing democracies. Titiunik’s work appears in various journals in the social sciences and statistics, including the the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Econometrica, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. In 2016, she received the Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Political Methodology, which honors a young researcher who is making notable contributions to the field of political methodology. She is a member of the leadership team of the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) Summer Institute, member-at-large of the Society for Poltical Methodology, and member of Evidence in Governance and Politics. She is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Political Science and Political Analysis, and is also incoming associate editor for Political Science Research and Methods. Titiunik was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she completed her undergraduate education at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She received her PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC, Berkeley in May 2009. She joined the Michigan faculty as assistant professor in the fall of 2010, after spending one year there as a postdoctoral fellow.
Statement of Views: Political science is a rich and diverse social science that combines scholars from a wide variety of intellectual backgrounds. As the leading professional organization representing political science, APSA is in a unique position to foster synergies between scholars working in different subfields and intellectual traditions. These synergies are, in my view, essential to improve our understanding of the social world and develop effective public policies. The integration of all of political science’s strengths is vitally important to the successful accumulation of knowledge in our discipline.
Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago
Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College and the codirector of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. She is also associate faculty in anthropology and a coeditor of the University of Chicago book series, Studies in Practices of Meaning. Her publications include two books: Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (1999; with a new preface, 2015) and Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen (2008). Among her articles are the following: “Conceptualizing ’Culture’: Possibilities for Political Science” (2002); “Concepts and Commitments in the Study of Democracy” (2004), “Ethnography as an Interpretive Enterprise” (2009), “Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science” (2010), “Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria” (2013), and “Scientific Knowledge, Liberalism, and Empire: American Political Science in the Modern Middle East” (2016). She is the recipient of the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award and an NSF fellowship. Her third book, Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria, is currently under review at the University of Chicago Press. Based on extensive fieldwork, the book is situated at the intersection of political theory, comparative politics, and cultural anthropology. In addition, she is coediting Conspiracy/Theory (with the anthropologist Joseph Masco, in preparation) and continues to teach in and organize the interpretive social science modules at the Institute for Qualitative Multi-Methods Research in Syracuse. She intends to begin work on a fourth book on violence and representation in the fall, and to complete a book of essays on interpretive social science.
Statement of Views: I believe in the importance of fostering conditions leading to expanded and enhanced forms of diversity, inclusion, and equity in the discipline. If elected, I shall work tirelessly to cultivate appreciation for important contributions to scholarship that can be routinely overlooked or under-recognized. As a team player who believes in presumptive generosity and mutual respect, I hope to have the opportunity to engage with colleagues over how to improve the discipline.
