Politics and History Section Award Recipients
More on the Politics and History section
J. David Greenstone Book Prize
Mary Parker Follett Prize
Walter Dean Burnham Dissertation Award
Best Paper Award
J. David Greenstone Book Prize
The J. David Greenstone Book Prize recognizes the best book in history and politics in the past two calendar years.
| 2025 | Agustina Paglayan, University of California, San Diego Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education. Princeton University Press, 2024. |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention Emily Zackin, Johns Hopkins University and Chloe N. Thurston, Northwestern University The Political Development of American Debt Relief. University of Chicago Press, 2024. |
| 2023 | Tomila V. Lankina, London School of Economics The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia: From Imperial Bourgeoisie to Post-Communist Middle Class. Cambridge University Press, 2022. |
| 2023 | Honorable Mention H. Zeynep Bulutgil, University College London The Origins of Secular Institutions: Ideas, Timing and Organization. Oxford University Press, 2022. |
| 2023 | Honorable Mention Shivaji Mukherjee, University of Toronto Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India. Cambridge University Press, 2021. |
| 2022 | Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation 1790-1870. Harvard University Press, 2021 |
| 2022 | Honorable Mention Peter Swenson, Yale University Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction and Money in American Medicine. Yale University Press, 2021 |
| 2021 | Henrik Spruyt, Northwestern University The World Imagined: Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian International Societies. Cambridge University Press, 2020. |
| 2021 | Boris Heersink, Fordham University and Jeff Jenkins, University of Southern California Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968. Cambridge University Press, 2020. |
| 2021 | Jeff Jenkins, University of Southern California Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968. Cambridge University Press, 2020. |
| 2019 | Jessica Trounstine, University of California, Merced |
| 2019 | David Alexander Bateman, Cornell University |
| 2019 | Honorable Mention |
| 2018 | Paul Frymer, Princeton University Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion. Princeton University Press, 2017. |
| 2017 | Eric Schickler, University of California, Berkeley Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965. Princeton University Press, 2016. |
| 2017 | Sarah Staszak, Princeton University No Day in Court: Access to Justice and the Politics of Judicial Retrenchment. Oxford University Press, 2015. |
| 2017 | Honorable Mention Sheena Chestnut Greitens, University of Missouri Dictators and Their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence. Cambridge University Press, 2016. |
| 2016 | Robert Mickey, University of Michigan Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America’s Deep South, 1944-1972. Princeton University Press, 2015 |
| 2015 | Erik Engstrom, University of California, Davis Party Ballots, Reform and the Transformation of America’s Electoral System. Cambridge University Press, 2014 |
| 2015 | Samuel Kernell, University of California, San Diego Party Ballots, Reform and the Transformation of America’s Electoral System. Cambridge University Press, 2014 |
| 2015 | Adria Lawrence, Yale University Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2013 |
| 2014 | Michele Dauber, Stanford University The Sympathetic State (University of Chicago Press, 2013) |
| 2014 | Ira Katznelson, Columbia University Fear Itself (Liveright, 2013) |
| 2012 | Julian Go, Boston University Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to Present (Cambridge University Press, 2011) |
| 2011 | James Mahoney, Northwestern University Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2010) |
| 2010 | Eileen McDonagh, Northeastern University The Motherless State: Women’s Political Leadership and American Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2009) |
| 2010 | Anthony Chen, Northwestern University The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972 (Princeton University Press, 2009) |
| 2009 | Karen Barkey, Columbia University Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2008) |
| 2008 | Keith Whittington, Princeton University Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History (Princeton University Press, 2007) |
| 2007 | Istvan Hont, University of Cambridge Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation State in Historical Perpective (Harvard University Press, 2005) |
| 2007 | Marie Gottschalk, University of Pennsylvania The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge University Press) |
| 2006 | Ken Kersch, Princeton University Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press, 2004) |
| 2006 | Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford University Press, 2005) |
| 2005 | Richard Valelly, Swarthmore College The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (University of Chicago Press 2004) |
| 2005 | Honorable Mention Kathleen Thelen, Northwestern University How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan(Cambridge University Press, 2004) |
| 2004 | Sonja Amadae, Eugene Lange College, The New School “Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism” (University of Chicago Press, 2003) |
| 2004 | Theda Skocpol, Harvard University “Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003) |
| 2003 | Mounira Charrad, University of Texas, Austin States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Post-Colonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco (University of California Press, 2001) |
| 2003 | Taeku Lee, University of California, Berkeley Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era (Chicago University Press, 2002) |
| 2002 | Richard Bensel, Cornell University Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2000) |
| 2001 | Uday Mehta, University of Pennsylvania Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1999) |
| 2000 | Elizabeth Sanders, Cornell University Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State 1877-1917 (University of Chicago Press, 1999) |
| 1999 | Peter Trubowitz, University of Texas Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1998) |
| 1998 | Rogers Smith, Yale University Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (Yale University Press, 1997) |
| 1998 | Mabel Berezin, University of California, Los Angeles Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar History (Cornell University Press, 1997) |
| 1997 | Stathis Kalyvas, New York University The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Cornell University Press, 1996) |
| 1996 | Hendrik Spruyt, Columbia University The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton University Press, 1994) |
| 1995 | Ian Lustick, University of Pennsylvania Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (Cornell University Press, 1993) |
| 1995 | Gerald Berk, University of Oregon Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of the American Industrial Order 1854-1917, (Johns Hopkins University Press) |
| 1994 | Stephen Skowronek, Yale University The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Harvard University Press, 1993) |
| 1993 | Theda Skocpol, Harvard University Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992) |
| 1993 | Karen Orren, University of California, Los Angeles |
Mary Parker Follett Prize
The Mary Parker Follett Prize recognizes the best article on Politics and History published in the previous year.
| 2025 | Melissa M. Lee, University of Pennsylvania and Nan Zhang, University of Mannheim; and Tilmann Herchenroder, Oxford University “Legibility and the Informational Foundations of State Capacity.” The Journal of Politics, 79(1), 2017: 118-132. |
| 2024 | Isabel Castillo, Universidad de Chile “Motivation Alignment, Historical Cleavages, and Women’s Suffrage in Latin America.” Perspectives on Politics, 21(1), 2023: 78-93. |
| 2023 | Kerry Goettlich, University of Reading “The Colonial Origins of Modern Territoriality: Property Surveying in the Thirteen Colonies.” American Political Science Review. |
| 2022 | Matthew Denney, Yale University “’To Wage a War’”: Crime, Race, and State Making in the Age of FDR.” Studies in American Political Development, 35, no. 1 (2021): 16-56 |
| 2022 | Edgar Franco-Vivanco, University of Michigan “Justice as Checks and Balances: Indigenous Claims in the Courts of Colonial Mexico.” World Politics 73, no. 4 (2021): 712-773 |
| 2021 | Agustina S. Paglayan, University of California, San Diego “The Non-Democratic Roots of Mass Education: Evidence from 200 Years.” American Political Science Review, 115(1), February 2021,179 – 198. |
| 2020 | Daniel J. Galvin, Northwestern University
“From Labor Law to Employment Law: The Changing Politics of Workers’ Rights.” Studies in American Political Development, 33 (April 2019), 50-86. |
| 2020 | Honorable Mention Alexandra Cirone, Cornell University “Bridging the Gap: Lottery-Based Procedures in Early Parliamentarization.” World Politics, 71 (April 2019), 197-235. |
| 2020 | Honorable Mention
Brenda Van Coppenolle, University of Essex |
| 2019 |
Peter Swenson, Yale University |
| 2022 |
Shivaji Mukherjee of the University of Toronto |
| 2018 | Jennifer M. Dixon, Villanova University “Rhetorical Adaptation and Resistance to International Norms.” Perspectives on Politics. 15(1) |
| 2017 | Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University “Weapons of the Meek: How Churches Influence Public Policy.” World Politics 68 (1): 1–36. |
| 2016 | Prerna Singh, Brown University “Subnationalism and Social Development: A Comparative Analysis of Indian States.” World Politics, Vol. 67, No. 3(2015), pp. 506-562 |
| 2015 | Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University “When Canvassers Become Activists: Antislavery Petitioning and the Political Mobilization of American Women” APSR 2014 |
| 2015 | Colin D. Moore, University of Hawaii, Manoa “When Canvassers Become Activists: Antislavery Petitioning and the Political Mobilization of American Women” APSR 2014 |
| 2014 | Lisa Blaydes, Stanford University “The Feudal Revolution and Europe’s Rise: Political Divergence of the Christian West and the Muslim World Before 1500 CE.” (American Political Science Review, 107(1), February 2013) |
| 2014 | Eric Chaney, Harvard University “The Feudal Revolution and Europe’s Rise: Political Divergence of the Christian West and the Muslim World Before 1500 CE.” (American Political Science Review, 107(1), February 2013) |
| 2012 | Diana Dumitru, Moldova State Pedagogical University Constructing Interethnic Conflict and Cooperation: Why Some People Harmed Jews and Others Helped Them During the Holocaust in Romania (World Politics 63:1) |
| 2012 | Carter Johnson, American Councils, Moscow Constructing Interethnic Conflict and Cooperation: Why Some People Harmed Jews and Others Helped Them During the Holocaust in Romania (World Politics 63:1) |
| 2011 | Giovanni Capoccia, Oxford Universitiy “The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond,” (Comparative Political Studies 43: 8-9) |
| 2011 | Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard University “The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond,” (Comparative Political Studies 43: 8-9) |
| 2010 | Stephen Skowronek, Yale University “The Conservative Insurgency and Presidential Power: A Developmental Perspective on the Unitary Executive,” (Harvard Law Review 122: 8) |
| 2009 | Alan Jacobs, University of British Columbia The Politics of When: Redistribution, Investment and Policy Making for the Long Term in the British (Journal of Political Science, 38:2) |
| 2008 | Justin Crowe, Williams College The Forging of Judicial Autonomy: Political Entrepreneurship and the Reforms of William Howard Taft (Journal of Politics, 69:1) |
| 2007 | Fredrick Harris, Columbia University “It Takes a Tragedy to Arouse Them: Collective Memory and Collective Action During the Civil Rights Movement,” (Social Movement Studies 5 May 2006) |
| 2007 | Cora Goldstein, California State University, Long Beach “Before the CIA: American Actions in the German Fine Arts (1946-1949),” (Diplomatic History 29, November 2005) |
| 2006 | David Robertson, University of Missouri, St. Louis “Madison’s Opponents and Constitutional Design,” American Political Science Review, vol. 99, no. 2 (May 2005) |
| 2005 | Peter Swenson, Yale University “Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden,” (Studies in American Political Development 18, Spring 2004) |
| 2004 | Paul Frymer, Princeton University “Acting When Elected Officials Won’t: Federal Courts and Civil Rights Enforcement in U.S. Labor Unions, 1935-85,” (American Political Science Review August 2003) |
| 2003 | Daniel Tichenor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick “Organized Interests and American Political Development” (Political Science Quarterly 117:4) |
| 2003 | Richard Harris, Rutgers University, Camden “Organized Interests and American Political Development” (Political Science Quarterly 117:4) |
| 2002 | Evan Lieberman, Princeton University “Causal Inference in Historical Institutional Analysis: A Specification of Periodization Strategies” (Comparative Political Studies 34:9) |
| 2001 | Jeffery Jenkins, Michigan State University “Examining the Robustness of Ideological Voting: Evidence from the Confederate House of Representatives” (American Journal of Political Science 44:8) |
| 2000 | Eileen McDonagh, Northeastern University Race, Class, and Gender in the Progressive Era: Restructing State and Society,” Progressivism and the New Democracy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) |
| 2000 | Frank Dobbin, Harvard University “Civil Rights Law at Work: Sex Discrimination and the Rise of Maternity Leave Policies” (American Journal of Sociology 105(2): 455-492) |
| 2000 | Erin Kelly, Princeton University “Civil Rights Law at Work: Sex Discrimination and the Rise of Maternity Leave Policies” (American Journal of Sociology 105(2): 455-492) |
| 1999 | Barry Weingast, Stanford University “Political Stability and Civil War: Institutions, Commitment, and Democracy,” Analytic Narratives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) |
| 1998 | Sarah Hanley, University of Iowa “Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500-1800” (American Historical Review 102:1) |
| 1997 | Hugh Heclo, George Mason University “The Sixties’ False Dawn: Awakenings, Movements, and Postmodern Policy-making, (Journal of Policy History 8:1) |
| 1996 | Daniel Deudney “The Philadelphia System; Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the American States-Union, 1787-1861,” (International Organization, Spring 1995) |
| 1995 | David Laitin, University of Chicago “Language and the Construction of States: the Case of Catalonia in Spain” (Politics and Society, March 1994) |
| 1995 | Carlotta Sole, Universitat Automoma of Barcelona and Stathis N. Kalyvas “Language and the Construction of States: the Case of Catalonia in Spain” (Politics and Society, March 1994) |
| 1995 | Stathis Kalyvas, Ohio State University “Language and the Construction of States: the Case of Catalonia in Spain” (Politics and Society, March 1994) |
| 1994 | Richard Valelly, Swarthmore College “Party, Coercion, and Inclusion: Party, Coercion, and Inclusion: The Two Reconstructions of the South’s Electoral Politics, (Politics and Society 21:1) |
| 1994 | Charles Stewart III, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Stacking the Senate, Changing the Nation: Republican Rotten Boroughs, Statehood Politics, and American Political Development” (American Political Development 6:2) |
| 1994 |
Barry Weingast, Stanford University |
Walter Dean Burnham Dissertation Award
The Walter Dean Burnham Award is given for the best dissertation in the field of Politics and History.
| 2025 | Apekhsya Prasai, Brown University “Gendered Processes of Rebellion: Understanding Strategies for Organizing Violence.” |
| 2025 | Honorable Mention Eun A Jo, Cornell University “’Nations After Democracy” |
| 2024 | Matthew Reichert, Harvard University “Who Built Nations in Eurasia?” |
| 2023 | Carissa Leann Tudor, Brown University “Whose Modernity: Revolution and the Rights of Woman” |
| 2022 | Paul Jeffrey Baumgardner, Augustana College “Retrenchment Rivals: Critical Legal Studies, Law-and-Economics, and the Legal Academy of the Long 1980s.” Princeton University. |
| 2021 | Brendan McElroy, University of Michigan “Peasants and Parliaments: Agrarian Reform in Eighteenth Century Europe.” Harvard University Press?. |
| 2020 | Matthew Berkman, University of Pennsylvania “Coercive Consensus: Jewish Federations, Ethnic Representation, and the Roots of American Pro-Israel Politics” |
| 2019 |
Matthias Dilling, Oxford University |
| 2018 | Jeffrey Javed, Harvard University “Land and Retribution: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in China’s Land Reform Campaign (1950–1952).” |
| 2017 | Daniel Koss, Academia Sinica, Taiwan “Where the Party Rules: Party-Based Authoritarianism and the Reach of the State.” |
| 2017 | Robert Braun, Northwestern University “Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide” |
| 2016 | Sarah Johnson, University of Chicago “The Ages We Live By: Historical Periodization in Social and Political Thought” |
| 2015 | Jonathan Obert, University of Chicago “Six Guns and State Formation: The Co-Evolution of Public and Private Violence in American Political Development.” University of Chicago, 2014 |
| 2015 | Honorable Mention Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer, City University of New York “Politics as a Sphere of Wealth Accumulation: Cases of Gilded Age New York, 1855-1888.” City University of New York, 2014 |
| 2014 | Devin Caughey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Congress, Public Opinion, and Representation in the One Party South, 1930s-1960s” (UC Berkeley) |
| 2014 | Sheena Greitens, Harvard University “Coercive Institutions and State Violence under Authoritarianism” (Harvard University) |
| 2013 | Deondra Rose, Cornell University/University of Notre Dame “The Development of U.S. Higher Education Policy and Its Impact on the Gender Dynamics of American Citizenship” (Cornell University 2012) |
| 2013 | Honorable Mention Jennifer Dixon, Villanova University |
| 2012 | Gwendoline Alphonso, Fairfield University “Hearth and Soul: Political Parties, Family Ideologies, and the Development of Social Policy in the 20th Century” (Cornell University 2011) |
| 2011 | Emily Zackin, CUNY Hunter College “Positive Constitutional Rights in the United States” (Princeton University 2010) |
| 2010 | Colin Moore, Harvard University “Institutions of Empire: Information, Delegation, and the Political Control of American Imperialism, 1890-1913” (Harvard University, 2009) |
| 2009 | Iza Hussin, University of Washington “The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority and the Making of Islamic Law” (University of Washington, 2008) |
| 2008 | Tomas Larsson, Cornell University “Capitalizing Thailand: Colonialism, Communism, and the Political Economy of Rural Land Rights” (Cornell University, 2007) |
David Brian Robertson Conference Paper Award
An award for the best paper in Politics and History presented at the previous annual meeting.
| 2025 | Volha Charnysh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ranjit Lall, Oxford University “Consequences of the Black Sea Slave Trade: Long-Run Development in Eastern Europe.” |
| 2024 | Valentin Figueroa, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Guadalupe Tuñón, Princeton University “Oppression Beyond Plantations: The Effect of Emancipation on Incarceration in Urban Buenos Aires.” |
| 2023 | Roya Talibova, Vanderbilt University “Choosing Sides: The Price for Battlefield Loyalty under Autocracy” |
| 2022 | Heather McCambly, University of Pittsburgh “The Rise of (E)quality Politics: The Political Development of Higher Education Policy at FIPSE, 1969-1999.” Presented at the APSA 2021 Annual Meeting. |
| 2022 | Quinn Mulroy, Northwestern University “The Rise of (E)quality Politics: The Political Development of Higher Education Policy at FIPSE, 1969-1999.” Presented at the APSA 2021 Annual Meeting. |
| 2021 | Matthew Denney, Yale University “‘To Wage a War’: Crime, Race, and State-Making in the Age of FDR.” |
| 2020 | Isabela Mares, Yale University
“From Religious violence to political compromise: the historical origins of institutional trust.” |
| 2020 | Ahmed Ezzeldin Mohamed, Columbia University
“From Religious violence to political compromise: the historical origins of institutional trust.” |