Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award
Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award
Nominations are closed.
The Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award honors the best paper presented at the previous year’s APSA Annual Meeting.
The award, supported by Pi Sigma Alpha, is presented at the APSA Annual Meeting and carries a cash prize of $750. Deadline: February 11, 2026
Nomination Information
- Eligibility: Self-nominations are accepted. Nominees do not have to be members of APSA, affiliated with an institution in the United States, or an American citizen in order to be considered for an award.
Annual Meeting program division chairs are invited to nominate one paper from their panel.
Papers must have been presented at the previous year’s APSA Annual Meeting (eligible papers for the 2026 award were presented in 2025 meeting).
Award Committee
Chair
Ana Weeks, University of Bath
Member
Dov Levin, University of Hong Kong
Member
Eric Gonzalez Juenke, Michigan State University
Member
Jessica Terman, George Mason University
Listing of Awardees
| Year | Recipient | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Matt Brundage | How Income Segregation Leads Americans to Underestimate Racial Inequality, Reducing Support to Address It |
|
2024 |
Collateral Censorship: Theory and Evidence from Venezuela | |
|
2024 |
Collateral Censorship: Theory and Evidence from Venezuela | |
|
2023 |
Addressing Risk by Doing Good: Business Responses to Policy Initiatives | |
|
2022 |
Machine Gun Politics: Why Politicians Cooperate with Criminal Groups | |
|
2021 |
Explaining Rural Conservatism: Technological and Political Change in the Great Plains | |
| 2020 | Kristin Kao and Mara Redlich Revkin | Retribution and Reconciliation: Attitudes Toward Rebel Collaborators in Iraq |
| 2019 | Nikhar Gaikwad and Pavithra Suryanarayan | Economic and Ethnic Determinants of Trade Preferences: Evidence from India |
| 2018 | Ana Catalano Weeks | Why Are Gender Quota Laws Adopted by Men? The Role of Inter- and Intra-Party Competition |
| 2017 | Kenneth Greene | Why Vote Buying Fails: Campaign Effects and the Elusive Swing Voter |
| 2016 | Pablo Barbera | How Social Media Reduces Mass Political Polarization: Evidence from Germany, Spain, and the U.S. |
| 2016 | John Voorheis, Nolan McCarty, Boris Shor | Unequal Incomes, Ideology and Gridlock: How Rising Inequality Increases Political Polarization |
| 2015 | Alexander Kuo, Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, Neil Malhotra | Why Do Asian Americans Identify as Democrats? Testing Theories of Social Exclusion and Intergroup Solidarity |
| 2014 | Chad P. Kiewiet de Jonge | Political Learning and Democratic Commitment in New Democracies |
| 2013 | Toby Bolsen, James Druckman, Fay Lomax Cook | When and How Partisan Identification Works |
| 2012 | No award given | |
| 2011 | Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman | Dynamic Public Opinion: Communication Effects Over Time |
| 2010 | Thomas B. Pepinsky, R. William Liddle, and Saiful Mujani | Testing Islam’s Political Advantage: Evidence from Indonesia |
| 2010 | Ben B. Hansen and Jake Bowers | Attributing Effects to a Cluster Randomized Get-Out-The-Vote Campaign |
| 2009 | No award given | |
| 2008 | Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita | Political Survival and Institutional Change |
| 2007 | Dennis Chong and James Druckman | Democratic Competition and Public Opinion |
| 2006 | Dawn Brancati | Decentralization: Fueling the Fire or Dampening the Flames of Ethnic Conflict and Secessionism |
| 2005 | William T. Bernhard and David Leblang | When Markets Party: Stocks, Bonds, and Cabinet Formations |
| 2004 | David Woodruff | Boom, Gloom, Doom: Balance Sheets, Monetary Fragmentation, and Financial Crisis in Argentina and Russia |
| 2004 | Larry W. Chappell and Bernard L. Bray | Civic Theatre for Civic Education |
| 2003 | Larry M. Bartels | Economic Inequality and Political Representation |
| 2002 | No award given | |
| 2001 | No award given | |
| 2000 | Herbert Kitschelt | Accounting for Outcomes of Post-Communist Regime Change: Casual Depth or Shallowness in Rival Explanations |
| 1999 | Charles Stewart III | Architect or Tactician? Henry Clay and the Institutional Development of the U.S. House of Representatives |
| 1998 | Karen Orren | Machine Constitutionalism: The Court, the Republican Party and the Eleventh Amendment in the Gilded Age |
| 1997 | Richard A. Brisbin | The U.S. Supreme Court and the Rationality of Labor Violence: The Impact of the Mackay Radio Doctrine and ‘Violence’ during the Coal Strike of 1989-90 |
| 1996 | Jeffrey A. Segal | Marxist (and Neo-Marxist) Models of Supreme Court Decision Making: Separation-of-Powers in the Positive Theory of Law and Courts |
| 1995 | Kenneth Schultz and Barry Weingast | The Democratic Advantage: The Institutional Sources of State Power in International Competition |
| 1994 | Paul Sniderman, Edward Carmines, Philip Tetlock, and Anthony Tyler | The Asymmetry of Race as a Political Issue: Prejudice, Political Ideology, and the Structure of Conflict of American Politics |
| 1993 | George Tsebelis | The Power of the European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda-Setter |
| 1992 | Edgar Kiser | Markets and Hierarchies in Early Modern Fiscal Systems: A Principal-Agent Analysis of the Choice Between Tax Farming and State Bureaucracy |
| 1991 | Bartholomew H. Sparrow | Raising Taxes and Going into Debt: A Resource Dependence Model of U.S. Public Finance in the 1940s |
| 1990 | Byron E. Shafer | The Notion of an Electoral Order: The Structure of Electoral Politics at the Accession of George Bush |
| 1989 | George Rabinowitz, Stuart Elaine Macdonald, and Ola Listhaug | New Players in an Old Game |
| 1988 | Ronald Rogowski | Changing Exposure to Trade and the Development of Political Cleavages |
| 1987 | James L. Gibson | The Policy Consequences of Political Tolerance |
| 1986 | Robert Axelrod | Modeling the Evolution of Norms |
| 1985 | Jack L. Walker | Three Modes of Political Mobilization |
| 1985 | Michael Wallerstein | The Micro-Foundations of Corporatism: Formal Theory and Comparative Analysis |
| 1984 | Gary Miller and Terry Moe | The Positive Theory of Hierarchies |
| 1983 | Jennifer Hochschild | Incrementalism, Pluralism and the Failure of School Desegregation |
| 1983 | Kaare Strom | Minority Government and Majority Rule |
| 1982 | Sylvia Snowiss | From Fundamental Law to the Supreme Law of the Land: A Reinterpretation of the Origin of Judicial Law Review in the U.S. |
| 1981 | Trudi C. Miller | Toward a Normative Dynamic Model of Educational Equity |
| 1980 | Bert A. Rockman | Constants, Cycles, Trends and Persons in Presidential Governance: Carter’s Troubles Reviewed |
| 1979 | Mancur Olson | Pluralism and National Decline |
| 1978 | Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven J. Rosenstone | Who Votes? |
| 1977 | Mary Cornelia Porter | Rodriguez, the “Poor” and the Burger Court: A Prudent Prognosis |
| 1976 | Richard F. Fenno | Congressmen in Their Constituencies: An Exploration |
| 1975 | Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph | Authority and Power in Bureaucratic and Patrimonial Administration |
| 1974 | William Zimmerman | National-International Linkages in Yugoslavia: The Political Consequences of Openness |
| 1973 | No award given | |
| 1972 | Alexander George | Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy |
| 1971 | Daniel Ellsberg | Escalating in a Quagmire |
| 1970 | Brian Fry and Richard Winters | The Politics of Redistribution |
| 1969 | Gerald H. Kramer | Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964 |
| 1968 | Sidney Tarrow | Catch-all Political Parties in a Polarized Political System: An Empirical Analysis and Theoretical Critique |
| 1967 | Frederick Frey | Socialization to National Identification: Turkish Peasants |
| 1967 | Robert C. Tucker | The Deradicalization of Marxist Movements |
| 1966 | Samuel Huntington | Political Modernization: America vs. Europe |
| 1965 | James B. Christoph | British Political Ideology Today: Consensus and Cleavage |
| 1964 | James G. March | An Individualistic Theory of Political Process |