| 2005 | William T. Bernhard and David Leblang | When Markets Party: Stocks, Bonds, and Cabinet Formations | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and University of Colorado, Boulder |
| 2004 | David Woodruff | Boom, Gloom, Doom: Balance Sheets, Monetary Fragmentation, and Financial Crisis in Argentina and Russia | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 2004 | Larry W. Chappell and Bernard L. Bray | Civic Theatre for Civic Education | Mississippi Valley State University and Talladega College |
| 2003 | Larry M. Bartels | Economic Inequality and Political Representation | Princeton University |
| 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 | Duke University |
| 1999 | Charles Stewart III | Architect or Tactician? Henry Clay and the Institutional Development of the U.S. House of Representatives | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 1998 | Karen Orren | Machine Constitutionalism: The Court, the Republican Party and the Eleventh Amendment in the Gilded Age | University of California, Los Angeles |
| 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 | West Virginia University |
| 1996 | Jeffrey A. Segal | Marksist (and Neo-Marksist) Models of Supreme Court Decision Making: Separation-of-Powers in the Positive Theory of Law and Courts | SUNY Stony Brook |
| 1995 | Kenneth Schultz and Barry Weingast | The Democratic Advantage: The Institutional Sources of State Power in International Competition | Stanford University |
| 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 | Stanford University, Indiana University, and University of California, Berkeley |
| 1993 | George Tsebelis | The Power of the European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda-Setter | University of California, Los Angeles |
| 1992 | Edgar Kiser | Markets and Hierarchies in Early Modern Fiscal Systems: A Principal-Agent Analysis of the Choice Between Tax Farming and State Bureaucracy | University of Washington |
| 1991 | Bartholomew H. Sparrow | Raising Taxes and Going into Debt: A Resource Dependence Model of U.S. Public Finance in the 1940s | University of Texas at Austin |
| 1990 | Byron E. Shafer | The Notion of an Electoral Order: The Structure of Electoral Politics at the Accession of George Bush | Nuffield College |
| 1989 | George Rabinowitz, Stuart Elaine Macdonald, and Ola Listhaug | New Players in an Old Game | University of North Carolina |
| 1988 | Ronald Rogowski | Changing Exposure to Trade and the Development of Political Cleavages | University of California, Los Angeles |
| 1987 | James L. Gibson | The Policy Consequences of Political Tolerance | University of Houston |
| 1986 | Robert Axelrod | Modeling the Evolution of Norms | University of Michigan |
| 1985 | Jack L. Walker | Three Modes of Political Mobilization | |
| 1985 | Michael Wallerstein | The Micro-Foundations of Corporatism: Formal Theory and Comparative Analysis | University of California, Los Angeles |
| 1984 | Gary Miller and Terry Moe | The Positive Theory of Hierarchies | Michigan State University and Stanford University |
| 1983 | Jennifer Hochschild | Incrementalism, Pluralism and the Failure of School Desegregation | Princeton University |
| 1983 | Kaare Strom | Minority Government and Majority Rule | Stanford University |
| 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. | California State University, Northridge |
| 1981 | Trudi C. Miller | Toward a Normative Dynamic Model of Educational Equity | National Science Foundation |
| 1980 | Bert A. Rockman | Constants, Cycles, Trends and Persons in Presidential Governance: Carter’s Troubles Reviewed | University of Pittsburgh |
| 1979 | Mancur Olson | Pluralism and National Decline | University of Maryland |
| 1978 | Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven J. Rosenstone | Who Votes? | University of California, Berkeley |
| 1977 | Mary Cornelia Porter | Rodriguez, the “Poor” and the Burger Court: A Prudent Prognosis | Barat College |
| 1976 | Richard F. Fenno | Congressmen in Their Constituencies: An Exploration | University of Rochester |
| 1975 | Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph | Authority and Power in Bureaucratic and Patrimonial Administration | University of Chicago |
| 1974 | William Zimmerman | National-International Linkages in Yugoslavia: The Political Consequences of Openness | University of Michigan |
| 1973 | No award given | | |
| 1972 | Alexander George | Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy | Stanford University |
| 1971 | Daniel Ellsberg | Escalating in a Quagmire | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 1970 | Brian Fry and Richard Winters | The Politics of Redistribution | Stanford University and Dartmouth College |
| 1969 | Gerald H. Kramer | Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964 | Yale University |
| 1968 | Sidney Tarrow | Catch-all Political Parties in a Polarized Political System: An Empirical Analysis and Theoretical Critique | Yale University |
| 1967 | Frederick Frey | Socialization to National Identification: Turkish Peasants | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 1967 | Robert C. Tucker | The Deradicalization of Marxist Movements | Princeton University |
| 1966 | Samuel Huntington | Political Modernization: America vs. Europe | Harvard University |
| 1965 | James B. Christoph | British Political Ideology Today: Consensus and Cleavage | Ohio State University |
| 1964 | James G. March | An Individualistic Theory of Political Process | Universityof California, Irvine |