Gabriel A. Almond Award - American Political Science Association (APSA)

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PROGRAMS > APSA Awards > Gabriel A. Almond Award

Gabriel A. Almond Award

Nominations are closed.

The Almond Award honors the best doctoral dissertation in the field of comparative politics.

The award was created in recognition of Dr. Gabriel Almond’s contributions to the discipline, profession, and Association. He was a long time faculty member at Stanford University and former APSA President (1966). Almond’s scholarly work contributed directly to the development of theory in comparative politics and brought together work on the developing areas and Western Europe that prevented splintering into an array of disparate areas studies. The award is presented at the APSA Annual Meeting and carries a cash prize of $750.
Nomination Information

Eligibility: 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.
Dissertations must have been successfully defended within the previous two calendar years (dissertations for the 2026 award must be defended in 2024 or 2025).

Self-nominations are accepted. Nominations from non-PhD departments and institutions are also welcome if the nominee is currently employed there.

APSA will accept only one nomination for the Almond Award per school or political science department.

Award Committee

Chair

Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell University

Member

Yoshiko Herrera, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Member

Soledad Prillaman, Stanford University

Member

Dominika Koter, Colgate University

Listing of Awardees

Year	Recipient	Dissertation	Institution
2025	Joséphine Lechartre	Genocide and Cultural Change: Civilian Survival Strategies and the Reinvention of Political Culture During Guatemala’s Mayan Genocide	University of Notre Dame
2024	Feyaad Allie	Power, Exclusion and Identity: The Politics of Muslim Marginalization in India	Harvard University
2023	Nicholas Kuipers	Meritocracy Reconsidered: The Politics of Civil Service Recruitment	University of California, Berkeley
2022	Anna Zhang	Go West, Young Han: Internal Migration as a Strategy of Counterinsurgency	Stanford University
2021	David Peyton	Property Security in the Midst of Insecurity: Wealth, Violence, and Institutional Stasis in the Democratic Republic of Congo	Northwestern University
2021	Chantal Berman	Protest, Social Policy, and Political Regimes	Princeton University
2020	Rachel A. Schwartz	Civil War, Institutional Change, and the Criminalization of the State in Central America	University of Wisconsin-Madison
2019	Andreas Wiedemann	Indebted Societies: Modern Labor Markets, Social Policy, and Everyday Borrowing	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2018	David Szakonyi	Renting Elected Office: Why Businesspeople Become Politicians in Russia	Columbia University
2017	Jeremy Ferwerda	The Politics of Proximity: Local Redistribution in Developed Democracies	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2016	Dawn Teele	The Logic of Women’s Enfranchisement: A Comparative Study of the United States, France and the United Kingdom	Yale University
2015	Adam Auerbach	Demanding Development: Democracy, Community Governance, and Public Goods Provision in India’s Urban Slums	University of Wisconsin-Madison
2014	Regina Bateson	Order and Violence in Postwar Guatemala	Princeton University
2013	Evgeny Finkel	Victims’ Politics: Jewish Behavior during the Holocaust	University of Wisconsin, Madison
2013	Gwyneth McClendon	The Politics of Envy and Esteem in Two Democracies	Princeton University
2012	Noam Lupu	Party Brands in Crisis: Partisanship, Brand Dilutions and the Breakdown of Political Parties in Latin America	Princeton University
2011	Brian Min	Democracy and Light: Public Service Provision in the Developing World	University of California, Los Angeles
2010	Tariq Thachil	The Saffron Wave Meets the Silent Revolution: Why the Poor Vote for Hindu Nationalism in India	Cornell University
2010	Maya Tudor	Twin Births, Divergent Democracies: the Social and Institutional Origins of Regime Outcomes in India and Pakistan, 1920-1958	Princeton University
2009	Lisa A. Blaydes	Competition Without Democracy: Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt	University of California, Los Angeles
2008	Rafaela Mirjam Dancygier	Immigration and Conflict	Yale University
2007	Emmanuel J. Teitelbaum	Mobilizing Restraint: Unions and the Politics of Economic Development in South Asia	Cornell University
2006	Matthew Adam Kocher	Human Ecology and Civil War	University of Chicago
2005	Edmund James Malesky	At Provincial Gates: The Impact of Locally Concentrated Foreign Direct Investment on Provincial Autonomy and Economic Reform	University of California, San Diego
2004	Daniel F. Ziblatt	Constructing a Federal State: Political Development, Path Dependence, and the Origins of Federalism, 1815-1871	University of California, Berkeley
2003	Julia Lynch	The Age of Welfare: Citizens, Clients, and Generations in the Development of the Welfare State	University of California, Berkeley
2002	Evan S. Lieberman	Payment for Privilege? Race and Space in the Politics of Taxation in Brazil and South Africa	University of California, Berkeley
2001	Jonathan Hiskey	Does Democracy Matter? Electoral Competition and Local Development in Mexico	University of Pittsburgh
2000	Anna M. Grzymala-Busse	Redeeming the Past: The Regeneration of the Communist Successor Parties in East and Central Europe after 1989	Harvard University
1999	Daniel Posner	The Institutional Origins of Ethnic Politics in Zambia	Harvard University
1998	Beatriz Magaloni	The Dynamics of Dominant Party Decline: The Mexican Transition to Multipartyism	Duke University
1998	James Mahoney	Radical, Reformist, and Aborted Liberalism: Origins of National Regimes in Central America	University of California, Berkeley
1997	Michael Orenstein	Out of the Red: Building Capitalism and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe	Yale University
1996	Torben Iverson	Contested Economic Institutions: The Politics of Macro-Economics and Wage Bargaining in Organized Capitalism	Duke University
1995	Jonah Levy	Tocqueville’s Revenge: Dilemmas of Institutional Reform in Post-Dirigiste France	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1994	Daniel Goldhagen	The Nazi Executioners: A Study of Their Behavior and the Causation of Genocide	Harvard University
1993	Daniel M. Green	Structural Study of PNDC Ghana and the District Assembly Decentralization Policy	Indiana University
1992	Felipe Aguero	The Assertion of Civil Supremacy in Post-Authoritarian Contexts: Spain in Comparative Perspectives	Duke University
1991	Michael Barnett	War Preparation and the Restructuring of the State-Society Relations: Israel and Egypt in Comparative Perspective	University of Minnesota
1990	Brian M. Downing	The Military Revolution and Political Change in Early Modern Europe	University of Chicago
1989	Jeffrey Herbst	Policy Formulation and Implementation in Zimbabwe: Understanding State Autonomy and the Focus of Decision-Making	Yale University
1989	Sven Steinmo	Taxes, Institutions and the Mobilization of Bias: The Political Economy of Taxation in Britain, Sweden and the United States	University of California, Berkeley
1988	David Friedman	The Misunderstood Miracle: Politics and the Development of a Hybrid Economy in Japan	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1987	James Tong	Collective Violence in a Pre-modern Society: Rebellions and Banditry in the Ming Dynasty (1364-1644)	University of Michigan
1986	Michael Loriaux	International Change and Political Adaptation: The French Overdraft Economy in the Seventies	Princeton University
1985	David Pion-Berlin	Ideas as Predictors: A Comparative Study of Coercion in Peru and Argentina	University of Denver
1984	Kaare Strom	Minority Government and Majority Rule	Stanford University
1983	Miriam A. Golden	Austerity and Its Opposition: Italian Working Class Politics in the 1970s	Cornell University
1982	David G. Becker	The New Bourgeoisie and the Limits of Dependency: The Social and Political Impact of the Industry in Peru since 1968	University of California, Los Angeles
1981	Thomas M. Callaghy	State Formation and Absolutism in Comparative Perspective: Seventeenth-Century France and Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire	University of California, Berkeley
1980	Steven Jay Kelman	Regulating Job Safety and Health: A Comparison of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Swedish Worker Protection Board	Harvard University
1979	Anne Louise Potter	Political Institutions, Political Decay and the Argentine Crisis of 1930	Stanford University
1979	John T. S. Keeler	The Politics of Official Unionism in French Agriculture, 1958-1976	Harvard University
1978	Peter H. Lemieux	The Liberal Party and British Political Change, 1955-74	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1977	Kenneth Wald	Patterns of English Voter Alignment since 1885	Washington University
1972	Paul M. Sniderman	Personality and Democratic Politics: Correlates of Self-Esteem	University of California, Berkeley

Support for Scholarship

We are continually grateful for the contributions from APSA members and friends that make our work possible. Your donation helps continue the Almond Award for future scholars researching comparative politics. Thank you for your support of APSA and scholars across the discipline.