Ralph J. Bunche Award

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Ralph J. Bunche Award

Nominations are closed.

The Bunche Award honors the best book in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism.

The award is presented at the APSA Annual Meeting and carries a cash prize of $1,000.

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. It is not compulsory that authors be political scientists.
Books must have been published in the previous calendar year to be eligible for the current awards cycle (books for a 2026 award must be published in 2025). Many books contain both a publication date and a copyright date, and these may differ. Eligibility is determined by the earlier of these dates that is printed with the publication information at the front of the book. Edited books are ineligible for nomination.
Individuals: Please contact the publisher and ask for either an eBook to submit via the online application portal or to have a physical copy of the nominated book mailed directly to each award committee member.
Self-nominations are accepted. If you nominate yourself for a book award, you assume responsibility for contacting your publisher and having copies of your book sent to the award committee either virtually or via mail.
Publishers: Please submit your nomination online through the APSA application portal. You have the option to either submit an eBook via the portal or mail a hard copy of the nominated book directly to each member of the award committee.

Award Committee

Chair

Andy Aoki, Augsburg University

Member

Megan Francis, University of Washington

Member

Lafleur Stephens,

Listing of Awardees

Year	Recipient	Title	Affiliation
2025	Kevin D. Pham	The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization	Universiry of Amsterdam
2024	Melvin Rogers	The Darkened Light of Faith	Brown University
2023	Sally A. Nuamah	Closed for Democracy: How Mass School Closure Undermines the Citizenship of Black Americans	Northwestern University
2022	Nadia E. Brown and Danielle Casarez Lemi Mark Fathi Massoud	Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Elites Shari’a, Inshallah: Finding God in Somali Legal Politics	Georgetown University, Southern Methodist University, University of California, Santa Cruz
2021	LaFleur Stephens-Dougan	Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics	University of Chicago Press
2020	Davin Phoenix	The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics	Cambridge University Press
2019	Michael G. Hanchard	The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracy	Princeton University Press
2018	Juliet Hooker	Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos	Brown University
2018	Chris Zepeda-Millán	Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism	University of California
2017	Vaughn Raspberry	Race and the Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination	Harvard University Press
2016	Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan Hajnal	White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics	Oxford University Press
2015	Megan Ming Francis	Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State	Cambridge University Press
2014	Tracie Burch	Trading Democracy for Justice: Criminal Convictions and the Decline of Neighborhood Political Participation	University of Chicago Press
2014	Natalie Masuoka and Jane Junn	The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration	University of Chicago Press
2013	Otto Santa Ana	Juan in a Hundred: Representations of Latinos on the Network News	University of Texas Press
2013	Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Melissa Michelson	Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-Out-the Vote Campaigns	Yale University Press
2012	Charlton D. Mcllwain and Stephen M. Caliendo	Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns	Temple University Press
2011	Cristina Beltrán	The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity	Oxford University Press
2010	Christopher S. Parker	Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South	Princeton University Press
2009	Richard Iton	In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era	Oxford University Press
2009	Julie Novkov	Racial Union: Law, Intimacy, and the White State in Alabama	University of Michigan Press
2008	Sarah Song	Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism	Cambridge University Press
2008	Victoria Hattam	In The Shadow of Race: Jews, Latinos, and Immigrant Politics in the United States	University of Chicago Press
2007	Fredrick C. Harris, Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, and Brian D. McKenzie	Countervailing Forces in African-American Civic Activism, 1973-1994	Cambridge University Press
2007	Mark Q. Sawyer	Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba	Cambridge University Press
2006	Lisa Garcia Bedolla	Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles	University of California Press
2005	Richard M. Valelly	The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement	University of Chicago Press
2005	Seyla Benhabib	The Rights of Others	Cambridge University Press
2004	Robert O. Self	American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oklahoma	Princeton University Press
2003	Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Piazza	Black Pride and Black Prejudice	Princeton University Press
2002	Michael Dawson	Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies	University of Chicago Press
2001	Claire Jean Kim	Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City	Yale University Press
2000	J. Morgan Kousser	Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction	University of North Carolina Press
2000	Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup	The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention	M.E. Sharpe
1999	Anthony W. Marx	Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil	Cambridge University Press
1999	Matthew F. Jacobson	Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race	Harvard University Press
1998	Rogers M. Smith	Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History	Yale University Press
1997	Amy Gutmann and K. Anthony Appiah	Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race	Princeton University Press
1996	Will Kymlicka	Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights	Oxford University Press
1995	William H. Tucker	The Science and Politics of Racial Research	University of Illinois Press
1994	Raphael J. Sonenshein	Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles	Princeton University Press
1993	Rodney E. Hero	Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-tiered Pluralism	Temple University Press
1992	Donald L. Horowitz	A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society	University of California Press
1991	Frank R. Parker	Black Votes Count	University of North Carolina Press
1990	Clarence N. Stone	Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988	University Press of Kansas
1989	Ronald Walters	Black Presidential Politics	State University of New York Press
1988	Earl and Merel Black	Politics and Society in the South	Harvard University Press
1987	D. Garth Taylor	Public Opinion and Collective Action: The Boston School Desegregation Conflict	University of Chicago Press
1987	Rasma Karklins	Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below	Allen & Unwin
1986	Paul R. Dimond	Beyond Busing: Inside the Challenge to Urban Segregation	University of Michigan Press
1985	Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb	Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics	University of California Press
1984	Mark Naison	Communists in Harlem During the Depression	University of Illinois Press
1983	John A. Armstrong	Nations Before Nationalism	University of North Carolina Press
1983	Orlando Patterson	Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study	Harvard University Press
1982	No award given
1981	Marguerite Ross Barnett	The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India	Princeton University Press
1980	Mario Barrera	Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality	University of Notre Dame Press
1979	Arend Lijphart	Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Approach	Yale University Press
1979	M. Crawford Young	The Politics of Cultural Pluralism	University of Wisconsin Press
1978	Irving Howe	World of Our Fathers	Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich