APSA Awards

Each year, APSA makes awards for the best scholarship in subfields throughout the discipline and for career achievement in the profession.  The Association extends its special thanks to award committee members for their service and contributions to the 2020 awards program.

APSA is pleased to open the award ceremony broadcast this year.  The event took place on Wednesday, September 9 at 4:00 p.m. MDT.

Congratulations to the following honorees:

APSA Community College Faculty Award for exemplary contributions that advance the multi-faceted goals of community college faculty.

  • Erin Richards, Cascadia College

APSA Distinguished Award for Civic and Community Engagement for significant civic or community engagement activity by a political scientist which merges knowledge and practice and has an impact outside of the profession or the academy.

  • Marc Howard, Georgetown University 

APSA Distinguished Teaching Award for outstanding contributions to the undergraduate and graduate teaching of political science at two- and four-year institutions.

  • Peter Lindsay, Georgia State University 

John Gaus Lecture Award for a lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.

  • John Bryson, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota 

Frank J. Goodnow Award for distinguished service to the profession and to the Association.

  • Kent Jennings, University of California, Santa Barbara 

Hubert H. Humphrey Award for notable public service by a political scientist.

  • Tom Wolf, Governor of Pennsylvania 

James Madison Lecture Award for an American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science.

  • John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago 

Carey McWilliams Award for major journalistic contributions to society’s understanding of politics.

  • Judy Woodruff, PBS NewsHour; Gwen Ifill (posthumously), PBS NewsHour

Barbara Sinclair Lecture Award for achievement in promoting the understanding of the U.S. Congress and legislative politics.

  • Richard Hall, University of Michigan 

Ralph J. Bunche Award for the best scholarly work in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism. 

  • Davin Phoenix

The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics

Cambridge University Press 

Robert A. Dahl Award for an untenured scholar who has produced scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy. 

  • Ashley Nickels

Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan: Unpacking the Policy Paradox of Municipal Takeovers

Temple University Press 

Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published during the previous calendar year in the field of U.S. national policy.

  • Amy E. Lerman

Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America (And What We Can Do to Fix It)

University of Chicago Press 

APSA-IPSA Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award in any field of political science that exemplifies qualities of broad ambition, high originality, and intellectual daring, showing promise of having a substantive impact on the overall discipline, regardless of method, specific focus of inquiry or approach to subject. 

  • Rachel Augustine Potter

Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy

University of Chicago Press 

Victoria Schuck Award for the best book published on women and politics. 

  • Melody E. Valdini

The Inclusion Calculation: Why Men Appropriate Women’s Representation

Oxford University Press 

Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs. 

  • Amy E. Lerman

Good Enough for Government Work: The Public Reputation Crisis in America (And What We Can Do to Fix It)

University of Chicago Press 

Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of comparative politics.  

  • Rachel Schwartz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Civil War, Institutional Change, and the Criminalization of the State in Central America”  

William Anderson Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the general field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, state and local politics. 

  • James Strickland, University of Michigan

“Multi-Client Lobbying in the American States” 

Edward S. Corwin Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public law. 

  • Tommaso Pavone, Princeton University

“The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics Behind the Judicial Construction of Europe” 

Harold D. Lasswell Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public policy.

  • Shiran Victoria Shen, Stanford University

“Political Pollution Cycle: An Inconvenient Truth and How to Break It” 

E.E. Schattschneider Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of American government.

  • John Dearborn, Yale University

“The Representative Presidency: The Ideational Foundations of Institutional Development and Durability” 

Kenneth Sherrill Prize for the best doctoral dissertation proposal for an empirical study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) topics in political science. 

  • Kristopher Velasco, University of Texas at Austin

“Caught in a Web: The Role of Rival Transnational Networks in (Un)Doing LGBT Rights” 

Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in political philosophy. 

  • Elena Gambino, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 

“‘Presence in Our Own Land:’ Second Wave Feminism and the Lesbian Body Politic” 

  • Tejas Parasher, University of Chicago

“Self-Rule and the State in Indian Political Thought, 1880-1950” 

Merze Tate Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of international relations, law, and politics. 

  • Erik Lin-Greenberg, Columbia University

“Remote Controlled Restraint: The Effect of Remote Warfighting Technology on Crisis Escalation” 

Leonard D. White Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public administration.

  • Angela Young-Shin Park, University of Kansas

“Beyond Adoption: The Influence of Local Institutional Arrangements on Sustainability Policy Implementation and Management” 

Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award for the best paper presented at the previous year’s Annual Meeting. 

  • Kristin Kao, Göteborg University; Mara Redlich Revkin, Georgetown University Law Center

“Retribution or Reconciliation: Attitudes toward Rebel Collaborators in Iraq” 

Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in American Political Science Review.  

  • George Kwaku Ofosu, London Schools of Economics and Political Science

“Do Fairer Elections Increase the Responsiveness of Politicians?” 

Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in Perspectives on Politics.

  • Katherine Levine Einstein, Boston University; David M. Glick, Boston University; Maxwell Palmer, Boston University

“Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes”