The Michael Harrington Book Award recognizes an outstanding book that demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the struggle to making the study of political science relevant to building a more democratic and egalitarian economic, social, and political order.
2026 Nomination Deadline: April 1st, 2026
Committee: Biko Koenig, Laura Olson, and Sarah Surak
Contact: Biko Koenig (Chair) bkoenig@fandm.edu
Nomination Instructions: All nominated books must have a 2025 publication date and cannot be an edited collection. Nominations must be made in writing to the committee chair by the publisher, and all committee members must receive a physical copy of the book from the publisher by April 1st in order to be eligible for consideration.
Please email Biko Koenig (bkoenig@fandm.edu) for a list of physical mailing addresses for committee members.
2025 Award Winner: Biko Koenig
Worker Centered: Allyship & Action in the Contemporary Labor Movement
Worker Centered is a novel work of critical political science. While this book would—unsurprisingly—be unrecognizable as political science to the mainstream of the discipline, this is just one of the reasons why it is such a significant contribution. It is an evocative ethnography of labor struggles and the complexities of representation, collaboration, and decision-making outside of traditional institutions of government power. And yet, it is all about power and how it works. At a time when workers of all kinds, but especially immigrant workers, are facing threats from all directions, Dr. Koenig’s book is a tool for how we can all respond better, for ourselves and each other. It is also a book about failures—and the lessons that can be learned from them. There are many, and everyone interested in how we can come together as workers and continue to struggle for more humane workplaces and a more just world, would hardly find a more engaging and thought-provoking book than Koenig’s Worker Centered.
2025 Honorable Mention: Rachel H. Brown
Unsettled Labors: Migrant Care Work in Israel/Palestine
Unsettled Labors is a superb example of critical political science in this moment. It is a courageous, original, incredibly well-written, and deeply researched text. It offers a creative application of feminist insights to offer readers a deeply nuanced understanding of the forces acting around and through the people who do the care work that keeps Israel/Palestine running–for better or worse. NPS as a caucus was founded, in part, in response to APSA not having panels on the Vietnam War during the war, and while we’re witnessing the US funding a genocide in Palestine, when simply speaking publicly on this topic—never mind publishing a work of genuine scholarship—can kill a career, critical political scientists have an obligation to do precisely that: to use our particular skills to contribute to a deep understanding of the most egregious injustices in our world and how they affect the lives of people living through them—and our Caucus has a responsibility to lift exactly these voices. Dr. Brown’s book is the pinnacle of skill and courage. It contributes methodologically, theoretically, politically, and morally in this moment when we need it the most.
Past Recipients
2024: Tom Malleson, King’s University College
Against Inequality: The Practical and Ethical Case for Abolishing the Superrich
2024 Honorable Mention: Neil Kraus, the University of Wisconsin
The Fantasy Economy
2023: Mark R. Warren
Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline
2022: Hahrie Han, Elizabeth McKenna, and Michelle Oyakawa
Prisms of the People: Power & Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
2021: Albena Azmanova, University of Kent
Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia. Columbia University Press, 2020.
2020: Rebecca Tarlau, Pennsylvania State University
Occupying Schools, Occupy Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education. Oxford University Press, 2019.
2019: Keisha Lindsay, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminism in All-Black Male Schools. University of Illinois Press, 2018.
2018: Gordon Lafer, University of Oregon & Economic Policy Institute
The One-Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time. ILR Press, 2017.
2017: Peter Dauvergne, University of British Columbia
Environmentalism of the Rich. MIT Press, 2016.
2016: Marie Gottschalk, University of Pennsylvania
Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Additional Recipients »