Harvard University, Department of Government

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The Department of Government is one of the leading political science communities in the United States. Our faculty represent a broad spectrum of backgrounds, methodologies and approaches. We have strength in teaching and research not only in the four fields of political science—American politics, political theory, comparative politics, and international relations—but also in the areas of formal theory, methodology, and political economy.

DEPARTMENT NEWS

Professor Susan Pharr has received Imperial Honors from the Japanese Government. The decoration was announced in Tokyo on April 29, Tokyo time.
From the citation:
"The Japanese Government, in recognition of Professor Pharr’s distinguished contributions to the study of Japan, intellectual exchange between our two countries and the nurturing of scholars of Japan, is delighted to announce her decoration of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon." The conferment will occur in May.

The Department of Government has been awarded a Dean’s Seed Grant for Planned Improvements in Graduate Education in the amount of $25,000. The Seed Grant will be used to upgrade its highly successful pilot program focusing on graduate student teacher training and professional development.

Professor Jeffry Frieden received the Distinguished Scholar Award in International Political Economy of the International Studies Association.

Professor Torben Iversen has been selected as a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Professor Nahomi Ichino and co-Principal Investigator Professor Matthias Schundeln of the Economics Department have been awarded an NSF grant for their research on "Political Participation and Electoral Malpractices in Ghana."

Professor Michael Rosen has been appointed to an Honorary Professorship of Philosophy at the Humboldt University, Berlin.

Brodi Kemp, Joseph Mazor, and Michael Nitsch, PHD candidates in Government, have been named Graduate Fellows in Ethics by The Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics.

Bruno Macaes (PhD, November 2006) has been awarded the Richard Herrnstein prize for his disssertation, "Adventure as a Theory of Politics" by Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Professor James Alt has been appointed a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, which provides for three weeks residence each year for three years starting 2007-2008.

Department News

RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY FACULTY

Kenneth A. Shepsle and Mark S. Bonchek, Las Formulas de las Politica: Instituciones, racionalidad, y comportamiento (Mexico: Taurus), tr. Mario Zamudio. [Spanish edition of Kenneth A. Shepsle and Mark S. Bonchek, Analyzing Politics (Norton)]

Michael J. Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007).

Michael J. Sandel, ed., Justice: A Reader ( Oxford University Press, 2007)

Robert H. Bates co-author with Benno Ndulu et al., The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960-2000: An Analytic Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Robert H. Bates co-editor with Benno Ndulu et al., The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960-2000: Case Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Robert H. Bates, When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Kenneth Shepsle and Alvin Rabushka Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability [2nd edition, Longman Classics in Political Science Edition with a foreword by James Fearon and a new "Epilogue, 2008" by the authors]

Kenneth Shepsle with Theordore Lowi and Benjamin Ginsberg American Government: Power and Purpose, 10th edition (NY: W.W. Norton, 2008)

Michael Rosen, The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (Oxford University Press, December 2007). Edited with Brian Leiter.

Jorge I. Domínguez and Anthony Jones, eds., The Construction of Democracy: Lessons from Practice and Research ( Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 253 pp.

Alastair Iain Johnston, Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980-2000 ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008) (already out)

Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston eds., Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective ( Cambridge University Press, 2007)

More publications by faculty.

Department of Government