About the Department

James E. Alt is Director of Graduate Studies and Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government. He is author, co-author, or editor of The Politics of Economic Decline (Cambridge University Press, 1979), Political Economics (University of California Press, 1983), Advances in Quantitative Methods (Elsevier, 1980), Cabinet Studies (Macmillan, 1975), Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Competition and Cooperation (Russell Sage, 1999). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including "Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1964-1974" in the British Journal of Political Science, 1977, "Political Parties, World Demand, and Unemployment" in the American Political Science Review, 1985, "Crude Politics: Oil and the Political Economy of Unemployment in Britain and Norway, 1970-85," in the British Journal of Political Science, 1987, "Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Deficits: Evidence from the States," in the American Political Science Review, 1994, and "Fiscal Policy and Elections in American States," in the American Political Science Review, 1998. He is the founding director of the Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences. He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Political Studies, American Political Science Review, and other journals, and has been a member of the Political Science Panel of the National Science Foundation. He was a Guggenheim Fellow 1997-98 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.