Updated November 20, 2009

The Department of Political Science is extremely proud to announce that Elinor Ostrom, the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, has been awarded the 2009 Nobel in Economic Science “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.” Professor Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel in Economics.

Elinor Ostrom, along with her long-term collaborator Vincent Ostrom, is co-founder of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. She served as the co-director of the workshop from 1973 to July 2009, and is currently its Senior Research Director.      Professor Ostrom served as president of the American Political Science Association in 1996-1997 and was the first woman to chair the Department of Political Science at IU. She was inducted to the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2008. Professor Ostrom is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of numerous Honorary Degrees. Among her many publications are Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

The Campus is planning a celebration of Lin Ostrom on her winning of the Nobel Prize on Wednesday, December 2, 4:00-6:00 pm. The celebration will take place in the IU Auditorium foyer and will include speakers from both the College and SPEA who are long-time friends and colleagues of Professor Ostrom. She will not speak at this event. This is purely a celebration of all of her good deeds. The Campus is working on a date in January or February when she will deliver her acceptance speech to the campus.

The Department welcomes new faculty, Timothy Hellwig and Yanna Krupnikov Yanna Krupnikov's research interests focus on the relationship between political communication and voter decision-making and, broadly, include political communication, electoral behavior, public opinion and political psychology. Krupnikov is currently working on three projects. The first integrates political science with research from marketing, psychology and behavioral decision theory to analyze the conditions under which negative campaigning can demobilize voters. The second project combines psychological theories of status quo bias to analyze the relationship between gubernatorial power and legislative turnover at the state level. The third project focuses on experimental measurement. This research on the validity of experimental instruments has recently been funded through National Science Foundation's Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences program. Her teaching interests include public opinion, political communication, political psychology, and state and local politics.

Tim Hellwig's interests include comparative and international political economy, mass political behavior, and European politics. His current work examines how elite cues affect how voters hold politicians to accounts, how electoral systems matter for parties' strategies in parliamentary elections, and how globalization shapes mass politics. Professor Hellwig holds a BA from St. Cloud State University, an MA from American University, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. Before coming to IU, he was on the faculty at the University of Houston and has been a visiting researcher at the University of Essex. He teaches courses on comparative political economy, comparative elections, European politics, world politics, and quantitative methods.

Sumit Ganguly gave a talk on November 2 at the International Relations Colloquium at the University of California at Berkeley on “Three Theories in Search of Reality: Explaining the Violence of the Partition of India”.

The World Learning’s Democracy Fellows Program (DFP), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) seeks a Democracy Fellow for the Elections and Political Processes Division in USAID’s Office of Democracy and Governance to guide, advise and contribute to research, assessment and evaluation efforts for USAID’s Political party programs worldwide. The full announcement can be found at http://wlid.usaid.gov and on the Graduate Office bulletin board.

The Department would like to welcome Jim Gibson as part-time Undergraduate Advisor. Jim comes to us with years of experience and also advises in Sociology.

Jeff Isaac, new Editor-In-Chief of Perspectives on Politics, brings journal to IU Department of Political Science.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Job Announcement: Political Economy/Or Public Policy, New PhD Program in Africology – University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, tenure track. Full announcement is located in the Rawles Room. Website: http://www.jobs.uwm.edu/.

Announcing the Dissertation Defense of Shanna Dietz Surendra Surendra exam

Announcing the Dissertation Defense of Barbara Junisbai Junisbai exam

Announcing the Dissertation Defense of Edward M. Burmila Burmila exam

Applications are being accepted for graduate student opportunity in international relations offered at the Bologna Center of The John Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Application deadline is February 1, 2010. Information can be found on bulletin board outside Graduate Office and at http://www.jhubc.it/openday.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is offering fellowship opportunities for 2010 for doctoral candidates completing dissertations. Information can be found at www.woodrow.org. Information is also posted outside the Graduate Office, Woodburn 210E.

EVENTS AND PRESENTATIONS

Aurelian Craiutu, Roundtable on Tocqueville on America after 1840 (with Harvey Mansfield, Cheryl Welch, Shep Melnick), Boston College, The Clough Center for Constitutionalism, November 9, 2009.

Yvette Alex-Assensoh will present “Obama’s Lincoln: Walking the Tightrope of Race and Unity in 21st Century America and Abroad”, Association of Third World Studies (ATWS), Cape Coast, Ghana, November 21, 2009.

Yvette Alex-Assensoh will present “Transnational Politics in Living Color: A Political Examination of Ongoing Ghanaian Immigration to America and African-American Immigration to Ghana, 1950-2009” Harvard Institute for Advanced Study, Accra, Ghana, November 27, 2009.

PUBLICATIONS AND CONFERENCE PAPERS

Jack Bielasiak, "The Paradox of Solidarity's Legacy: Contested Values in Poland's Transition," Paper for the Conference on Europe Twenty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Overcoming "East and West", National Center for Research on Europe, Wellington, New Zealand, November 2-4, 2009.

Ostrom, Elinor. 2009. “A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change.” Policy Research Working Paper No. 5095. Background paper to the 2010 World Development Report. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Policy Research Working Paper

Sumit Ganguly, “Breaking America’s Silence on Pakistan,” in the Asian Wall Street Journal on November 3, 2009.

Prakash Kashwan, "Nobel for Lin Ostrom: Are Indian Policy Makers Listening?" published on November 3rd, 2009 by IndiaTogether at http://indiatogether.org/2009/nov/opi-ostrom.htm

. Barbara Junisbai's paper on the political import of financial-industrial groups in Kazakhstan received an Honorable Mention in the Central Eurasian Studies Society's graduate student paper competition, which was held in conjunction with the Society's 10th annual conference in Toronto on October 8-11. The paper, entitled "A Tale of Two Kazakhstans: Sources of Political Cleavage and Conflict in the Post-Soviet Period," was also recently accepted for publication in the journal Europe-Asia Studies.

Sumit Ganguly and Manjeet S Pardesi, "Prospects for India's Energy and Geopolitical Roles in the Middle East," in the The New Energy Silk Road: The Growing Asia-Middle East Nexus, The National Bureau of Asian Research Conference Report, October 2009. Available: http://www.nbr.org/downloads/pdfs/eta/ES_Conf09_PR.pdf.

Eduardo Brondizio, Elinor Ostrom, and Oran Young. 2009. “Connectivity and the Governance of Multilevel Social-Ecological Systems: The Role of Social Capital.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34 (November): 253–278.

Jeff Hart delivered a paper on “The Transition to Digital Television in the United States: The Endgame,” at a conference on Digital TV Transitions: DTV Switchover, Mobile TV, IPTV – Lessons and Projections at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, Columbia University, New York, October 2, 2009.

Jeff Hart Delivered a presentation on “Theories of International Relations” to Indiana University Student Foreign Policy Initiative, Bloomington, Indiana, September 22, 2009.

Jeff Hart, "Video on the Internet: The Content Question," in Darcy Gerbarg (ed.), Television Goes Digital (New York: Springer, 2009).

Jeff Hart, "Organizational Cultures in U.S. Research-Oriented Universities," in Charles F. Bonser (ed.), Adapting Universities to the Global Society: A Transatlantic Perspective (Muenster: LIT Verlag, 2009).

Basurto, Xavier, and Elinor Ostrom. 2009. “Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons.” Economia delle fonti di energia e dell’ambiente 52(1) (October): 35–60. Sumit Ganguly and Nicholas Howenstein co authored "India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan," Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 63, No. 1 (December 2009).

Nicholas Howenstein, "Co-Opting Jihad: A Review of Ayesha Jalal and Praveen Swami," India Review, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Fall 2009).

Yvette Alex-Assensoh, “African Immigrants and African Americans: An Analysis of Voluntary African Immigration and the Evolution of Black Politics in American”, African and Asian Studies 8(2009): 89-124 pp.

Yvette Alex-Assensoh, “Change and the 2008 Presidential Elections”, Croatian National Political Science Review. 5(2009).

Nicholas Clark and Robert Rohrschneider, “Second-Order Elections versus First-Order Thinking: How Voters Perceive the Representation Process in a Multi-Layered System of Governance” September 2009. European Integration. 31(5): 613-632.

    On behalf of my colleagues in the Department, I want to welcome you to the Indiana University Political Science homepage. Our department is one of the oldest political science departments in the nation, and one of the best. The faculty analyze problems of vital interest to the nation and world, as you’ll discover elsewhere on this page. Their expertise is at your disposal, and we invite inquiries from students, parents, alumni and friends, the citizens of Indiana, and scholars around the world.

We teach courses on a variety of topics in American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and public policy. Our expert staff provides information, assistance in planning academic programs, and direction to the many services available to students on campus. We also coordinate internships, service learning, and “on the job” learning experiences.

Training the next generation of political scientists is part of our mission, and we offer graduate degrees in political science, as well as a joint Ph.D. with Indiana University’s School of Public & Environmental Affairs. As part of their training our graduate students teach courses in their specialties, under the supervision of experienced faculty members.

We hope that our web site answers many of your questions and informs you of resources and services that are available through our department. If you have additional questions, or if you are unable to find the information that you need, please contact one of us personally. Our phone numbers and email addresses are included as part of the web site.


Russell Hanson, Chair