Politics has rarely taken on such immediacy for so many people. The year 2021 began with a struggle over whether there would be a peaceful transition of power in the United States. Ever since, citizens have watched a divided Congress while the consequences of the 2020 election hung in the balance. Political polarization in the United States has grown along with fights over ballot access and racial discrimination in policing.
Democratic institutions are in retreat around the world, with fewer democracies than at any time since the early 1990s. The majority of authoritarian countries, like Russia and Belarus, now conduct elections, but these elections are rigged and often bloody affairs, and many of these countries have ratcheted up repression in recent years. Among the world’s largest democracies, India and Brazil appear to be sliding towards authoritarianism under populist leaders, and even in the European Union, Hungary has become an authoritarian state, and Poland’s populist leadership is following in its footsteps by stifling the judiciary and the media.
Democratic countries face increasingly aggressive challenges from China and Russia. Meanwhile, global problems have become local problems. As the world’s nations were failing to come to grips with climate change at COP 26 in Glasgow, communities across the globe dealt with forest fires, droughts, and hurricanes intensified by rising global temperatures. Covid spread in wave after wave, as new mutations arose in countries without access to vaccines and international cooperation failed to materialize. In turn, Covid polarized politics across the globe and fanned the flames of xenophobia.
Politics has never been more complex, and understanding politics has never been more essential. The Political Science Department at Rochester is dedicated to research and teaching that brings to bear the most sophisticated tools of our profession to understand the problems of our times. In our undergraduate majors in Political Science and International Relations, we teach tools courses in game theory and statistics and integrate those techniques into substantive classes about political institutions, voting and elections, and international conflict. In our Ph.D. program, we take technical training to the highest level in the discipline, and our graduates apply their skills to a wide range of substantive issues in all subfields of political science.
In what follows, you will find references to some of our recent research and accomplishments, but I would like to highlight two special initiatives here. First, the Department is launching an initiative in African-American politics. We have extended two faculty offers in African-American politics this fall, and we plan to follow this up with additional hiring in the future in partnership with the University of Rochester’s Frederick Douglass Institute. Second, we are in the process of launching a new Center for the Study of Democracy, which is conceived as a broad-based institution that will deepen our research and teaching in American politics, comparative politics, and race and ethnic politics. We are forming an alumni committee to help support the new Center, and we look forward to announcing more initiatives in the future.
Let us hear from you! We are seeking to foster a continuing engagement with our alumni, and we would like to hear how you are using your Rochester training, what aspects of that training seem particularly important to you now, and what new ideas you have. Until our next newsletter, you can stay up-to-date with department activities by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Meliora,
Randall Stone
Chair, Department of Political Science
Support the Department of Political Science by making a gift today.
| |
The Department of Political Science celebrated its graduates in May with a hybrid ceremony. Elisabeth Rott ’21, a double major in International Relations and Spanish, is pictured here taking a selfie with the track team at Commencement.
| |
Department faculty publish articles in leading political science journals and books with top university presses, often coauthoring with students. Click here for a listing of recent faculty publications. Below is a sampling of recent department research and activities.
| |
In a special feature in Rochester Review, faculty members and alumni offered their thoughts on whether American democracy is in crisis and where the country is headed.
| |
Professor Anderson Frey and Rochester PhD and IE University Professor Zuheir Desai published an article explaining why right-wing parties often win elections in developing countries where much of the population lives in poverty.
| |
In November, the Politics and Markets Project, an initiative directed by Professor David Primo, held its first in-person event since 2019. Over 100 students came together in Wegmans Hall to hear competing perspectives on the federal budget. You can follow the PMP on Facebook and Instagram.
| |
Professor Gerald Gamm and his UCSD coauthor, Professor Thad Kousser, published an article establishing that “party competition is not just healthy for a political system but for the life prospects of a state’s residents.”
| |
Professor Gretchen Helmke, Professor Jack Paine, and their UNC-Chapel Hill coauthor, Professor Mary Kroeger, published an article about how democracies survive despite constitutions being “incomplete contracts” in constraining leaders.
| |
Mohammed Bah ’23 (l), an International Relations major, and Miguel Yakouma ’23 (r) have received a Davis Projects for Peace grant for a project in Africa that seeks to restore social bonds between warring religious groups.
| |
Professor Mayya Komisarchik and coauthors show how Twitter hashtags can be used to understand public opinion on hate crimes directed toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
| |
On November 18, the Department honored Caltech Professor Thomas Palfrey with the William H. Riker Prize in Political Science. This prize is awarded every two years to a social scientist whose work advances the scientific study of politics in the spirit of William Riker.
| |
Bethany Tallis ’20, an International Relations and Environmental Studies major, was one of four youth chosen to represent Scotland at COP26’s Conference of Youth. This group prepared an 80-page statement calling on global leaders to “step up their game” on climate change policy.
| |
Professor Gretchen Helmke and collaborators created Bright Line Watch to regularly survey Americans and political scientists about the state of American democracy. BLW continued its work in 2021 as a new president took office.
| |
|
|
|
