Senate confirms Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain’s appointment to NEH Council on the Humanities

Mitch Seligson’s article "The 'Kling Thesis': An Early Effort at Systematic Comparative Politics" has been published in the Political Research Quarterly (2008, 61:17-19).

Visiting Professor Mike Nelson has published not one but two pieces on the presidency and John Adams in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Presidential Power" is available online at this address: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=9hcPRhvkvhXknvv2C5tftGFghtPkhgkg "John Adams, in Brilliant Colors" is available online at this address: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=dfzvQnmBnRWnn3stjwvmzbp5Cmxsty9W

Ph.D. candidate Daniel Moreno Morales’s article “National political community and ethnicity: Evidence from two Latin American countries” has appeared in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 14:55–84, 2008.

Professor Carol Swain appeared today with President Bush and other presidential nominees in a press conference where he addressed his nominations and their senate confirmations. Swain has been nominated by the President to serve on the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Advisory Board.

John Geer’s book In Defense of Negativity has been awarded the Goldsmith Book Prize for the “academic book published in the last year that best fulfills the objective of improving government through an examination of the intersection between press, politics, and public policy.” The Goldsmith Book Prize is awarded by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy of Harvard University.

LAPOP (the Latin American Public Opinion Project) has been awarded $9 million in new and continuing funding to support its AmericasBarometer series of surveys in 20 nations of the Americas. The funding, for Latin American and Caribbean countries, is provided by the United States Agency for Economic Development to support biennial surveys through 2014. LAPOP was founded and is directed by Centennial Professor of Political Science Mitchell Seligson.

Jenna Lukasik (with Stefanie Lidquist, her adviser) will be awarded a prestigious NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.

Jose Miguel Cruz has been invited by the Democracy and Development Project of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies to participate in a workshop on “Violence and Citizenship in Post-Authoritarian Latin America,” to be held, March 7, 2008 at Princeton University.

Mitch Seligson's book THE LEGITIMACY PUZZLE IN LATIN AMERICA: DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL SUPPORT IN EIGHT NATIONS (coauthored with John Booth of the University of North Texas) has been accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press.

President Bush has nominated Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science and Law, to serve a six year term on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Vanderbilt political scientists Mitch Seligson and Neal Tate with their University of Pittsburgh collaborators Steve Finkel and Anibal Perez-Linan presented the findings of their new research on "Deepening our Understanding of the Effects on US Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building" to a Washington seminar sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on December 7, 2007.

Erwin Hargrove's latest book THE EFFECTIVE PRESIDENCY: Lessons on Leadership from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush has been published by Paradigm Publishers. For a look at Erwin’s work, click here http://www.vanderbilt.edu/myvu/news/2007/10/26/getting-it-done-hargrove-gauges-the-effectiveness-of-recent-presidents.48248

Karen Owen's "Partisan Change and Consequences for Lobbying: Two Party Government comes to Georgia Legislature" (coauthored with Chuck Bullock) is the lead article in STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT REVIEW (39:2).

A conference introducing the findings of the 2006 "Barometer of the Americas" surveys of Vanderbilt's Latin American Public Opinioin Program (LAPOP) will be held on September 27, 2007 at the Casa de la Universidad de California en Mexico in Mexico City.

March Hetherington has been awarded the College of Arts and Science Jeffrey Nordquist Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the Social Sciences for 2007.

Michaela Mattes's article “The Effect of Changing Condition and Agreement Provisions on Conflict and Renegotiation between States with Competing Claims” has been accepted for publication in the INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY.

The 9th edition of Jim Ray's GLOBAL POLITICS (co-authored with Juliet Kaarbo), published by Houghton Mifflin with a 2008 publication date, has just appeared.

Stefanie Lindquist, Associate Professor of Political Science and Law, was selected as Chair-Elect of the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science at the recent APSA Annual Meeting in Chicago.

Mitch Seligson, Centennial Professor of Political Science and Founder/Director of the Latin American Public Opinion Program (LAPOP) is the author of articles to appear in WORLD POLITICS, POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY, JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY, and in FREEDOM REVIEW (in Korean).

Pam Corley’s article "The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Influence of Parties' Briefs" has been accepted for publication in the POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY.

Kate Ivanova's article “CBRN Attack Perpetrators: An Empirical Study” (with Todd Sandler) has been accepted for publication at Foreign Policy Analysis.

Stefanie Lindquist and Carol Swain are the authors of two recent op ed articles in the Nashville TENNESSEAN. Both articles argue one side of a current controversial issue.

Debating Immigration, edited by Professor Carol Swain, is now available from Cambridge University Press, with an official release date of April 30, 2007.

Marc Hetherington's article "Priming, Performance, and the Dynamics of Political Trust" (coauthored with Thomas J. Rudolph of the University of Illinois) will appear in the first issue of JOURNAL OF POLITICS in 2008.

Mitch Seligson's article "Is Democracy at Risk in Latin America? The Implications of the Rise of the Left and the Resurgence of Populism," is forthcoming in the JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY.

“Challenges to Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean: Evidence from the AmericasBarometer 2006,” sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies and featuring the work of Mitch Seligcon's Latin American Public Opinion Program (LAPOP), will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Renaissance Room at Vanderbilt Law School.

Stefanie Lindquist's article "Judicial Review by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts: Examining Justice's Responses to Constitutional Challenges" has been published in the March 2007 issue of the POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY. The article is coauthored with Rorie Spill Solberg of Oregon State University.

Carol Swain has been appointed to the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The appointment is congressionally approved.

Brooke Ackerly will receive the Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center Mentoring Award. The Award honors a member of the Vanderbilt University community who fosters the professional and intellectual development of Vanderbilt women.

Mitch Seligson delivered the Winter 2007 International RElations Lecture at Brigham Young University's David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, March 15. 2007.

John Geer's "Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate" (coauthored with Deborah Jordan Books of Dartmouth University) has been published as the lead article in the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

Pam Corley's article "Bargaining and Accommodation on the United states Supreme Court: Insights from Justice Blackmun" has been published in the January-February 2007 issue of Judicature: The Journal of the American Judicature Society.

Stefanie Lindquist has received acceptances for "Bureaucratization and Balkanization: The Evolution of Decision Making Norms on the Federal Appellate Courts," in the University of Richmond Law Review. "Judicial Review in the Rehnquist Court," (with coauthors Joseph Smith of the University of Alabama and Frank B. Cross of the University of Texas Law School) in Constitutional Commentary. "The Scientific Study of Judicial Activism," (with coauthor Frank B. Cross) in the University of Minnesota Law Review. In addition, her "best selling" book Judging on a Collegial Court (coauthored with Virginia Hettinger of the University of Connecticut and Wendy Martinek of Binghamton University) is going to paperback with the University of Virginia Press.

Graduate student Russell Parman's article ""Social Roots of Terrorism" has been accepted for publication in The World of Transformations, a journal of the Institute for Economic and Political Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Kate Ivanova's article "Corruption, Illegal Trade and Compliance with the Montreal Protocol." has been accepted for publication in "Environmental and Resource Economics," the second best journal in environmental economics.

A youtube video montage "Vanderbilt 2006 Election Highlights" features four VU political scientists who were heavily involved in commentary on the election: John Geer, Christian Grose, Bruce Oppenheimer, and Carol Swain. See http://youtube.com/watch?v=VuSSfUq5Rj0

Marc Hetherington's article "Issue Preferences and Evaluations of the U.S. Supreme Court" will appear in the next issue of Public Opinion Quarterly (Spring 2007). The article is coauthored with Joe Smith of the University of Alabama.

Carol Swain is the author of two recent articles dealing with voting rights and the chances of African American candidates for President. "Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act: How Politics and Symbolism Failed America" appears the GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY. "Is American Ready for a Black President?" appears in the January 2007 edition of EBONY. The article was also discussed on MSNBC.

Vivian Schwatz-Blum's article "Por quê confiamos nas instituições? O caso boliviano" appears in the Brazilian journal, PUBLIC OPINION (OPININAO PUBLICA, November. 2006, vol.12, no.2, p.297-328).

Ph.D. student Irek Kusmierczyk remembers George Graham

George J. Graham, Professor of Political Science and a Vanderbilt faculty member for over 43 years, died November 30, 2006 at Vanderbilt University Hospital, of cancer. Memorial service arrangements are pending.

The board of the Vanderbilt University Center for the Americas has approved a grant of $50,000 to the Latin American Public Opinion Program (LAPOP) to enable it to include the United States and Canada (via phone surveys) in LAPOP's ongoing series of surveys. That brings the number of countries LAPOP will be surveying this year to 20!

Michaela Mattes's article "Alliance Politics During the Cold War: Aberration, New World Order or Continuation of History" (with Brett Ashley Leeds) will be published in Conflict Management and Peace Science 24/3 (2007).

Jon Hiskey's article "Exit without Leaving: Political Disengagement in High Migration Municipalities in Mexico" has been accepted for publication in COMPARATIVE POLITICS.

Brett Benson has had his article "Economic Interdependence and Peace: A Game-Theoretic Analysis," (with Emerson M.S. Niou) accepted for publication in the Journal of East Asian Studies.

Brooke Ackerly has been awarded a grant in the amount of $72,250 from the Vanderbilt Center for Ethics to support her Global Feminisms Project .

Bruce Oppenheimer discussed the race for U.S. Senate in Tennessee on the NPT "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" for Wednesday September 20. Check "Senate Races in South Gain Momentum as Election Nears" on the linked page to access the video segment.

John Geer's research on negative campaigning and attack ads, reported in his book DEFENDING NEGATIVITY, has made him the target of an attack ad. Check the link for the lowdown!

Brooke ackerly has been awarded the University of Auckland's Strategic International Research Collaboration Grant to support the writing of Doing Feminist Research in Social and Political Science.

The 2006 Ernest A. Jones Faculty Advising Award in the College of Arts and Science has been awarded to Professor Jim Ray.

The 4th edition of Don Hancock's POLITICS IN EUROPE has just been publpublished by CQ Press.

Klint Alexander has had a chapter on "Rethinking Retaliation in the WTO Dispute Settlement System" accepted for publication in a new volume The World Trade Organization and Trade in Services and an article on "Resolving Differences over Trade and Development Between Rich and Poor Countries within the WTO" accepted for 2007 publication in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

John Geer's article "Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate" (with Professor Deb Brooks of Dartmouth) has been accepted for publication in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE (AJPS).

Christian Grose has had two new articles accepted for publication. "Bridging the Divide: Interethnic Cooperation, Minority Media Outlets, and the Coverage of Latino, African-American, and Asian-American Members of Congress." Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. "Race, Political Empowerment, and Constituency Service: Descriptive Representation and the Hiring of African-American Congressional Staff." (coauthored with Maurice Mangum and Christopher Martin) is forthcoming in Polity.

Centennial Professor Mitch Seligson has been appoiinted to serve on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Evaluation of USAID Democracy programs.

Mitch Seligson and Neal Tate (of Vanderbilt) and Steve Finkel and Anibal Perez-Linan (of the University of Pittiburgh) have been awarded a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to support research on “Deepening our Understanding of the Effects of US Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building."

Pam Corley's article "Bargaining and Accommodation on the United States Supreme Court: Insight from Justice Blackmun" has been accepted for publication in Judicature. Her "Avoiding Advice and Consent: Recess Appointments and Presidential Power" is forthcoming in the December 2006 issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly.

Stefanie Lindquist's article "Judicial Review by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts: Explaining Justices' Responses to Constitutional Challenges" (coauthored with Rorie Spill Solberg) has been accapted for publication in the POLITICAL RESEARCH QUARTERLY.

Stefanie Lindquist's article "Supreme Court Auditing of the United States Courts of Appeals: An Organizational Perspective", (aoauthored with Susan Haire of the University of Georgia and Don Songer of the University of South Carolina) has been accepted for publication in J-PART - JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH AND THEORY.

Carol Swain has been informed by the National Science Foundation that she will receive a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) grant to support her research on immigration.

USAID (the Unites States Agency for International Development) has added $110,000 for the DIMS (Demiocracy Indicators Monitorung Surveys) project being conducted by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) under the leadership of Centennial Professor of Political Science Mitchell Seligson.

Carol Swain testifies on June 20, 2006 before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary on "Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act." Her testimony is part of a session on "Policy Perspectives and Views from the Field."

Crhistian Grose's work is receiving scholarly attention. He has had three articles published or accepted recently.

March Hetherington's article The Price of Leadership: Campaign Money and the Polarization of Congressional Leadership. (coauthored with Bruce Larson and Eric Heberlig) has been accepted for publication in the JOURNAL OF POLITICS.

Stefanie Lindquist has had articles accepted in LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, JOURNAL OF EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES, and STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT REVIEW.

John Geer'S IN DEFENSE OF NEGATIVITY: ATTACK ADS IN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS is the subject of an op ed review by Ruth Marcus in the WASHINGTON POST.

The work of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and a related workshop on measuring democratic values sponsored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) are featured in the VANDEBILT REGISTER.

Brooke Ackerly's "Deliberative Democratic Theory for Building Global Civil Society: Designing a Virtual Community of Activists." appears in CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL THEORY. 5, 2 (May): 113-141, 2006.

John Geer's new book IN DEFENSE OF NEGATIVITY: ATTACK ADS IN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS is generating substantial media attention.

"Filling in the Blanks: A New Method for Estimating Campaign Effects," coauthored by John Geer and Richard R. Lau (or Rutgers University), has appeared in the April, 2006 issue of the BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE (at pages 269-290).

Don Hancock and recent Vanderbilt graduate Karen Petersen recently completed initial work on a workshop on "The Baltic Security Triangle: Scandinavia, Russia, and the European Union." The workshop was funded by a $5,000 grant from the International Studies Association.

"The Contours of Critical Citizenship: Exploring Democratic Legitimacy," c-authored by Mitch Seligson, John A. Booth, and Miguel Gómez B. has been accepted for publication Opinião Pública, the Brazilian equivalent of PUBLIC OPINION QUARTERLY.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded Vanderbilt University and Centennial Professor of Political Science Mitchell Seligson $1.92 million for a program of Democratic Indicators Monitoring Surveys. The surveys will be conducted under the auspices of the Latin American Public Opinion Project, supported by the Vanderbilt Center for the Americas.

Stefanie Lindquist's JUDGING O A COLLEGIAL COURT: INFLUENCES ON FEDERAL APPELLATE DECISION MAKING (coauthored with Virginia Hettinger and Wendy Martinek) has been published by the University of Virginia Press.

John Geer's IN DEFENSE OF NEGATIVITY: ATTACK ADVERTISING IN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS has now been published by the University of Chicago Press.

Florence Faucher-King's CHANGING PARTIES: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF BRITISH POLITICAL PARTY CONFERENCES has now been published in United States. The book, published by by Palgrave-Macmillan Publishers, appeared in Europe in December 2005.

LAPOP (the Latin American Public Opinion Program) is one of the major public opinioin survey resource listed by World Public Opinion.

Professor Bruce Oppenheimer has won the Graduate Mentoring Award of the College of Arts and Science in recognition of his outstanding guidance of graduate students at Vanderbilt and elsewhere through his career. Oppenheimer's award is the fourth major teaching award won by a Vanderbilt Political Science faculty member during 2004 and 2005.

Bruce Oppenheimer, Professor of Political Science, has also been named Professor of Public Policy and Education in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organization of Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education.

Graduate student Irek Kusmierczyk's Op Ed Piece "Tennessee is rich in the homage it pays to Holocaust victims" P appears in the NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN on December 2, 2005, 2005.

Marc Hetherington's article "Issue Preferences and Evaluations of the Supreme Court" (with Joseph L. Smith of the University of Alabama) has been accepted for publication in the PUBLIC OPINION QUARTERLY in 2006.

Pamela Corley was awarded the Malcolm Jewell Award at the January 2006 meeting of the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) in Atlanta. The Malcolm Jewell award is given to the writer of the best paper presented by a graduate student at the Annual Meeting of the SPSA.

Mitchell Seligson's article "Strategy, Careers, and Judicial Decisions" (coauthored by Barry Ames and Anibal Perez-Linan of the University of Pittsburgh) has been accepted for publication in the May, 2006 issue of the JOURNAL OF POLITICS.

Stefanie Lindquist and Frank Cross (Law, University of Texas at Austin) have a new article in the NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW's October 2005 issue. The article is titled "Empirically Testing Dworkin's Chain Novel Theory: Studying the Path of Precedent."

The JOURNAL OF POLITICS, one of the top three scholarly journals in political science, is edited at Vanderbilt. Professor John Geer is the JOURNAL's editor. Graduate students Irik Kusmierczyk, Rae Manacsa, and Sonalini Sapra are the JOURNAL's Editorial Interns.

Phil C.W. Chan, a scholar of international law and human rights from Hong Kong, has joined the department as a Visiting Senior Researcher for the Spring 2008 semester.

Florence Faucher-King has accepted an appointment as Associate Professor of European Studies, Political Science, and Sociology. She was formely Chargée de Recherche’ at Sciences-Po, the National Foundation for Political Science (FNSP), in Paris.

Carol Swain's wrtings and public appearances related to the national immigration debate have been receiving varied notice in the press.

Irek Kusmierczyk was the featured speaker on October 30th for a Rotary International Foundation Seminar in Detroit. Irek spoke on "The Ambassador Bridge: The Role of Cross-Cultural Exchanges in Fostering Understanding, Peace, and Democracy Abroad".

Irek Kusmierczyk, a second-year graduate student in Political Science at Vanderbilt, will speak on “Solidarity and Democratization in Poland” at the next United Nations Association Brown Bag Luncheon at noon on November 17th at the Nashville Peace and Justice Center, 1016 18th Avenue South.

USAID Bolivia has increased its grant support to Centennial Professor of Political Science MItchell Seligson for the democracy-related activities of the Latin American Public Opinion Program (LAPOP), an affiliate of Vanderbilt's Center for the Americas. USAID is providing an additional $139,133.00, bringing the total Bolivian grant to $678,947.

MItch Seligson has appointed to the newly formed International Advisory Board of the AfroBarometer.

Christian Grose is profiled as one of the new faculty of note in the Vanderbilt Register. . View the article "Grose ready for some Tennessee politics" in the September 19-October 2 edition.

The 2005 Ernest A. Jones Faculty Adviser Award in the College of Arts and Science was presented to Professor George Graham. The award in named for a former Vanderbilt Professor.