Ed Goldring received a place on the Institute for Far Eastern Studies’ (IFES) summer program in 2017. IFES is a research arm of Kyungnam University in South Korea, whose scholars focus on research relating to peace and unification on the Korean Peninsula. Ed conducted research for two months over the summer in Seoul, including interviews with North Korean defectors, policy, and media professionals.

Dictators and Their Secret Police by Assistant Professor Sheena Greitens has been named a co-winner of the 2017 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Section on Comparative Democratization.  The selection committee was “deeply impressed with the rigor of [the] comparative analysis and the magnitude of [the] book’s theoretical contributions to our understanding of coercive institutions.”  The book was recognized at the September APSA conference in San Francisc

Professor Peverill Squire's most recent book, The Rise of the Representative: Lawmakers and Constituents in Colonial America, is now out from University of Michigan Press.

Read an interview with Squire about his latest project.

Three MU Political Science graduate students attended the prestigious Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) in Ann Arbor, Michigan this summer.

Lael Keiser, professor of public policy and administration, has been appointed director of the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs.

In July Dr. Sheena Greitens testified to Congress on the terrorism threat from ISIS-affiliated groups in the Philippines and how the US can design security cooperation with the Philippines to counter these threats.

New book from Andrea Benjamin and Cambridge Press, Racial Coalition Building in Local Elections, examines racial and ethnic coalition building in local elections and considers Black and Latino political incorporation more broadly.

In April, the department held our annual awards reception, honoring our undergraduate and graduate student scholarship winners.

Undergraduate Scholarship Winners

William L. Bradshaw Scholarship
Steven Chaffin

Jeffrey D. Byrne Scholarship
Morgan Corder
Brooks Green

J.G. Heinberg Scholarship
Tricia Swartz
Dylan Cain

Bill Horner, Teaching Professor of Political Science, and Heather Carver, Professor and Chair of the MU Theatre Department, evaluate the impact of comedy on the 1976 election in their new book, Saturday Night Live and the 1976 Presidential Election, from McFarland Press.