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This prize is awarded annually to the best article published in PSRM.
You can now access all prize winning articles below - without charge - until the end of 2021.
2020-2021: "Does Residential Sorting Explain Geographic Polarization?" - Gregory J. Martin and Steven W. Webster
Committee: Nils Weidmann (Chair), Despina Alexiadou and Guy Grossman.
The committee wrote:
"In the United States, residential political segregation --- whereby partisanship is correlated with population density --- is one of the most consequential political phenomena of our time, affecting polarization, and increased malapportionment in legislative bodies. However, to date, we lacked a convincing empirical analysis of the reasons underlying this political geographic process. Using an innovative research design, Martin and Webster explore the explanatory power of three proposed theories: political sorting, sorting on non-political preferences that correlate with partisanship and persuasion. The authors find strong evidence that location has some influence on political preference (i..e, persuasion), rather than the other way around.
"Utilizing the large size of data, the authors show that although Americans move to places that match their partisan ideology, locality attributes, such as population density and quality of housing, better predict their moving decisions. As a result, they find that in fact, through moving, electoral districts become less, not more homogenous. However, the fact that districts are homogenous and polarized implies that migrants change their political views to match the views of their neighbors. These findings have important implications on understanding how socialization and locality affect political behavior. Their findings not only contribute to current debates in American politics but also have important implications for electoral behavior outside the US. Taking into account voters’ moving patterns in the UK, for example, could help us better understand the rapidly changing voting behaviors across regions."
2019/2020: "Attitudes Toward Economic Inequality: The Illusory Agreement" - Rasmus T. Pedersen and Diana C. Mutz
Committee: Mark Kayser (Chair), Allyson Benton and Craig Volden.
2018/2019: "Women’s Issues and Their Fates in the US Congress" - Craig Volden, Alan E. Wiseman and Dana E. Wittmer
Committee: Stefanie Walter (Chair), Despina Alexiadou, and Indridi Indridason.
2017/2018: “The Effect of Electoral Systems on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment” - Carlos Sanz
Committee: Jude Hays (Pittsburgh), Kostas Matakos (King’s College London) and Denise Traber (Luzern).
2016/2017: "Elections and Civil War in Africa" - José A. Cheibub and Jude C. Hays
Committee: Anja Neundorf (Nottingham), Olga Chyzh (Iowa State), Stephane Wolton (LSE), Scott Cook (Texas A&M).
2015/2016: “Does Information Lead to Emulation? Spatial Dependence in Anti-Government Violence” - Blake E. Garcia and Cameron Wimpy
Committee: Simone Dietrich (Essex), Daniel Stegmueller (Duke), Elias Dinas (Oxford).
2014/2015: “Staying in the First League: Parliamentary Representation and the Electoral Success of Small Parties” - by Elias Dinas, Pedro Riera and Nasos Roussias
Committee: Vera Troeger (Warwick), Cameron Thies (Arizona), Ray Duch (Oxford).