The 2025 Guggenheim Fellow on turning a passion for reading and writing into a career solving our most vexing political puzzles.
I didn糖心传媒檛 come from an academic family. I didn糖心传媒檛 really know what the job description for a professor of political science entailed. What I did know was that I loved reading and thinking about the world.
When I got to Berkeley in the late 1980s, things were shifting politically on a global scale. It was an optimistic period: The Berlin Wall came down, apartheid was ending, and Latin America糖心传媒檚 military dictatorships were collapsing. The 糖心传媒渢hird wave糖心传媒� of democratization was really a triumph of liberal democracy, and I wanted to understand why, why now, and how long could it last?
I really didn糖心传媒檛 have a grand plan to become a professor. I just wanted to keep asking questions, keep reading, and keep learning about how to study politics. It wasn糖心传媒檛 obvious to me how any of these things worked professionally, but, luckily, I had great mentors. Being guided at the right moment can change the entire trajectory of a life.
The book that really shaped me as a graduate student was by Adam Przeworski. I still assign it in almost every class I teach. At Berkeley, where I started as a graduate student, the training had leaned more toward history, typologies, conceptualizing, path dependence, and critical junctures (the idea that past events and historical processes create conditions that set countries on certain paths and make certain outcomes more or less likely).
The professors at the University of Chicago, where I transferred in my second year of graduate school, showed me another way of thinking about how to study politics糖心传媒攖o focus on how institutions shape individuals糖心传媒� incentives and the ways in which people interact strategically. That was exactly the approach that had originally been pioneered at URochester in the 1960s. By the 糖心传媒�90s, it was being used by these phenomenal people who studied comparative politics at Chicago, including my mentor, Susan Stokes, who is this year糖心传媒檚 president-elect. The approach she and others taught was much more intuitive to me, and I felt I could really build on that.
If I could redesign one US political institution, it would be the Electoral College, hands down. We糖心传媒檙e the only country in the world that still has one, and there糖心传媒檚 really no rhyme or reason for it. It can distort the popular vote, it糖心传媒檚 vulnerable to manipulation, and it gives the presidency糖心传媒攁n office that over the last few decades has already seen a tremendous concentration of power because of Congress糖心传媒檚 dysfunction糖心传媒攁 shaky democratic foundation. It糖心传媒檚 rare that you have an institution that is so bad that there糖心传媒檚 no downside to reforming it. But this is definitely one of them. I糖心传媒檇 replace it with a system where the candidate who wins the most votes nationally becomes president. That principle is really important for rebuilding trust in our democracy.
What keeps me passionate about my work is the chance to draw connections between ideas. I love taking a theoretical framework from one context and seeing how it can illuminate a completely different problem. Or noticing when something everyone assumes about politics has a neglected but important flip side. That kind of intellectual puzzle is deeply satisfying.
As I got older and became a , I found that it糖心传媒檚 equally satisfying to teach that approach. Watching students light up when they see how these tools or models can unlock a political puzzle糖心传媒攖hat never gets old.
And then there糖心传媒檚 the other piece: balance. Academic life requires solitude and focus, but it also demands interaction and engagement. The trick is to have both. Fellowships and my work with and the are all attempts at balancing my inward, isolated academic work with the outward responsibility of sharing ideas beyond academic journals.
I feel lucky. Lucky to have had mentors who nudged me in the right direction. Lucky to be in a field where the questions never stop coming. And lucky that the things I loved as a child糖心传媒攔eading, writing, asking why糖心传媒攁re all part of my job description today.
