Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University

James Alt

Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Research Workshop in Political Economy

• James Alt's web site

James Alt is Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government and founding Director of the Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, predecessor to the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He is author, co-author, or editor of The Politics of Economic Decline (Cambridge University Press, 1979), Political Economics (University of California Press, 1983), Competition and Cooperation (Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), and Perspectives on Positive Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1990) among others, as well as over fifty articles in scholarly journals, including ""Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1964-1974"" in the British Journal of Political Science, 1977, ""Political Parties, World Demand, and Unemployment"" in the American Political Science Review, 1985, and ""Fiscal Policy and Elections in American States"" in the American Political Science Review, 1998. He was co-editor with Douglass North of the Cambridge University Press Series on ""The Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions."" Alt is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been President of the American Political Science Association's Section on Political Economy and British Politics Group. He was a Guggenheim Fellow 1997-98. He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Political Studies, and other journals.
Professor Alt's present research deals with parties, political institutions, and fiscal policy in industrial nations.