by John Duggan, Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Rochester
The recipient of the 2023 William H. Riker prize in Political Science is Kenneth A. Shepsle. The prize is awarded by the Rochester Department of Political Science for outstanding work in social science in the spirit of William H. Riker. Riker founded the Ph.D. program at Rochester and introduced formal modeling to political science. Professor Shepsle—a student of Riker's and the first Rochester Ph.D. to receive the prize—has made seminal contributions to the emerging field of formal political theory. He was among the first to treat political institutions as constraints on rational political actors. In particular, Professor Shepsle's work on structure-induced equilibrium, his work with Barry Weingast on agendas and committees, and his work with Michael Laver on cabinet formation in parliaments develops this perspective. As a whole, Shepsle's body of research constitutes a significant and profound advance of the scientific study of politics.
Professor Shepsle is the George D. Markham Professor of Government at Harvard University, and he is a founding affiliate of yhe Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. He is a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellow. In 1990, Professor Shepsle was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as Chair of the Department of Government at Harvard, and as Vice President of the American Political Science Association.
IQSS affiliate and George D. Markham Research Professor of Government Kenneth Shepsle will accept the prize and deliver the 2023 Riker Lecture in person at the University of Rochester on Wednesday, October 25, at 3:00 pm. More details are available at the departmental website.
