Pippa Norris Awarded
It is our great pleasure to announce that IPSA has awarded the 2014 Karl Deutsch Award to Pippa Norris.
The purpose of the Karl Deutsch Award is to honour a prominent scholar engaged in the cross-disciplinary research of which Karl Deutsch was a master. The award is made on the recommendation of the Committee on Awards. It is supported by the Karl Deutsch fund.
Pippa Norris is a comparative political scientist. She serves as the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Laureate Research Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Electoral Integrity project.
Her research compares elections and public opinion, democratic institutions and cultures, gender politics, and political communications in countries worldwide. She currently directs a 6-year research project, www.electoralintegrityproject.com, funded by the Australian Research Council.
Previous honors include award of the 2011 Johan Skytte prize in political science, with Ronald Inglehart, the 2011 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellowship by the Australian Research Council, a ‘special recognition’ award by the UK Political Science Association, and a Doctor honoris causa by the University of Edinburgh. Book awards include the 2006 Doris A. Graber award for the best book in political communications (for A Virtuous Circle) and the Virginia Hodgkinson prize from the Independent Sector (for Sacred and Secular).
A well-known public speaker and prolific author, she has also directed Democratic Governance at the UNDP in New York and served as an expert consultant for many other international organizations, including the OSCE, World Bank, UNESCO, NDI, and UN Women.
She has published more than forty books including, in 2014, Why Electoral Integrity Matters (NY: Cambridge University Press), Advancing Electoral Integrity edited with Richard W. Frank and Ferran Martinez I Coma (NY: Oxford University Press) and Comparing Democracies edited with Lawrence LeDuc and Richard Niemi (4th edition, Sage Publications, UK). Details are at www.pippanorris.com.
Karl Deutsch Lecture at the IPSA World Congress of Political Science
Prof. Norris presented the Karl Deutsch lecture on Wednesday July 23 at 13:00 during the IPSA World Congress of Political Science in Montréal (Canada) (http://www.ipsa.org/events/congress/montreal2014/news), under the theme When do elections fail and why does this matter?
Synopsis: All too often elections around the globe are deeply flawed or even fail. Opponents are banned. Districts are gerrymandered. Rules are unfair. Campaigns are awash with money. Reporters are muzzled. Voter registers are inaccurate. Parties boycott contests. Turnout is suppressed. Electoral officials are biased. Contests spark violence. Courts fail to resolve disputes.
Why does this matter?
It is widely suspected that flawed, or even failed, contests will undermine confidence in elected authorities, damage voting turnout, trigger protests, exacerbate conflict, and occasionally spark revolutionary upheavals.
Well-run elections, by themselves are insufficient for successful transitions to democracy. But contentious contests are thought to wreck fragile progress.
But is there good evidence for these claims? Under what circumstances do failed elections undermine regime legitimacy? Drawing upon a new book, Why Electoral Integrity Matters, and presenting new evidence derived from expert evaluations and from the 6th wave World Values Survey from countries around the globe, this study presents fresh insights into why these issues matter and what can be done to strengthen electoral integrity.
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