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The Charles Merriam Award is presented biennially to a person whose published work and career represent a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research.

Award Committee: Katherine Tate, Chair, University of California, Irvine; Michael Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa; and B. Dan Wood, Texas A&M University

Recipient: Robert Axelrod, University of Michigan

Citation: The Charles E. Merriam Award was established by the American Political Science Association to recognize a person whose published work and career represent a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research. Robert Axelrod’s career exemplifies what was intended for the award.

He has made huge contributions toward our understanding of conflict, the evolution of cooperation, and the management of complexity. His work has been published not only in top political science journals and presses, but also in multidisciplinary and scientific outlets, such as Scientific American, Discover, Science, and Nature. He is among the most cited political scientists in the world.

For his many scholarly contributions, Professor Axelrod has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. A paper he coauthored with the famous biologist William Hamilton won the Newcomb Cleveland Prize for the most outstanding paper published in Science in 1981. He was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985 and the American Philosophical Society in 2004. He was named the MacArthur Prize Fellow in 1987. The list goes on.

As intended for the award, Professor Axelrod’s research has also made major contributions to the applied world. His application of tit-for-tat games were used to explain why soldiers at various points along the trenches between France and Germany during World War I progressively modified their behavior in response to actions of their adversaries in ways that led to the coordinated cessation of fighting during meals and holidays, and to understand the willingness to shoot to miss rather than shoot to kill despite the consternation of commanding officers. Professor Axelrod’s insights have been used to assist the United Nations, the World Bank, the U.S. Department of Defense, and various organizations servicing health care professionals, business leaders, and K-12 educators in more contemporary and less turbulent settings. Two of his articles on cooperation take on enormously important substantive problems: governing the Internet and cooperation among cancer cells. His book the Complexity of Cooperation proposed a mechanism of differential attachment to explain thick cultural boundaries. The model proposed in this book has influenced work in sociology and computer science.

Like Charles Merriam, Robert Axelrod has had a career that combined “innovative political and social science scholarship and practical service to the community and nation.” For example, he has worked for some time behind the scenes to help the Israeli and Syrian governments toward signing a comprehensive peace accord. He has also worked for years to facilitate cooperation between feuding parties in the Middle East.

Professor Axelrod has also served on three National Academy of Sciences panels: one on energy consumption and production; a second on preventing nuclear war; and a third on international security and arms control. He is also an associate of the Council for a Community of Democracies.

And this service to the nation and world fails even to consider his exemplary service to the discipline of political science, where he has been Secretary, Vice-President, and President of the APSA.

In the view of the Merriam Award Committee consisting of Katherine Tate, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, and myself, there is currently no one more deserving of this award than Professor Axelrod. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we present it to him.