Home

Arthur Lupia is the Hal R. Varian Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and Research Professor at its Institute for Social Research. He studies how information and institutions affect policy and politics with a focus on how people make decisions when they lack information. He draws from multiple scientific and philosophical disciplines and he integrates many research methods. His work provides insights on voting, civic competence, legislative-bureaucratic relations, parliamentary governance, and political communication.

His articles have appeared a wide range of academic journals. His books include The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know?; Stealing the Initiative: How State Government Reacts to Direct Democracy; Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality; Positive Changes in Political Science: The Legacy of Richard D. McKelvey’s Most Influential Writings; and The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science (forthcoming).

He is active in developing new opportunities for social scientists. As a founder of TESS (Time-shared Experiments for the Social Sciences), he has helped hundreds of researchers run innovative experiments using nationally-distributed subject pools. As an original and regular contributor to NSF's EITM (Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models) program, he has helped to develop curricula that show young scholars how to better integrate advanced empirical and theoretical methods into effective research agendas. As a Principal Investigator of the ANES (American National Election Studies), he has introduced many procedural, methodological, and content innovations to one of the world's best-known scientific studies of elections.

His awards include the 2007 Innovators Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research and 1998 Award for Initiatives in Research from the National Academy of Sciences. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and had a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He served on the APSA Governing Council from 2006 to 2008. He has served APSA in numerous other capacities including being an APSR Editorial Board member and president of the Political Psychology section.