John Harbeson, Council 2003-05 CUNY-City College and The Graduate Center

John W. Harbeson, CUNY-City College and The Graduate Center
Council 2003-05

John W. Harbeson is professor of political science in the Graduate Center and at City College in the City University of New York, chairing the College department from 1999-2001. Prior to 1985, he was professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. At both universities he has served as Director of International Studies. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College, his M.A. from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Harbeson's research has centered on the comparative study of political change and the political economy of development in less developed countries, with a concentration on sub-Saharan Africa. His books include: The Ethiopian Transformation: The Quest for the Post-Imperial State, Nation Building in Kenya: The Role of Land Reform, Civil Society and the State in Africa (co-edited with Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan), Africa in World Politics (3rd. edition, co-edited with Donald Rothchild), The Military in African Politics (ed.), and Responsible Government: The Global Challenge (co-edited with Raymond Hopkins and David Smith). He has written over 70 articles and book chapters and an equal number of conference papers. His teaching interests include political theory and international rela-tions as well as comparative politics.

He has been a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a Visiting Fellow of the Center of International Studies at Princeton University. While on leave from his academic positions, he twice served in the U.S. Agency for International Development, most recently as Regional Democracy and Governance Advisor for Eastern and Southern Africa.

Harbeson received grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He has taught at the Universities of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Nairobi, Kenya and as a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He chairs the editorial board for the Lynne Rienner series on Challenge and Change in Contemporary African Politics. Combining the study of politics with its practice, he was twice elected to the Board of Trustees (city council) of Croton-on-Hudson, NY, where he resides.

Within APSA, Harbeson is cofounder (with Cynthia McClintock) of the Comparative Democratization section and the section's current chair. He is also the founder and current chair of the African Politics Conference Group, a related group within APSA and a sponsored organization within the African Studies Association. A central objective of both groups has been to broaden the contributions to theory and to leading paradigms of comparative politics so as to be more inclusive of insights from research in all world regions, particularly historically marginalized, less developed country regions. He has been a member of APSA's Area Studies Liaison Group since its establishment.

John Harbeson is committed to methodological pluralism, to a market place of ideas and conceptual approaches, and to employing insights from the experience of all world regions in the quest for sound theory. He believes in, and seeks to advance, mutually fruitful dialogue between the academic and policymaking worlds.