APSA Nominating Committee 2006

Charles R. Beitz, Princeton University

Frances Hagopian, University of Notre Dame (chair)

Mathew D. McCubbins, University of California, San Diego

Desiree S. Pedescleaux, Spelman College

Karen L. Remmer, Duke University

Gary M. Segura, University of Washington

Statement of Committee Chair

I was honored to serve as chair of the APSA 2006 Nominating Committee, and to work with such a diverse group of knowledgeable, experienced, fair, open-minded, and conscientious colleagues.

The process of producing the Nominating Committee’s slate of candidates for Association officers and council members, as always, began with nominations from the membership. Various organized sections, status groups, caucuses, and individual members brought distinguished and highly qualified applicants to our attention. To maximize these nominations, we were as flexible as we could possibly be with deadlines. Committee members also worked hard to supplement nominations from the membership. In aiming to be as broadly inclusive at the stage of generating a pool of nominees as possible, we not only drew on our own knowledge of scholars in various subfield of political science, but we also worked with the APSA staff to identify persons previously unknown to us who had served the Association in various capacities from members of various prize committees to officers of regional Associations. With the staff’s assistance, we gathered detailed information on all those placed in nomination for any office at any time in the previous four years.

When our committee met in early February, we had already reviewed an impressive pool of more than 130 diverse candidates, and we had available to us materials on several hundred more potential candidates. In accordance with APSA by-laws, we gave “due regard to diversity, geographical distribution, fields of professional interest, type of institution, and academic/nonacademic employment status” of our nominees for officer and Council positions, and we did so in light of recent and continuing officers and Council members. We were also charged by APSA president Ira Katznelson to act affirmatively to select nominees for vice-president and for Council from non-PhD granting institutions, an area in which analyses had shown the Association had fallen short in recent years. We were guided as well as prior Council resolutions encouraging nominating committees to avoid selecting a nominee for President of the same gender for more than two consecutive years. Finally, the Committee made a special effort this year to grant representation to the large contingent of the Association’s foreign members.

Committee members worked hard and earnestly. Our discussions were vigorous, constructively uninhibited, and spirited. The product of the Committee’s deliberations is a slate that is both balanced and eminently qualified to lead the Association. Nominees represent a variety of subfield specializations, substantive interests, and methodological approaches to political science as well as public and private, Ph.D. and non-Ph.D. granting institutions. They are also a diverse group of men and women from various ethnic and racial groups. What unites them is a strong record of scholarly accomplishment and visibility, graduate and undergraduate teaching, as well as creative and dedicated service to creating public goods in their home institutions and the APSA.

The entire committee thanks Michael Brintnall and Rebecca Myers, without whose capable assistance and extraordinary dedication our charge could not have been executed.