For the best doctoral dissertation completed and accepted in 2004 or 2005 in the general field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, or state and local politics.

Award Committee: Richard E. Foglesong, Rollins College; William E. Nelson, Jr., Ohio State University, Chair; Jeff Talbert, University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth

Recipient: Joon Suk Kim, University of Chicago

Dissertation: "Making States Federatively: Alternative Routes of State Formation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe"

Dissertation Chair: Suzanne Rudolph, University of Chicago

Citation: This important work challenges the orthodox view that workable states are centralized political authorities formed through external struggles. Dr. Kim shows how a long-standing historiographical tradition has systematically favored a particular view of the state over other views, despite historical examples to the contrary. Problematizing our taken-for-granted assumptions about the state, he demonstrates the viability of an alternative "federative state" model, using examples from late medieval and early modern Europe. Thus, he explains how the Holy Roman Empire, Swiss Confederation, and Dutch Republic continued to retain decentralized, loosely integrated political and institutional structures despite engaging in geopolitical competitions throughout the 15th and 16th centuries.

These early examples of state building, he concludes, show both the limits of the modern state model and the viability of alternative state forms. His historical argument has value for scholars and diplomats alike in showing the utility, over extended periods of time, in face of major external and internal challenges, of the federative state alternative. As one contemporary example, he argues in his concluding chapter for the legitimacy of the European Union as a workable federative state.

He accomplishes all this while writing with great economy of language, making careful use of the approach of "historical institutionalism" while also acknowledging and responding to the shortcomings of this theoretical perspective. And he makes a noteworthy contribution to an America-centric field by showing the utility not only of rethinking accepted concepts, but of re-examining pre-modern, non-American examples of state models, this extending the empirical and theoretical reach of an established field of political science research.