Last modified: Tuesday, August 21, 2012
IU political scientist recognized for book of enduring value
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug. 21, 2012
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University political scientist Edward G. Carmines will receive the 2012 Philip E. Converse Award from the American Political Science Association, recognizing a scholarly book that has stood the test of time.
Carmines and co-author James A. Stimson of the University of North Carolina were chosen to receive the award for their 1989 book "Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics." The American Political Science Association section on elections, public opinion and voting behavior presents the Converse Award for an outstanding book in the field that was published at least five years ago.
Carmines is Warner O. Chapman Professor and Rudy Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington. He is director of the Center on American Politics and research director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University.
"Issue Evolution" explores the changing nature of race as an issue in American politics, focusing on the reversal of Democratic and Republican positions in the 1960s and the responsibility of political elites for the increased salience of racial politics. The book received the American Political Science Association's 1990 Gladys M. Kammerer Prize, recognizing the year's best political science book in U.S. national policy.
"Using carefully constructed measures of racial attitudes based upon party platforms, roll-call votes and survey data, Carmines and Stimson show how the positions of the parties, the members of the House and Senate, political activists and the mass electorate changed in tandem over the past 50 years," judges wrote in a citation for the Kammerer Prize.
Carmines' research focuses on American politics, especially elections, public opinion and political behavior. He has published widely in the major journals in the discipline and is the co-author of six books. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He was a fellow of the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in the spring semester of 2011-12, working on a book about the increased polarization of party politics in the United States and the mismatch between political elites and the American public.
The American Political Science Association's 2012 awards will be presented at the group's annual meeting Aug. 29 to Sept. 2 in New Orleans. The association, founded in 1903, is the leading professional organization for the study of political science and serves more than 15,000 members in over 80 countries.
Previous recipients of the Philip E. Converse Award include IU professor of political science Gerald C. Wright, who shared the 2010 award for "Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States," published in 1993.
