Political science professor wins career achievement award

Frank Baumgartner

Frank Baumgartner, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has received a career achievement award from the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Baumgartner, the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, received the Samuel J. Eldersveld Career Achievement Award from the APSA section on political organizations and parties. It honors a scholar whose lifetime professional work has made an outstanding contribution to the field.

Baumgartner, who joined the UNC faculty in 2009, is a leading expert on democratic politics, especially the impact of interest groups and government institutions.

He has won a number of book awards from the APSA. “Agendas and Instability in American Politics” (1993) was recognized as “a work of lasting impact on the field of public policy.” “Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence” (2008) was named the best book on U.S. national policy. “Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses and Why” (2009) won the outstanding book award.

One of Baumgartner’s best-known endeavors is the Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org), which he created with Bryan Jones at the University of Texas at Austin. The online initiative provides comprehensive databases for analysis of every congressional hearing, law, bill introduced, Supreme Court decision, executive order and more since 1947. The project has been expanded to 11 countries via the Comparative Policy Agendas Project (www.comparativeagendas.org).

More on Frank Baumgartner
Read an Endeavors magazine story on Baumgartner’s research