The James Madison Award is presented every three years by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor an American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science. The 2023 award was presented to Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology.
As part of the award, the recipient delivers the James Madison Award Lecture at the annual APSA Conference. Skocopol delivered her lecture, titled “Rising Threats to U.S. Democracy – Roots and Responses” on Friday, September 6 in Philadelphia, PA.
She kicked off the talk by saying “I am greatly honored by receipt of the James Madison Award and thankful for this opportunity to engage with so many thoughtful colleagues. From the moment I was notified, I realized the Award is not just a passive honor; it requires preparing a lecture to address pressing public challenges, in the proud tradition of previous honorees. I delayed my presentation from last year’s convention partly in the hope that the challenges facing U. S. democracy – my subject – would clarify by now. Little did I realize how stark the clarifications would turn out to be – above all, once a partisan Supreme Court majority voted to overturn the anti-monarchical core of the U.S. Constitution (Shane 2024a), shortly before one of America’s two major political parties nominated an ethno-nationalist would-be authoritarian for president.
“Today I therefore grapple with the pressing question before us as social scientists and as citizens: How and why have U.S. politics and governance arrived at the present juncture where long-standing Constitutional practices and democratically responsive governance are very much at stake?”
Skocpol went on to explain that “my answer focuses on what I see as the prime driver of the current crisis, the recent radicalization of the Republican Party and its allies, as they have pursued two forms and phases of anti-democratic politics. The first version involves maximum use of legal hardball steps that stretch existing laws and rules to disadvantage partisan opponents (I also call this approach “McConnellism” in honor of its chief practitioner, outgoing GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky).
“The second approach targets political competitors and government operations with extralegal harassment, threats of violence, even actual violence. Drawing on my own research with many collaborators, as well as from many excellent studies by colleagues in political science and beyond, I will dissect the elite and popular roots of recent Republican embrace of both forms of antidemocratic politics.”
Read the full transcript of the lecture here.
Skocpol is currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, where she received her PhD in 1975 and has served on the faculty for most of her career. Skocpol originally garnered widespread recognition for her groundbreaking work in comparative historical sociology, including her first book States and Social Revolutions.
Since then, she has made foundational contributions in our understanding of the interaction between institutions and interests, and tackled essential questions related to strengthening democracy, civil society, and social policy. Working at the intersection of the disciplines of Sociology and Political Science, her historical-institutional research has had an impact upon all of the subfields of political science, especially within American Politics and Comparative Politics. More recently, she co-founded and directs the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN), which facilitates productive non-partisan engagement by scholars in public policy and public discourse.