Center for Political Studies

Center for Political Studies
Name	Center for Political Studies
Formation	1966
Headquarters	Ann Arbor, Michigan
Leader title	Director
Leader name	Robert J. Franzese
Affiliation	Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

Center for Political Studies is an academic research unit focused on comparative politics, public opinion, political behavior, electoral studies, and policy analysis. It is based within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and collaborates with scholars across North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The center convenes interdisciplinary teams from political science, sociology, psychology, economics, and statistics to produce empirical work that informs scholars, practitioners, and public debates.

History

The center was founded amid the quantitative turn in postwar social science alongside institutions such as the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, drawing intellectual lineage from survey efforts like the American National Election Studies and multinational collaborations exemplified by the British Election Study and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Early directors fostered links to the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research and to data archives at the Library of Congress, while methodological innovations resonated with work by scholars from Princeton University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and Yale University. During the late 20th century the center expanded partnerships with the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the European Commission, and foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its staff engaged with field projects in regions including Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe, collaborating with institutions like the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos, the University of Cape Town, the National University of Singapore, and the Central European University.

Mission and Research Focus

The center's mission emphasizes empirical analysis of political behavior, institutional design, and public attitudes, building on traditions associated with the American Political Science Association, the International Political Science Association, and the Society for Political Methodology. Research foci include electoral systems research connected to scholars at the European University Institute, campaign studies paralleling work at the University of California, Berkeley and New York University, and public opinion research in the lineage of the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Organization. Work on political institutions engages debates traced to the Federalist Papers tradition and comparative studies involving the Constitution of the United States, the Treaty of Maastricht, and post-communist transitions following events like the Velvet Revolution and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Methodological emphases intersect with advances from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Carnegie Mellon University statistics program, and the RAND Corporation.

Organizational Structure

Administratively housed within the Institute for Social Research, the center is governed by a director and an advisory board including faculty from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the Ross School of Business, and the Ford School of Public Policy. Resident researchers hold joint appointments with departments at the University of Michigan and visiting scholars come from institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, the London School of Economics, the Sciences Po, and the Humboldt University of Berlin. Core units include a survey laboratory modeled on facilities at the Norwegian Social Science Data Services and a computational lab reflecting collaborations with the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and the Oxford Internet Institute.

Major Programs and Projects

The center directs long-running initiatives comparable to the American National Election Studies and coordinates cross-national surveys akin to the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the European Social Survey. It houses experimental programs inspired by the Laboratory for Experimental Social Sciences and fieldwork consortia that partner with the Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Projects include electoral observation collaborations similar to those undertaken by The Carter Center, policy evaluation efforts connected to the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, and civic engagement studies paralleling work by CIRCLE and the Brennan Center for Justice.

Publications and Data Resources

Researchers publish in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, and Public Opinion Quarterly. The center curates data collections deposited with the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the Harvard Dataverse, and the UK Data Service, and contributes to aggregated resources like the Varieties of Democracy dataset, the Quality of Government dataset, the World Values Survey, and the Comparative Manifestos Project. Methodological outputs connect to repositories maintained by the Open Science Framework and standards promoted by the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Partnerships and Funding

Funding sources have included federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of State, as well as philanthropic partners like the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Institutional partners span the European Commission, the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and bilateral collaborations with national research councils including the Economic and Social Research Council and the German Research Foundation.

Impact and Notable Alumni/Researchers

Alumni and affiliated scholars have gone on to positions at leading institutions including Princeton University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University, Columbia University, London School of Economics, Sciences Po, University of Oxford, and the University of California, Berkeley. Notable researchers have influenced debates alongside figures from the National Academy of Sciences, contributors to the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences community, and public intellectuals engaged with outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. The center's work has informed policy deliberations at the United States Congress, the European Parliament, the World Bank, and national ministries of interior and foreign affairs across democratic and transitional states, while former trainees serve in roles at the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the U.S. Department of State, and civic organizations like the Open Society Foundations.

Category:Research institutes