Competitive elections between rival slates of candidates for the APSA Council!
Dear Prof. XXXX: I would be grateful if you might forward this message to your faculty.
The APSA Council election begins on October 1. This year’s vote is an indirect referendum on competitive elections. If you favor regular competitive elections for APSA’s officers, please support the following candidates, whose bios and candidate statements are attached to this message:
Michael Desch (U. of Notre Dame)
Sanford Schram (Bryn Mawr College )
Ange-Marie Hancock (U. of Southern California)
David Pion-Berlin (U. of California, Riverside)
Dvora Yanow (U. of Amsterdam – Netherlands)
Marla Brettschneider (U. of New Hampshire)
Anne Norton (U. of Pennsylvania)
Laura Katz Olson (Lehigh U.)Currently, an appointed nominating committee selects one candidate for each APSA post. Elections occur only when the membership nominates alternative candidates, as we are doing this year.
There are many reasons to institute regular electoral competition. Elections will bring transparency to the selection of APSA’s officers. Elections will weaken the sense of alienation that many feel under the current system by giving members a direct voice. Electoral competition will compel every candidate to present a serious statement of goals and thereby engender a sense of accountability on the part of APSA’s officers to those who elect them. And elections will provide a significant forum for discussing methodological pluralism, the editorial policies of APSA’s journals, and other issues facing the profession.
At minimum, we advocate that the nominating committee should be required to put forth two candidates per post instead of one, so that a competitive election occurs every year. This change will bring APSA’s procedures in line with those of every other major academic professional association in the United States.
This year’s election is unique in giving APSA’s members the opportunity to express their views on a matter of substance. Please support our efforts to democratize the association. Greg
Prof. Gregory J. Kasza
Department of Political Science
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
NB that we at the Monkey Cage are not taking a position on the merits of either the official or the unofficial slate of candidates. But this is a genuinely unusual election. APSA, as best I know (perhaps there is an institutional history somewhere that details this) has moved from mostly uncontested elections in which a slate chosen by the organization’s nominating committee were more or less waved through by members, through elections where one dissident sought election, to this election, where there is an entire challenging slate of opposing candidates. It will be interesting to watch.