Best schools for the study of elections?

[redaxcx]

I'm interested in elections and electoral systems, I would love to hear which schools and faculties you think are the best. Shugart is the type of scholar I'm interested in but not sure he's taking any more students at UC Davis. Any other suggestions in the US/Canada/Europe?

 

[anonymousvulture]

7 hours ago, redaxcx said:

I'm interested in elections and electoral systems, I would love to hear which schools and faculties you think are the best. Shugart is the type of scholar I'm interested in but not sure he's taking any more students at UC Davis. Any other suggestions in the US/Canada/Europe?

 

Stanford has Gary Cox, the greatest in my humble opinion. UChicago had Andy Eggers, who I think is awesome. If you are American or want to study American elections, MIT has a cool elections lab, UW-Madison too. Duke has a bunch of people as well. If you wanna do historical oriented quantitative research UMich has some folks, Cornell hás Cirone and many other. Lower ranked, but also very good: Rice is kind of a boutique for representation, elections etc. Penn State has Matt and sona golder, more for comparative. Oh, WashU has awesome scholars on that too. That's just of the top of my Head, but I'm comparative. Lot of places I haven't looked into that should be great depending on geographic and specific interests you may have. Columbia, UMD (Ernesto calvo), UNC Chapel Hill, Princeton has Boix and Titiunik and others, should've mentioned earlier. There are many options for elections really. I think inside american politics, a field I'm not familiar with, I must be ommiting many great people and places 

 

[redaxcx]

16 hours ago, anonymousvulture said:

Stanford has Gary Cox, the greatest in my humble opinion. UChicago had Andy Eggers, who I think is awesome. If you are American or want to study American elections, MIT has a cool elections lab, UW-Madison too. Duke has a bunch of people as well. If you wanna do historical oriented quantitative research UMich has some folks, Cornell hás Cirone and many other. Lower ranked, but also very good: Rice is kind of a boutique for representation, elections etc. Penn State has Matt and sona golder, more for comparative. Oh, WashU has awesome scholars on that too. That's just of the top of my Head, but I'm comparative. Lot of places I haven't looked into that should be great depending on geographic and specific interests you may have. Columbia, UMD (Ernesto calvo), UNC Chapel Hill, Princeton has Boix and Titiunik and others, should've mentioned earlier. There are many options for elections really. I think inside american politics, a field I'm not familiar with, I must be ommiting many great people and places 

 

Hey, thanks for your comment! Yes Gary Cox is legendary, although I'm also wondering if by the time I start applying to PhDs (~two years) he'd still be taking people. I'm not American but the study of American elections is also of interest to me and I've followed MIT and UW-Madison Elections Research Center. I'm familiar of most of the scholars you've mentioned and it is reasurring that there are a lot of good options! I'm also in comparative and defintely more interested in the field from an international perspective. 

 

I asked because everytime I checked the schools and scholars, I felt like I had a lot of options (I think Harvard and a bunch of the UCs are doing great work too) and how people on this site talk about 'fit' and how in theory that shouldn't be more than 5-7 schools, whereas I think that according to my criteria I could get a match with almost all departments in the top-20 in the US. Add to that I'm also applying in Europe (where I currently am) to places like EUI, LSE, Oxford, Zurich, Vienna is also doing good work and possibly to Canada (UMontreal has Blais & Dassonneville). So I was kind of thinking that I maybe misunderstood departments but glad to know that my assemesment was right.

 

Are you also applying in elections? Best of luck if you're applying this cycle!

[anonymousvulture]

1 hour ago, redaxcx said:

Hey, thanks for your comment! Yes Gary Cox is legendary, although I'm also wondering if by the time I start applying to PhDs (~two years) he'd still be taking people. I'm not American but the study of American elections is also of interest to me and I've followed MIT and UW-Madison Elections Research Center. I'm familiar of most of the scholars you've mentioned and it is reasurring that there are a lot of good options! I'm also in comparative and defintely more interested in the field from an international perspective. 

 

I asked because everytime I checked the schools and scholars, I felt like I had a lot of options (I think Harvard and a bunch of the UCs are doing great work too) and how people on this site talk about 'fit' and how in theory that shouldn't be more than 5-7 schools, whereas I think that according to my criteria I could get a match with almost all departments in the top-20 in the US. Add to that I'm also applying in Europe (where I currently am) to places like EUI, LSE, Oxford, Zurich, Vienna is also doing good work and possibly to Canada (UMontreal has Blais & Dassonneville). So I was kind of thinking that I maybe misunderstood departments but glad to know that my assemesment was right.

 

Are you also applying in elections? Best of luck if you're applying this cycle!

Yeah, you certainly have plenty of options. I think what you have to figure out until the application cycle is what approach do you want to focus on or what kind of electoral study you are interested in. So you can focus on electoral behaviour, electoral institutions, electoral regulation, or maybe something clientelism, machine politics and patronage; elections and corruption, electoral accountability, elections under authoritarianism etc. Also, would you like to do formal theory, more empirical work, historical oriented research? Best of all, if you are open to studying many of these aspects/methods and you can signal in your application that you know what you are talking about, you can taylor your statement of purpose accordingly and fit with schools/advisors covering more than one of those topics.

I have applied this cycle, but not to study elections; I have been studying pre-electoral coordination in my Master's, and electoral politics is a topic I want to keep working on as a lateral research agenda, but it wasn't the focus of my application. I'm based in Latin America, but you can check for people who are studying Europe if you're interested. I think given the fact that your research topic is a big area inside political science (much bigger than, say, judicial politics), your list may be larger than average, but the method and area focus could trim it down a little bit (emphasis on could; I'm in Latin America, but I suspect there's more people studying Europe). I say that because, had I applied strictly to study elections, I think I would not have applied to UW-M, since their focus seems to be a lot stronger in american elections, but I would have applied to MIT, because they have danny hidalgo in addition to the folks from the elections lab that is also very american-centered. (I could be very wrong; would be great if someone more experienced than I gave an opinion here haha, but I think this kind of fine tuning may matter when crafting a list). Of course, time and money also count; you may have a huge list if you can manage it and pay for it lol. 

 

Outside of the top 10, I've mentioned WashU already - they have Crisp, Tarvitts (might have mispelled her name) and others. Vanderbilt is a great place, at least for Latin America, but I suspect that it must be very good for other areas too. UNC-Chapel Hill is great because they have people studying multi-level politics and electoral politics, which could interest you (European Union etc); I'm not very familiar with Emory and Rochester, but if you are into formal theory you should check them out (I'd check Emory regardless); Urbana-Champaign has Gisela Sin, Matthew Winters, Brian Gaines, all of whom study or have studied elections; Stony Brook is great for political psychology, if you want to approach elections from that vantage point (I don't know if they have people studying elections specifically); Notre Dame has Schiumerini, who does cool stuff on Latin America, and other people; Brown has a bunch of people who could fit your interests too. Keep an eye on pittsburgh. Either way, you can certainly craft a list going from ultra competitive top 5 to less competitive - but no less competent - top 40 places that will train you very well, and hopefully you will get to choose between them. 

 

Also, the places in Europe you mentioned are great, as far as I know. I would tell you to keep in mind that rankings and prestige matter. I don't care a lot for them, but you have to take it into account because the market cares about it. So Montreal is great and Blais is one of the greatest, but you will have a hard time in the US job market. If you don't care about the US job market (myself, I want to go to Europe after the phd, but that could change), go for it. I'm just telling you this because everyone told me it is easier to go to Europe with a phd from the US than the other way around, which is one of the reasons why I have applied to US, to keep my options open (but there were more important, academic-related resons too - I think their model of phd was better for me given my undergrad background, but that's a long story). Other than the places you mentioned, I personally like Unis like Oslo, Aarhaus, Amsterdam, on top of those you mentioned. 

[redaxcx]

10 minutes ago, anonymousvulture said:

Yeah, you certainly have plenty of options. I think what you have to figure out until the application cycle is what approach do you want to focus on or what kind of electoral study you are interested in. So you can focus on electoral behaviour, electoral institutions, electoral regulation, or maybe something clientelism, machine politics and patronage; elections and corruption, electoral accountability, elections under authoritarianism etc. Also, would you like to do formal theory, more empirical work, historical oriented research? Best of all, if you are open to studying many of these aspects/methods and you can signal in your application that you know what you are talking about, you can taylor your statement of purpose accordingly and fit with schools/advisors covering more than one of those topics.

I have applied this cycle, but not to study elections; I have been studying pre-electoral coordination in my Master's, and electoral politics is a topic I want to keep working on as a lateral research agenda, but it wasn't the focus of my application. I'm based in Latin America, but you can check for people who are studying Europe if you're interested. I think given the fact that your research topic is a big area inside political science (much bigger than, say, judicial politics), your list may be larger than average, but the method and area focus could trim it down a little bit (emphasis on could; I'm in Latin America, but I suspect there's more people studying Europe). I say that because, had I applied strictly to study elections, I think I would not have applied to UW-M, since their focus seems to be a lot stronger in american elections, but I would have applied to MIT, because they have danny hidalgo in addition to the folks from the elections lab that is also very american-centered. (I could be very wrong; would be great if someone more experienced than I gave an opinion here haha, but I think this kind of fine tuning may matter when crafting a list). Of course, time and money also count; you may have a huge list if you can manage it and pay for it lol. 

 

Outside of the top 10, I've mentioned WashU already - they have Crisp, Tarvitts (might have mispelled her name) and others. Vanderbilt is a great place, at least for Latin America, but I suspect that it must be very good for other areas too. UNC-Chapel Hill is great because they have people studying multi-level politics and electoral politics, which could interest you (European Union etc); I'm not very familiar with Emory and Rochester, but if you are into formal theory you should check them out (I'd check Emory regardless); Urbana-Champaign has Gisela Sin, Matthew Winters, Brian Gaines, all of whom study or have studied elections; Stony Brook is great for political psychology, if you want to approach elections from that vantage point (I don't know if they have people studying elections specifically); Notre Dame has Schiumerini, who does cool stuff on Latin America, and other people; Brown has a bunch of people who could fit your interests too. Keep an eye on pittsburgh. Either way, you can certainly craft a list going from ultra competitive top 5 to less competitive - but no less competent - top 40 places that will train you very well, and hopefully you will get to choose between them. 

 

Also, the places in Europe you mentioned are great, as far as I know. I would tell you to keep in mind that rankings and prestige matter. I don't care a lot for them, but you have to take it into account because the market cares about it. So Montreal is great and Blais is one of the greatest, but you will have a hard time in the US job market. If you don't care about the US job market (myself, I want to go to Europe after the phd, but that could change), go for it. I'm just telling you this because everyone told me it is easier to go to Europe with a phd from the US than the other way around, which is one of the reasons why I have applied to US, to keep my options open (but there were more important, academic-related resons too - I think their model of phd was better for me given my undergrad background, but that's a long story). Other than the places you mentioned, I personally like Unis like Oslo, Aarhaus, Amsterdam, on top of those you mentioned. 

 

First of all, thank you for your thorough response! I haven't had the chance to talk with other candidates somewhat interested in elections in Comparative Politics, sometimes I feel like it's only political economy people in CP. Fair enough on the specializations, I'm interested in party politics and electoral systems, so that differently narrows it for me, although polarization is and interest for me as well. I'm defintely more on the formal theory side (currently in an MA in digital humanities and quantitative methods). 

I see, really interesting topics and comments on how to choose faculty! It is kinda hard estimating how much time and effort applications would take from you in advance to applying, but I think I would take my time choosing a balanced list and selecting carefuly, kind of why I started already thinking of which schools etc...

I have checked a lot of faculty on an individuel basis, but haven't yet checked out of the top 7 for now. I should certainly look at some of the people you mentioned. Yes UNC Chapel Hill is really good for European Politics (also the case for Pittsburgh and Washington). I also read that Emory and Rochester are good for formal theory as well so I will look into them! But I want to certainly look at some of the faculty you mentioned as well so thank you for the recommendations and for taking the time!

Concerning your point on prestige and rankings, yes that is also what I have read on here and PSR. In Canada I would go with the top 3 (UofT, UBC, McGill) as well, I know Montreal is top 100 only but I think for Europe they would be a decent choice as a safety for me, and a lot better than a lot of option in Europe. I'm also considering the US because I want to come to Europe later on. I just feel like I would like to pass by the US at one point, and it is a lot easier as you said to do a PhD there and then go to Europe than the other way around. If I get into a top PhD in Europe then I wouldn't mind that much as even a Post-Doc in the US would satisfy my will for a sejour there. I also think for CP the training and methods in the US are a lot better than Europe. I'm in France currently and the CP research done here is a joke (except a very few group of scholars). Everything is political sociology here...

Yes Oslo are good and an option for me as well. Aarhaus kinda only accept people that do their BA and MA there, and Amesterdam is a very good option for me as well. 

Wishing you the best of luck with your applications! And would love to read your lessons in the lessons thread in a few months!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[anonymousvulture]

On 2/20/2023 at 11:19 AM, redaxcx said:

 

First of all, thank you for your thorough response! I haven't had the chance to talk with other candidates somewhat interested in elections in Comparative Politics, sometimes I feel like it's only political economy people in CP. Fair enough on the specializations, I'm interested in party politics and electoral systems, so that differently narrows it for me, although polarization is and interest for me as well. I'm defintely more on the formal theory side (currently in an MA in digital humanities and quantitative methods). 

I see, really interesting topics and comments on how to choose faculty! It is kinda hard estimating how much time and effort applications would take from you in advance to applying, but I think I would take my time choosing a balanced list and selecting carefuly, kind of why I started already thinking of which schools etc...

I have checked a lot of faculty on an individuel basis, but haven't yet checked out of the top 7 for now. I should certainly look at some of the people you mentioned. Yes UNC Chapel Hill is really good for European Politics (also the case for Pittsburgh and Washington). I also read that Emory and Rochester are good for formal theory as well so I will look into them! But I want to certainly look at some of the faculty you mentioned as well so thank you for the recommendations and for taking the time!

Concerning your point on prestige and rankings, yes that is also what I have read on here and PSR. In Canada I would go with the top 3 (UofT, UBC, McGill) as well, I know Montreal is top 100 only but I think for Europe they would be a decent choice as a safety for me, and a lot better than a lot of option in Europe. I'm also considering the US because I want to come to Europe later on. I just feel like I would like to pass by the US at one point, and it is a lot easier as you said to do a PhD there and then go to Europe than the other way around. If I get into a top PhD in Europe then I wouldn't mind that much as even a Post-Doc in the US would satisfy my will for a sejour there. I also think for CP the training and methods in the US are a lot better than Europe. I'm in France currently and the CP research done here is a joke (except a very few group of scholars). Everything is political sociology here...

Yes Oslo are good and an option for me as well. Aarhaus kinda only accept people that do their BA and MA there, and Amesterdam is a very good option for me as well. 

Wishing you the best of luck with your applications! And would love to read your lessons in the lessons thread in a few months!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

no problem! you can DM me whenever. I don't think I learned a lot about what makes an application successfull, but I'd be happy to share whatever may be useful. And do expand out of the top 7; people on PSR are too maniac about rankings (to be fair, the job market really is rough and it helps a lot to be at a top 10, but still...)