European politics in the US

[expfcwintergreen]

So I'm going for a Ph.D. in comparative, and my general areas of interest are in party systems, elections and electoral systems, and public opinion, with a strong focus on Western Europe and Scandinavia in particular. I'm almost a year into my grad school search with applications coming up in a few months, and I feel like I've learned absolutely nothing. It's like there are no big European politics programs - it seems like every school in the known universe is strong on Latin America, but I'm very lucky if I can find a faculty with more than one or two Europeanists. Same with parties: you can't swing a dead fish without hitting someone studying democratization, but party people are few and far between. I'm taking a grad-level European politics course this semester, so I went to my prof for guidance, hoping she'd know of some big-name programs, but to my dismay her response was basically: Yeah, sorry, that's about the state of things.

Ah, crap.

Obviously my best option would be to get into a top-ranked school that's good at everything, but I'm not exactly a model candidate for, say, my dream school of Berkeley. Other schools I'm looking at, with varying degrees of fit potential, include UNC-Chapel Hill, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Colorado, and Oregon - I mean, after a year of searching I just have no clue. I'm not even looking for some mythical Perfect Fit, I just need to come up with a pool of 10-20 schools I'd feel good about applying to.

So, to recap: parties, elections, opinion, Europe, light on the quant (I'm not bad at math, I just really don't enjoy it). The question: Where should I be looking? Should I lean more towards the programs with the most and best-established Europeanists, even if they aren't much interested in the other things on that list? Or should I lean more towards programs that are studying parties and elections and opinion, even if it would break my heart to give up on European politics?

My long-story stats are as follows:

- Degree: Government and Linguistics double major at UT-Austin, graduating May '12

- GPA: 3.17 cumulative, major 3.83 Gov/3.9 Lin. The reason for the cum/maj discrepancy is because there was a lot of misery and woe during my first two years, but in my last two years I've gotten mostly A's and perhaps two or three B+'s.

- GRE: I just took it this week, and they couldn't give me my exact score because they're still working out the new scoring system (130-170 or whatever). The computer said my score would be comparable to somewhere in the range of V 680-780, Q 750-800, which puts me somewhere between the 96th and 99th percentile for verbal and between the mid-80s and mid-90s for math. AW I'll get with my actual scores in November.

- I'm currently in an undergraduate research program, but I won't actually be producing anything until well after applications are due. No other research experience, publishing, or relevant extracurriculars. (I do, however, have some great research papers for potential writing samples.)

- Zero relevant work experience or internships. I haven't had a job of any kind in almost three years, and even that was just part-time retail.

Edited September 9, 2011 by expfcwintergreen

[orst11]

I would suggest you to look at schools with EU Study centers or schools relatively strong in Western European/Scandinavian languages and you will probably be able to find some strong Europeanists at these schools with your interests. Here's a link to the website of EU centers of excellence: http://euce.org I will note there are a good amount of EU enters throughout the US that probably have scholars you may be interested in as well.

Given you are going to be in the field of comparative politics, I think typically you want to aim at POI more on thematic guidelines because area expertise often limits your career prospects more. You will probably have to settle on some things but you should never simply just give up a topic you have a lot of passion for.

Hopefully one of the more senior members on the forum can comment on your post.

[balderdash]

I feel for you. Try being an Africanist (that isn't doing petropolitics or elections).

I can't really help with particular faculties, but I can say that all of my advisors basically said to expand out a bit because of the dearth of Africanists. Basically you'll say, "I want to do XYZ with Europe, but I stand to learn a lot from Prof Jinglebutt's work on Latin America because it explores the same themes." It may not seem like much, but it will probably add 1 POI at every school you're thinking of applying to, and it will make you seem flexible enough to adapt your research to the department.

[Penelope Higgins]

A perfect fit in a school will have scholars who can cover both the geographic area and the substantive interests. Those are few and far between for everyone. What you need to "settle for" are schools that have strength in one or the other. You want to apply to schools that have an interesting Europe scholar (because you won't find many with more than one), and to schools that have parties/public opinion/electoral systems folks. Notre Dame, for example, has lots of party system folks, some of whom know quite a bit about Europe even though they work on other areas.

I would, if you have not already, go through the list of folks here here, see if any of them look interesting, and see where they did their grad work. These are mostly young scholars in European politics whose work won prizes at APSA. If that link doesn't work, the url is http://www.apsanet.org/~ep/archive.html

I would also, given your interests, keep your mind open about going to Europe (whether EUI in Florence or places in England) for your PhD. It makes coming back to the US to teach much harder, but my vague sense (I'm in CP but not Europe) is that much of the interesting scholarship is being done over there.

[Penelope Higgins]

Just to add a couple of schools off the top of my head that jump to min that fit your profile: Florida (Bernhard on Europe, Smith on parties), Temple (Wlezien on elections, Pollack, Fioretos, Deeg on Europe), and Wisconsin.

[flyers29]

Good advice above. I'm also an aspiring Europeanist (I feel weird calling myself any sort of "-ist" at this point....heh) and have run into similar issues in my own mind. Then again my school is one of the ones with a EUCE posted above, so perhaps it's not all bad. Either way, developing expertise in broader themes and frameworks versus a geographic region might be the road you have to take, at least at first.

[CooCooCachoo]

I'd say UNC-Chapel Hill is a very good fit, actually. Many Europeanists, and some of the most renowned scholars working on the topics you mentioned (Hooghe & Marks, with Vachudova undoubtedly being able to offer useful insights as well).

For other universities you might want to combine one scholar working on European politics/elections, with those whose substantive focus is applied to areas other than Europe (e.g. WashU, which has Matthew Gabel).

I'm also a Europeanist who is applying this cycle, so I am to some extent grappling with similar problems. I think we will have to think logically and creatively in order to arrive at a fit that perhaps isn't immediately apparent. Good luck!

[expfcwintergreen]

Thanks everyone for the advice and commiseration. I'm feeling less panicked now, and a little more confident that I'll find a way to make things work out.

I'd say UNC-Chapel Hill is a very good fit, actually. Many Europeanists, and some of the most renowned scholars working on the topics you mentioned (Hooghe & Marks, with Vachudova undoubtedly being able to offer useful insights as well).

Yeah, Hooghe and Marks are actually what attracted me to UNC in the first place. Unfortunately, according to my professor, they're on leave from Chapel Hill for like three years doing research in Europe. It still seems like a great program, though. Plus, if I were to get in and start out there a year from now, then maybe I'd still be able to work with them when they came back (isn't the beginning of the third year when you start to transition from coursework to dissertation anyway?)

[CooCooCachoo]

Thanks everyone for the advice and commiseration. I'm feeling less panicked now, and a little more confident that I'll find a way to make things work out.

Yeah, Hooghe and Marks are actually what attracted me to UNC in the first place. Unfortunately, according to my professor, they're on leave from Chapel Hill for like three years doing research in Europe. It still seems like a great program, though. Plus, if I were to get in and start out there a year from now, then maybe I'd still be able to work with them when they came back (isn't the beginning of the third year when you start to transition from coursework to dissertation anyway?)

A friend of mine is there now, working with H&M, so I'm not too sure. The only downside for you would be that, as far as I understand, their research is shifting away a bit from elections. But their research has always been somewhat eclectic, so I doubt that that should hold you back.

[expfcwintergreen]

That's weird. Maybe they were just talking about doing that sometime in the near future, or maybe my professor was thinking of someone else who's doing similar work.

Anyway, as to the concerns in my original post, I've been hitting a goldmine lately just pulling up books and papers I've enjoyed and seeing where the authors are working. For example Russell Dalton led me to UC-Irvine, which may not be the most prestigious school (#36 per USNWR), and they have kind of a weird program structure (comparative and American are integrated as "democracy studies"), but in terms of what the faculty is doing it's a shockingly good fit for me. And Kaare Strøm and the legendary Arend Lijphardt led me to UCSD, etc.

[midwest513]

Interestingly enough my undergrad institution GWU has a lot of people doing European related stuff. There's even an institute:

http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/

Farrell, Wolchik, Morgan, Feigenbaum, and Hale (just to name a few) do various research related to Europe.