Dear Society members and friends,

It is my pleasure to announce that the winner of the Society for Political
Methodology's 2016 Career Award is Keith Poole of University of Georgia.
Please join me in congratulating Keith.

My thanks to prize committee members Robert J. Franzese (Chair, Michigan),
Wendy K. Tam Cho (Illinois), Lonna Atkeson (New Mexico), Kosuke Imai
(Princeton), and Simon Jackman (University of Sydney). Their citation for
the prize follows:

"In a career spanning five decades, Keith Poole's contributions to
Political Methodology, indeed to Political Science and the study of
American politics, have had enormous impact. The work is widely read and
cited (north of 14,000 Google cites, which probably understates greatly
given that many use NOMINATE data without citing their source), and his
contributions have revolutionized the political methodology and provide a
foundational bedrock for American institutional research. He is best known
for his research on measurement models, especially the NOMINATE model
co-developed with Howard Rosenthal that revolutionized the manner in which
political scientists measure and think about ideology. One can say
perfectly correctly, and without any \ hyperbole: the modern study of the
U.S. Congress would be simply unthinkable without NOMINATE
legislative-roll-call-voting scores. NOMINATE has produced data that entire
bodies of our discipline—and many in the press—have relied on to understand
the U.S. Congress. His Voteview website provides both academics and
journalists and the general public a way to interrogate his measures of
ideological placement of U.S. politicians across time.

What is less commonly known about Keith is that he has also been a
tremendous mentor to a number of political methodologists. Keith has
taught, mentored, advised, and/or worked closely over the years with many
students and scholars junior to him, including John Londregan, Nolan
McCarty, Jeff Lewis, Royce Carroll, Adam Bonica, James Lo, Chris Hare,
Jamie Monogan, Ryan Bakker, Michael Lynch. On more than one occasion, he
was known to go extraordinarily beyond the normal call of academic good
citizenship to assist and help guide students and junior colleagues. One
story recounted how Keith actually “changed some of the underlying code in
W-NOMINATE [at that time] and compiled a new binary to help [a first-year
graduate student just recently met at a workshop with his] project.” Keith
subsequently hired that graduate assistant (even though he was located at
another school) to work on extensions of W-NOMINATE he was then undertaking
with Jeff Lewis & Howard Rosenthal; he worked closely with and mentored
this student, James Lo, ultimately producing five papers and three R
packages from their collaborations. Another recounted tale is of a junior
colleague trained as an economist approaching Keith with a question whether
economic performance influenced autocrats’ tenure similarly to how it was
understood to affect the re-election fortunes of democratic governments.
Keith guided the colleague to some relevant literature, and the two
realized that they could make a positive contribution, resulting in a
series of papers on the causes of coups d'_etat, that this substantive
application in comparative politics and analysis of macro-level panel data
being quite distant from Keith’s work on scaling and on the American
Congress deterring him not in the least; that colleague, John Londregan,
says of the experience: “This research project with Keith is one of the
primary reasons my research agenda shifted from economics to political
economy.” Keith’s engagement with younger scholars has exerted an enormous
benign influence beyond his advisees and junior colleagues as well:
Consider the huge number of scholars (a short li\st would include Josh
Clinton, Jeff Lewis, Adam Bonica, John Londregan, Nolan McCarty, Simon
Jackman, Douglas Rivers, Sebastian Saiegh, Marc Ratkovic) whose research
builds on or depends on Poole's scaling methodology.

The conclusion from the nomination letter signed by 12 other nominators is
entirely fitting: “Throughout his career, Keith has pushed the field of
methodology light years ahead beyond boundaries that most practitioners
could not even have conceived and found limiting without his work, and
repeatedly demonstrated how methodology done well can surmount them and in
so doing enrich our understanding of political phenomena. He is
simultaneously an intellectual giant, a deeply creative political
scientist, and a methodologist par excellence. His work has set a standard
for all political methodologists to follow. He has influenced generations
of young political scientists not only as a standard bearer for the
profession, but also as a mentor and friend.” The award committee (Rob
Franzese (chair), Lonna Atkeson, Wendy Tam Cho, Kosuke Imai, and Simon
Jackman) unanimously and enthusiastically concur in awarding Keith Poole
the 2016 Career Achievement Award of the Society for Political Methodology."

A formal presentation of the award will be made at the Methodology
Section's business meeting at APSA (September 2nd at noon).

Best,

Jeff Lewis

-- 

Jeffrey B. Lewis
Professor and Chair
Department of Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles
BOX 951472, 4289A Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472

President
The Society for Political Methodology

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