New York University Professor Adam Przeworski has been awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for his scholarship examining the interplay among democracy, capitalism, and economic development.
New York University Professor Adam Przeworski has been awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for his scholarship examining the interplay among democracy, capitalism, and economic development.
Awarded annually by the Skytte Foundation at Sweden’s Uppsala University, the Skytte Prize consists of an award of 500,000 Swedish Kronor (approximately $75,000). Przeworski will accept the prize, one of the largest and most prestigious in political science, at a ceremony in Uppsala, Sweden, on September 25th.
Przeworski was recognized for “raising the scientific standards regarding the analysis of the relations between democracy, capitalism, and economic development,” Uppsala University said in announcing the prize. “He has devoted his research to the interplay between economics and politics and specially the relationship between democracy and capitalism. One of his most certain conclusions is that economic development doesn’t generate democracy, but makes it survive.”
In a 2003 interview, Przeworski outlined how similar political outcomes under different economic conditions can result in divergent responses from the electorate.
“If the American presidential election of 2000 had occurred in a country with one-third the income of the United States, it would have ended in a coup d’etat or a civil war, as it did in Costa Rica in 1948 under very similar circumstances,” Przeworski observed in an interview with University of Southern California Professor Gerardo Munck. “These outcomes did not occur because people in the United States have too much to lose…In less developed countries, by contrast, more is at stake. This is why democracies survive in wealthy countries.”
Przeworski’s published works include: States and Markets: A Primer In Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 1991); Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 1985); and, Democracy and Development: Political Regimes and Material Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), a co-authored volume.
Born in Warsaw, Przeworski was previously a professor at the University of Chicago and Washington University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Przeworski, the Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor in NYU’s Wilf Family Department of Politics, holds a masters degree in philosophy and sociology from the University of Warsaw (1961) and a doctorate in political science from Northwestern University (1966).
The Skytte Prize was established in 1994, and the foundation was created from a donation made in 1622 by Johan Skytte, a member of the Swedish government and Chancellor of Uppsala University. For more, click here.