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Robert Erikson (Columbia University)
Selection committee: Robert Franzese (Michigan, chair), Lonna Atkeson (New Mexico), Koskue Imai (Princeton), Simon Jackman (Sydney} and Wendy Tam Cho (Illinois)
Citation:
Bob has been a trailblazer in the application of quantitative methods for studying questions that are central to the fields of public opinion, political behavior, and political representation, over a career that spans 50 years. He started in 1967 as Assistant Professor at Florida State, where he spent his first 11-12 years. Bob then moved to Houston, via WashU St Louis, for 21-22 years until 1999, and since the turn of the century he has been at Columbia. He has served as editor of both Political Analysis (2003-2007) and the American Journal of Political Science (1982-1984). Bob was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.
Bob has written several seminal pieces that have set and reset research agendas in the study of public opinion and elections, made possible by deep engagement with sophisticated quantitative methods. For example, his early work in the 1970s on the incumbency advantage pointed out selection/reverse causation problems that had been unnoticed, and essentially started a literature in American politics that not only continues to this day, but has extended to comparative politics. The methodological issues Bob pointed out in 1971 are still the issues that everyone grapples with today. His work with Wright and McIver on public opinion in the states highlighted important issues in the measurement of public opinion and ideology at the state level, and his work on macro politics with MacKuen and Stimson has been enormously influential.
His publication record is astounding, including an incredible 14 articles in the discipline's flagship journal. According to his Google Scholar page, Bob's work currently has 15,855 citations, with an h-index of 51 (i.e., Bob has published 51 papers/books with at least 51 citations each). To list just those over 1,000 cites: The Macro Polity with MacKuen & Stimson has 1811; Statehouse Democracy with Wright & McIver has 1637; Dynamic Representation and Peasants or Bankers, both in APSR’s top-list, have 1462 and 1035 respectively. And American Public Opinion, with Kent Tedin is in its 9th edition, and also has around 1000 google cites.
Bob's work has been versatile and dynamic, and he shows no sign of slowing down. He continues to make important contributions as his career enters now its fifth decade. He has not stopped innovating, recently embracing for instance some of the causal inference tools that have become popular in political science of late to address questions that have long been part of his agenda: He has used regression discontinuity designs to study the incumbency advantage and gubernatorial coattails; he has delved into randomization-inference methods; he has used natural experiments and instrumental variables methods to study political attitudes. Bob is a scholar who has been at the cutting edge for five decades.
Bob has been an outstanding citizen of the political methodology community: he has always been an advocate for young and female scholars in our field, and generous with his time and advice. He is a constant constructive and positive presence in political methodology conferences in the U.S. and abroad.
In sum, Bob Erikson, on the strength of so many great past and present contributions to political methodology and to the political-methodology community is so very deserving of this Career Award, the Society for Political Methodology’s highest distinction that comes with our very greatest appreciation.