The John G. Tower Center for Political Studies has awarded two faculty fellowships for the 2014-2015 academic year: Dr. Stephen K. Wegren, Professor of Political Science, has been awarded a Colin Powell Global Order and Foreign Policy Fellowship to analyze Russian food policy. Dr. Luigi Manzetti, Associate Professor of Political Science has been awarded a Tower Center Faculty Fellowship to study Re-Nationalization in Argentina from 2005-2013.
Through these faculty fellowships, the Tower Center supports tenured SMU faculty members in research that reflects the mission of the Center. In addition to receiving financial support for their work, recipients are expected to produce original and quality research, acknowledge the Tower Center’s support of their work and to present their findings at a seminar once the project is complete.
Learn more about the Tower Center Faculty Fellowships:
Ray Rafidi | Associate Director for Administrative and Academic Affairs | rrafidi@smu.edu | 214-768-3665
Research Synopsis
Dr. Stephen Wegren, Professor of Political Science & Director of International and Area Studies, SMU
The Arab Spring teaches us that authoritarian regimes that are unjust, unequal, and corrupt are ripe for instability, and food policy may act as the tipping point to collective action. The purpose of this project is to analyze Russian food policy in order to increase our understanding of regime stability and regime efficacy. Food is important to the population and the political leadership. The population, as consumers, is fundamentally interested in the price of food and access to it. In addition, food as a policy issue has experienced a dramatic rise in Russian political discourse. In recent years, Russian leaders have equated food security with national security. The project entails a cross-sectional survey of 10-15 regions and 1,000-1,500 respondents.
Dr. Luigi Manzetti, Associate Professor of Political Science, SMU
Nationalization is a topic that over the decades has attracted a large number of theoretical and empirical analyses from different disciplines, including law, economics, and political science. However, the nationalization trend that we have witnessed in South America in recent years is different from private asset takeovers in previous decades. We will analyze the nationalization-privatization nexus through the new institutional economics (NIE) framework.