2013 Recipient

The Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies, established in 2008 and sponsored by the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography in the previous calendar year.

Winner: Gerald Easter
Title: Capital, Coercion, and Postcommunist States (Cornell University Press)

The question of why we observe different regime outcomes across postcommunist states has been at the heart of the study of transition politics since the mid-1990s. Relying on an interdisciplinary framework, Gerald Easter’s masterful study transforms the debate to illuminate the complexity of state-society relations in the postcommunist context. The rich analytic narratives of tax policy and coercive capacity in two states, Russia and Poland, are rooted in history and combine a wide range of evidence to support the argument.  Easter’s book is an outstanding contribution to the literature on regime change that is appropriate for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in a range of disciplines. The committee agreed that this is one of the best-written, most accessible pieces of research to appear in recent years. As one committee member argued, “Easter has a way of finding just the right quote or turn of phrase to make the intricate world of fiscal politics easy to understand. More than this, he brings his subject to life for the reader.”

Honorable Mention: Sonia Hirt