2024

Honorable Mention: Egor Lazarev, State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

Egor Lazarev’s State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya is a fine-grained study of social and political dynamics, gender relations, and the rule of law in Chechnya. Lazarev develops an original theory of state-building through lawfare between different legal systems as exercised by a variety of social and political agents. It is a breakthrough study implemented with an outstanding methodological reflexivity. It uses a region that is often exoticized to contribute to the comparative politics literature on state-building in the periphery of empires.    

Honorable Mention: Bogdan Popescu, Imperial Borderlands: Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

Bogdan Popescu’s Imperial Borderlands: Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier is a cutting-edge study into the complexities of state-building and institutional development in the periphery of the Habsburg empire. Popescu advances a theory of persisting peripheral development patterns resulting from continuities associated with extractive institutions in military colonies. It is a fine addition to the currently bourgeoning scholarship in historical political economy and development. 

Winner: Greta Uehling

Prize Committee: Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (chair), Lenka Bustikova-Siroky, and Fabio Mattioli