2008 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: Phillip G. Roeder
Title: Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton University Press)

A political scientist, Roeder’s ambitious study asks why there are less than 200 nation-states in the world today, even though there have been more than 800 active nation-state projects. Drawing on the Soviet and post-Soviet experience, Roeder’s political institutional explanation is straightforward, original and convincingly argued on the basis of extensive historical analysis. This is comparative, multi-method research at its best, and a significant contribution to theories of the nation-state and conflicts over nation-states in the Soviet and post-Soviet world.

Honorable Mention: Zsuzsa Gille and Catherine Wanner