ASU professor receives 2020 William Anderson Award

Arizona State University Assistant Professor James Strickland is the 2020 award recipient for the American Political Science Association’s William Anderson Award for his dissertation “Multi-Client Lobbying in the American States.”

According to the APSA website, “the William Anderson Award honors the best doctoral dissertation in the general field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, state and local politics.”

Strickland, who joined the School of Politics and Global Studies in fall 2019, received his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. His primary areas of research include interest groups, legislatures and U.S. state politics. In his research, Strickland focuses on how legislative institutions and lobby regulations affect the political mobilization of organized interest groups.

“I initially became interested in lobbying while in college and working as a page in the state senate,” Strickland said. “In writing a dissertation on multiclient lobbying, I sought to highlight an aspect of government affairs that has received limited scholarly attention.”

A recent article from Political Science Now included a citation from the award committee commending the dissertation, saying it “presents an ideal case of comparative state analysis.”

The article continues: “The committee congratulates Strickland on making a sophisticated contribution to interest group theory while addressing an aspect of practical politics that has implications for all areas of state-level public policy.”

“The U.S. states are ideal political systems for measuring and testing hypotheses related to lobbying,” Strickland said. “I hope that my work might inspire more interest in state politics generally, and the use of states for answering policy-related questions.”