IRVINE : UCI Wins Grant for Study of Democracy

Scholars at UC Irvine have won a five-year, $562,500 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the creation and growth of democracies, university officials announced last week.

Through the Graduate Research Traineeship Program on Democratization and Democratic Politics, educators will develop studies on democracy around the world, UCI spokesman Scott Nelson said.

The grant also will subsidize five doctoral students with full-time fellowships each year, beginning next fall.

“We see this as putting the political science department finally on the map,” said political science professor Russell Dalton, one of the project’s chief investigators.

The grant is a victory for social science researchers at UCI, where the heftiest chunks of grant money usually go to biological and health sciences or related fields. It means the amount given in fellowships through political science will quintuple, Dalton said.

The grant also will help create a new generation of experts in democracy by funding the work of doctoral students in the area, Dalton said. “Good (graduate) students are the best investment--they’ll teach sections and grade papers for the other students as well, and assist faculty in research.”

UCI professors and scholars formed a focused research program on democratization in 1991. About 25 UCI democracy scholars cooperate with about a dozen teachers at other UC campuses and 10 participatory politics experts from Germany, Japan and other nations.

“Democratization has quickly become one of the most central questions in political science and social science,” since the Berlin Wall came down and democracies sprung up worldwide in 1989, Dalton said.

Researchers in the program are studying new democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, Dalton said, and how democratic processes expand in the West.

The program explores how people construct electoral systems, write constitutions and develop tolerance and democratic values.

Dalton’s fellow researchers on the project are professor emeritus Harry Eckstein, Prof. Rein Taagepera and Assistant Prof. Jozsef Borocz.

Students will also work with Prof. Bernard Grofman, who has researched elections in South Africa and minority voter representation through redistricting in this country.