Amanda Driscoll, Ph.D. – Associate Professor in FSU’s Department of Political Science – won the Southern Political Science Association’s Neal Tate Award for her co-authored paper, “The Costs of Court Curbing: Preliminary Evidence from the Latin American Public Opinion Project.”
This award recognizes the author(s) of the Best Paper on Judicial Politics presented at the prior year’s conference.
When speaking about the impact of her work she explains, “Understanding the foundations and consequences of public support for democratic institutions is essential for building and maintaining the rule of law worldwide.”
Dr. Driscoll and co-author Michael J. Nelson, Professor of Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Penn State, were awarded a National Science Foundation grant for $300,000 in order to analyze the societal costs of curtailing courts’ power. Using the funding from this grant, her team studied 12 countries led by populist leaders across the globe where court-curbing measures have either been proposed or adopted. The project also garnered notice at the American Political Science Association Annual Conference where it won the 2021 American Political Science Association Law & Courts Section Best Conference Paper Award.
The implications of her work are far-reaching. She says, “If these sorts of proposals [court-curbing measures] actually mobilize some voters, this implies that incumbents might benefit electorally from attacking or trying to stack the courts.”
Dr. Driscoll is the Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Political Science Department’s Applied Politics and Policy Learning Experience (APPLE), which provides a handful of exceptional political science undergraduates with opportunities to interact with government officials and gain hands-on experiences with the legislative process.