Katzenstein wins 2020 Skytte Prize

Peter J. Katzenstein, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies Walter S. Carpenter, Jr., Professor of International Studies in the Department of Government, has been named the recipient of the 26th Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science.

The prize – considered the Nobel Prize for political science – was given to Katzenstein for his work “furthering the understanding of how history, culture and norms shape economies, as well as national and global security policy,” according to the award committee.

Katzenstein, a core faculty member of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies’ East Asia Program and Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, is scheduled to receive the award in October in a ceremony in Uppsala, Sweden.

“[The award] recognizes work that I have done in many different fields of political science over almost half a century,” Katzenstein said. “That feels even more satisfying than winning a prize for a particular piece of scholarship.”

His research and teaching lie at the intersection of the fields of international relations and comparative politics. Katzenstein's work addresses issues of political economy, security and culture in world politics. His current research interests focus on worldviews, the politics of civilizations and regions in world politics, and European and German politics.

Katzenstein served as president of the American Political Science Association from 2008 to 2009, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1987, and is also a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the British Academy. He holds six honorary degrees. He has written and edited more than 40 books. 

He was the recipient of the 1974 Helen Dwight Reid Award of the American Political Science Association for the best dissertation in international relations; of the American Political Science Association's 1986 Woodrow Wilson prize for the best book published in the United States on international affairs; and together with Nobuo Okawara, of the 1993 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize.

His book on national security was selected by Choice magazine as one of the top 10 books in international relations in 1997; his coauthored book, with Rudra Sil, on eclecticism was the winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2011; and his book on Anglo-America was one of Foreign Affairs magazine’s top picks in 2013.

This summer, Katzenstein plans to finish two collaborative book projects. 

“One deals with the end of liberalism and the crisis of the American order in world politics, the other with worldviews in world politics,” he said. “In addition, I am planning two books in the next two to three years — one on complexity in world politics and a second on Germany. I have carried that one in my head for 40 years. Before I have written the first line, it already has a title: ‘In Search of Germany.’ ”