Recent News

Game Changers Book Talk Examines Key California Elections

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Can voters truly change things by going to the polls? The answer is yes, according to the four authors of " Game Changers: Twelve Elections that Transformed California ," which won the California Historical Society Book Award in 2014. Steve Swatt , Susie Swatt , Jeff Raimundo , and Rebecca LaVally spoke at IGS about the...

panelists at Annual review of presidency event

Panel Examines Obama Legacy, 2016 Election

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

President Obama will leave office with a legacy of significant accomplishments, but also with a vestige of disappointment among voters who once invested too much hope in his historic victory, according to panelists at the 35th annual IGS/Matsui Center Review of the Presidency . The panelists – Tom Mann of IGS, Julia Azari...

Do Political Party Stereotypes Fuel Partisanship?

Monday, April 11, 2016

Public perceptions of Democrats and Republicans are not very aligned with reality, says a new study by IGS Graduate Fellow Doug Ahler and social scientist Gaurav Sood. Ahler and Sood have published new research on people’s misperceptions of political party composition. By asking people to estimate the share of supporters...

Josh Kalla on Reducing Prejudice

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Josh Kalla had always been interested in politics as a child. Spring of his freshman year at Yale, he took a class about the use of field experiments in political and social science and was hooked. “The thought of running a rigorous experiment in political science, and learning something true about the world was just so...

Can the Supreme Court Save America from Plutocracy?

Thursday, March 17, 2016

UC Irvine law professor and election-law blogger Rick Hasen scheduled his IGS book talk long before President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the timing of Hasen’s talk on March 16 turned out to be perfect. Just hours after Obama’s nomination of Garland, Hasen spoke about his new book,...

Upcoming Fellowship and Award Deadlines

Monday, February 29, 2016

Get your applications ready! Deadlines this week for several IGS fellowships and awards: Local Government Fellowship -- applications due February 29 Martin Award -- applications due March 1 John Gardner Fellowship -- applications due March 2

Samuel Garrett Zeitlin Named Winner of 2016 Underhill Fellowship

Monday, February 22, 2016

Congratulations to the 2016 recipient of the Underhill Fellowship, Samuel Garrett Zeitlin , a UC Berkeley Political Science Ph.D. student whose research focuses on the political thought of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The R. Kirk Underhill Graduate Fellowship provides $30,000 to a UC Berkeley graduate student who has...

IGS Honors Winners of Percy Grant, Synar Fellowship

Monday, February 22, 2016

The Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) celebrated the recipients of the Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research and the Mike Synar Graduate Research Fellowship on Friday, February 19th in the IGS Library. Jack Citrin, the Director of IGS, opened the ceremony and thanked Bill Brandt and Patrice...

Study: Competition May Lead to Lower Rates

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Competition among insurance companies may help lower rates for consumers buying policies under the Affordable Care Act, according to a new study by IGS Graduate Fellow Sam Trachtman and other researchers. Trachtman and co-authors Paul D. Jacobs and Jessica S. Banthin published their study in the journal Health Affairs ,...

Elections that Changed California

Monday, February 8, 2016

A new book produced by four co-authors with ties to IGS tells the story of 12 of the most critical elections in California history. IGS National Advisory Council member Susie Swatt and Matsui Center National Advisory Committee member Jeff Raimundo are two of the writers who collaborated on Game Changers: Twelve Elections...