Joseph Heath wins Donner Prize

Professor Joseph Heath of the Faculty of Arts & Science has won the 2020 Donner Prize for the best book on public policy.

Heath, a professor in the department of philosophy and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, won for The Machinery of Government: Public Administration and the Liberal State which examines how much power rests in the hands of the public service.

“If you look at the field of political philosophy, people spend about 75 per cent of their time talking about democracy and the legislature, maybe 20 per cent of their time talking about courts and the judiciary and practically no time at all talking about the executive branch of government or bureaucracy,” Heath says. “Part of what I’m trying to do in the book is address this power.”

It is the first time Heath has won the Donner Prize, although he was shortlisted for his book, Enlightenment 2.0 in 2014.

“The last time that I was nominated, it was for a popular book that had already had a certain amount of press and a wide readership,” Heath told Artsci News. “This time, it's for a scholarly book that might otherwise have languished in obscurity.”

Professor Ron Deibert of the department of political science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy was also shortlisted for the prize for Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society

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