Ran Hirschl receives 2021 Stein Rokkan Prize
Published: October 7, 2021
The University of Toronto’s Ran Hirschl has won the 2021 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research for his book City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity (Oxford University Press, 2020).
“Like many others, I studied Rokkan’s groundbreaking work in my comparative politics courses back in the day,” said Hirschl, a professor in the department of political science at the Faculty of Arts & Science and in the Faculty of Law. “Writing a book of this scope on a vitally important yet understudied topic at the intersection of public law and comparative politics requires tremendous devotion and research.
“It is very gratifying to receive this prestigious award, with its European and international outreach.”
Awarded by the International Science Council, the University of Bergen and the ECPR, the prestigious recognizes prize recognizes a substantial and original contribution to comparative social science research.
In their laudatio, the jury called the book “original, innovative and deeply comparative,” noting it brought together perspectives from political science, law, and sociology to show the economic and political importance of the city and how cities are diminished by the lack of constitutional authority to protect themselves.
“Readers will not think about cities and constitutions the same way after reading this book,” the jury wrote. “The author points out the glaring absence of a place for cities on constitutional law thinking, despite their concentration of the world’s population at this point.
