As the financial crisis of 2008 led to foreclosures, job losses and shrinking retirement funds, political scientists and economists argued over whom to blame. Noticing how even the experts disagreed prompted Case Western Reserve University political scientist Kathryn Lavelle to write a new primer, Money and Banks in the American Political System (Cambridge University Press), that explains how politics and the U.S. financial system interact.
Faculty Activity and Accomplishments
Karen Beckwith, the Flora Stone Mather Professor in the Department of Political Science, won the 2011 Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics. Her project, “Gender and Cabinet Recruitment: Pace and Profile in Gendering Government,” focuses on women’s access to cabinet positions in West Europe and North America and involves an international research group of scholars in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Long before the epicenter of the financial crisis shifted to the European Union (EU), Case Western Reserve University political scientist Elliot Posner had been studying the region’s financial arrangements and their international effects. This year, as an EU Affairs Fulbright Research Scholar, Posner is using his previous work to understand EU, transatlantic and international responses to the crisis—and efforts to prevent another one.
Professor Kathryn C. Lavelle’s new book, Legislating International Organization: The US Congress, the IMF, and the World Bank, has just been published by Oxford University Press
ABC asked Case Western Reserve University Political Scientist Justin Buchler, a redistricting expert, to decode the news.
Lavelle said she looks forward to exploring new ways to connect the practice of politics with academic work by interacting with policymakers and finance professionals at the highest levels of government and business.