Paul Pierson
Professor and
Department Chair of Political Science
Phone: (510) 642-6326
Office Location: 222 Barrows
Office Hours:
Spring 2008 Course: Not teaching in Political Science this term
Paul Pierson is Professor of Political Science and holder of the Avice Saint Chair of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. As of July 1st, 2007 he is also Chair of the Department of Political Science. Pierson’s teaching and research spans the fields of American politics and public policy, comparative political economy, and social theory. His most recent books are Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (Yale University Press), co-authored by Jacob Hacker, and Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (Princeton University Press 2004). A volume co-edited with Theda Skocpol, The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism, will be published in late 2007 by Princeton University Press. Pierson is an active commentator on public affairs, whose writings have recently appeared in such outlets as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. Along with Jacob Hacker, he is currently writing a book on the politics of rising inequality in the United States.
Pierson is also the author of Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge 1994), which won the American Political Science Association's 1995 prize for the best book on American national politics. His article “Path Dependence, Increasing Returns and the Study of Politics” won the APSA’s prize for the best article in the American Political Science Review in 2000. He currently serves on the editorial boards of The American Political Science Review and The Annual Review of Political Science.