The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science had long made it a priority to be good at a lot of things — and it had developed core strengths in political theory, comparative politics, and international security.
But in order to become great, it had to get better at one thing — American politics — and bring the subfield up to the standard of other areas of the department.
“Our new position is a reflection of the accumulation of our efforts. We were underranked, and the pressure to rank us higher has been increasing more and more. All of a sudden, people are now taking a closer look.”
— Geoffrey Layman, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science
“Up until now, our American politics field hasn't really been built by hiring the big-name free agent,” said Geoffrey Layman, professor and chair of the department. “It's been building with young, almost fresh-out-of-graduate-school faculty and making the right hires.”
After several external reviews that emphasized the need for improvement in American politics, the department boasts an impressive roster in that core subfield. The 14 faculty members in American politics now include five endowed chairs, five full professors, and four collegiate chairs.
It’s a demonstration of the department's conscious effort to strengthen in one area without sacrificing quality in others — and that improvement is getting noticed. In the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings, the department made a significant jump for the first time in a decade — moving from 37 to 27.
With a slew of recent senior hires bolstering a strong roster of junior faculty; a thriving set of centers and institutes focused on American democracy, international security, and constitutional studies; a University-wide investment in democracy research and student support; and one of the most popular undergraduate programs on campus, the department is stronger than it's ever been — even if it took the rankings a while to catch up.
“Our new position is a reflection of the accumulation of our efforts,” Layman said. “We were underranked, and the pressure to rank us higher has been increasing more and more. All of a sudden, people are now taking a closer look.”
A center of gravity
After its founding 100 years ago, the department initially developed a reputation in political theory and eventually in comparative politics.
“If we wanted to be considered among the top political science departments, it's not that we needed to do other stuff instead of theory, it's that we needed to do other stuff in addition to theory,” said David Campbell, the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy and former department chair.
Political theory had emerged as a strength in the department because of the subfield’s integration of the social sciences with humanities-rooted ways of thinking, a natural intersection with Notre Dame’s longstanding strength in philosophy. In it, faculty and students ask fundamental questions about politics and derive their theories from great thinkers such as Socrates, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas.
As a leader in the subfield, the department is home to the political theory journal The Review of Politics and hosts the biennial Niemeyer Lectures in Political Philosophy.
“At Notre Dame, there's historically been a sense of its Catholic tradition and of thinking about politics in light of the dignity of the human person,” said Mary M. Keys, a professor who joined Notre Dame in 1998 and whose research primarily focuses on Christianity, ethics, and political thought.
The department has also been a strong presence in comparative politics, particularly the study of Latin America, which was accelerated by the establishment of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies in 1982. Notre Dame has long been a convening and catalyzing force in the subfield; Campbell refers to it as “one of the centers of gravity” of comparative politics.
Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, professor of political science and global affairs, said that the central role grew out of the Congregation of Holy Cross’ presence in Chile and the recruitment of Argentine political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell, who became Kellogg’s first academic director.
“With O’Donnell’s arrival, Notre Dame became a prominent hub for the study of Latin American politics and was able to recruit new generations of superb scholars working on the region,” said Pérez-Liñán, who currently serves as director of the Kellogg Institute, housed in the Keough School of Global Affairs. “It took us more than 40 years to build this reputation, and we are called to expand it.”
Strong — and getting better
Now, the department has enhanced its reputation by securing and supporting leading scholars who are doing impactful work across a range of subfields.
Prominent junior hires include Jeff Harden, the Andrew J. McKenna Family College Professor (and now a full professor), who studies legislative institutions; Rachel Porter, the Notre Dame du Lac Assistant Professor of Political Science, is an expert in political methodology with a particular focus on Congress; Erin Rossiter, the Nancy Reeves Dreux Assistant Professor, researches political behavior through quantitative methodology; and assistant professor Richard Clark focuses on globalization, international finance, and climate change.
“Notre Dame is a place where if you're entrepreneurial, the support is there if you can come up with compelling ideas,” said Clark, who returned to his undergraduate alma mater after two years on the faculty at Cornell University. “I really wanted to be a part of a department that was not just really strong, but that wanted to grow and keep getting better.”
Notre Dame has also had significant recent success in recruiting senior scholars. In the most recent hiring cycle, the department added three senior faculty members, strengthening existing areas of excellence and expanding into new territory not covered by current faculty.
Those additions included Saad Gulzar, a joint associate professor of political science and global affairs and leading scholar of South Asia, formerly of Princeton University; and professor James Curry, an expert on U.S. politics and policymaking who moved from the University of Utah. In January, Ken Kollman will join the faculty as the William M. Scholl Professor of Politics and professor of global affairs after 32 years at the University of Michigan.
And, in addition to longtime faculty member Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., being named University president, two new senior leaders also brought political science expertise to Notre Dame — Kenneth Scheve, professor of political science and the I.A. O'Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts & Letters, joined this fall from Yale University, and Mary Gallagher, formerly of the University of Michigan, is now the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs.
“One of my colleagues at Michigan said that Notre Dame just seems like it’s on fire, in a good way,” Kollman said. “And it’s fun to join something like that.”
“As a department, we have worked to ensure that others in the discipline know what's happening at Notre Dame. We have to bring them here in order to show them what we’re doing, and we’ve made a concerted effort to do that.”
— David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy
Notre Dame’s graduate students are also making a strong impression on the job market, with recent tenure-track placements at institutions such as the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arkansas, the University of Tennessee, the University of Arizona, and Oklahoma State University. The strength of the program was evident at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting this year. Three Notre Dame Ph.D. alumni won four dissertation awards — Benjamin Garcia-Holgado ’23 (best dissertation in public law); Josephine Lechartre ’24 (best dissertation in comparative politics); and Natán Skigin’24 (best dissertation in political psychology and best dissertation award from the Experimental Research Section).
Notre Dame faculty continue to be sought out for leadership and receive recognition from major professional associations, as well. Dianne Pinderhughes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science, has served as the president of the APSA and the International Political Science Association, and professor Christina Wolbrecht recently finished her tenure as president of the Midwest Political Science Association. The department’s roster now also includes three members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — Pinderhughes, Scheve, and Scott Mainwaring, the Eugene and Helen Conley Professor.
In effect, the success reflected in Notre Dame’s rankings jump is not just a credit to the political science department, but to the University as a whole.
“These are people who are not just doing good scholarship,” Campbell said. “But they are also in networks and in leadership positions that reflect well on Notre Dame.”
Earning a closer look
But it’s not all about the rankings and impressing peers. Notre Dame political scientists are playing a significant role in policy-relevant research and convening critical conversations, especially related to democracy, constitutional studies, and national security.
As part of Notre Dame 2033: A Strategic Framework, the University established the Democracy Initiative, which aims to position Notre Dame as a leader in the study of democracy both in the U.S. and worldwide.
The initiative was established after U.S. News and World Report surveys were sent out, so it likely had little effect on the department’s new ranking. But its impact has already been felt. In addition to support that helped recruit significant hires (including Gulzar and Kollman), the initiative has also created research funding opportunities and hosted major public events.
“The Democracy Initiative is an accelerant of all of this,” said Campbell, who directs the initiative. “The strides the department has made, those are going to continue or even get even bigger with the Democracy Initiative’s booster fuel.”
The initiative’s efforts will be furthered by the newly endowed Rooney Democracy Institute, led by Matthew E.K. Hall, the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional Studies, which aims to advance Notre Dame’s role as a national and global leader in democracy scholarship.
In addition to the Rooney Institute, the department also houses the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government and the O’Brien Notre Dame International Security Center, which offer support for research, student programs, and events that host esteemed figures in their fields on campus.
“As a department, we have worked to ensure that others in the discipline know what's happening at Notre Dame,” Campbell said. “We have to bring them here in order to show them what we’re doing, and we’ve made a concerted effort to do that.”
Clearly, a lot of momentum is building in political science at Notre Dame — and while the department has made progress toward its goal of strengthening its expertise in American politics, it has also improved across the board. And the field is taking notice.
“I think what rankings do is just lead people to take a closer look at who’s already here, and then they start to see that ‘oh, Notre Dame is a lot better than I thought,” Layman said. “That’s what highly visible projects or splashy hires do — they force people to take a look and say, ‘This is a serious department.’”
