Prof wins Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award
Royce Koop, political studies
Royce Koop, assistant professor of political studies, was awarded the 2014 Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award on Aug. 29 for his work, Grassroots Liberals: Organizing for Local and National Politics.
This is an annual award given out by the American Political Science Association recognizing the book that the jury feels most contributes to contemporary scholarship on Canadian politics.
The award is named for Seymour Martin Lipset, a noted political scientist and scholar of political sociology, comparative politics, and democracy. While he taught primarily at George Mason and Stanford Universities, Dr. Lipset taught for a time at the University of Toronto and maintained a longstanding scholarly interest in Canadian politics. Indeed, amongst his many books were two groundbreaking studies of Canadian politics and society, Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan (1950) and Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (1989).
“It’s obviously a wonderful experience to receive an award named after such a giant in our discipline,” Koop wrote in an email.
About the book
The Liberal Party has fallen on hard times since 2006. Once Canada’s governing party but now confined to the sidelines, it struggles to renew itself. Drawing on interviews and personal observations in cross-country ridings, Royce Koop reveals that although the federal Liberal Party disassociated itself from its provincial cousins to rebuild itself in the mid-twentieth century, grassroots Liberals in the constituencies are building bridges between the national party and the provinces. This insider’s view of party politics challenges the idea that Canada has two distinct political spheres – the provincial and the national – and suggests that national parties can overcome the challenges of multi-level politics by deepening ties with constituencies. – Amazon
About the award
Seymour Martin Lipset
The Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award is given to honor a significant contemporary contribution to the scholarship on Canadian politics, or Canada in a comparative perspective, or a comparative analysis of Canada with other countries, particularly the United States.