(Based on articles from the Volume year of 2013)
Award Recipient
T. William Lester (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Award Committee Assessment
After weeks of careful deliberation, the Best JUA Article 2014 Committee has chosen T. William Lester’s article, “The Role of History in Redistributional Policy Discourse,” (36, Nr. 4, pp. 783-806). Committee members praised Lester’s path-breaking application of urban theory and effective use of history to engage with the important question of what determines whether redistributional policy challenges will succeed. Specifically, the methodologically strong comparative two-city study employs a historical approach, thoughtful analysis, and the rich local cases of San Francisco and Chicago to offer a new look at economic and political determinants of living wage policy outcomes. Although his approach of historical new institutionalism is not new, it has not been widely used in the study of urban political discourse. Lester demonstrates, in his words, that, “history plays a critical role in how economic problems are framed and, to varying degrees, reframed…history plays an active and contingent role by providing actors with the ‘vocabulary’ with which to present their arguments” (p. 801). Lester’s article is an important contribution to how political actors use history and how political structures impact policy outcomes; we expect that it will be widely applied.
Award Committee
Chair Janice Bockmeyer (CUNY – John Jay College); Surajit Chakravarty (ALHOSN University); Albert Fu (Kutztown University); Susan Saegert (CUNY – Graduate Center); Aaron Schultz (University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee)
Read more about the award for Best Published Paper in the Journal of Urban Affairs.
