Princeton SPIA’s Markus Prior Named Andrew Carnegie Fellow
May 07 2024
By
David Pavlak
In the latter years of Andrew Carnegie’s life, the industrialist turned to philanthropy, sharing his wealth to further social and educational endeavors. In turn, the Carnegie Corporation of New York established a fellows program in honor of its namesake in 2015 to provide charitable support to scholars and writers for exceptional research in the humanities and social sciences. On May 7, Princeton SPIA’s Markus Prior was officially announced as a Class of 2024 fellow.
Prior, a professor of politics and public affairs and a member of The Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, was one of 28 scholars selected from a pool of more than 360 nominees.
“I'm thrilled by this recognition, being named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow provides a boost of encouragement as my research group and I make the case that we should study political patience.”Markus Prior, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs
Each Andrew Carnegie Fellow will receive up to $200,000 for research that seeks to understand how and why our society has become so polarized and how we can fortify our democracy. In his application, Prior included a one-page brief about policy patience and its role in partisan polarization.
“If partisans disagree more on what they want than when they want it, incorporating the temporal dimension is bound to attenuate findings of issue polarization,” Prior wrote. “Lack of policy patience adds a new concern, however: Impatient voters reduce incentives for candidates and elected officials to address costly long-term policy challenges.”
Prior has previously published a paper — “People are Less Myopic about Future than Past Collective Outcomes” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — that laid the groundwork for his upcoming fellowship topic. He intends to use the funding to support research time on the project and planned survey data collection.
“It is a tremendous accomplishment to be named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow,” said Princeton SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal. “As we continue to elevate the School’s research to promote effective policy in this pivotal time, I’m both excited and curious to see what Markus’ research reveals. We’re all extremely proud of him.”