Proposal

The Doris Graber Award

Political Communication Section
American Political Science Association

The following language is being proposed by the Graber Award Committee for review and discussion at the next business meeting. This is a draft only, for members to review.

This award is given annually for a book in the field of political communication published within the last decade to acknowledge distinguished scholarship, theoretical creativity and analytic ingenuity. The field of political communications is defined broadly. Eligible works may include significant studies with an emphasis on history, policy, or political advocacy as well as the empirical and theoretical research more traditionally associated with the Political Communication Section of the Association.

The Graber Award Committee consists of three section members with staggered three-year terms nominated and approved according to normal section practice and guided by the section bylaws. Normally the chair is serving his or her third year on the committee.

Precise procedures for the solicitation and evaluation of nominations are left to the committee each year. Normally, announcements of the award and solicitation of suggestions for nomination would be sent to academic publishers and, via the section newsletter, to members of the section. The newsletter notice may attract attention of members of the parallel section in the International Communication Association who are not precluded from nominating significant works.

It is hoped that the section will be able to able to provide an appropriate monetary award to accompany the award plaque. In some cases this financial incentive may be explicitly used for travel of the awardee(s) to the annual meeting. The awarded work is normally determined by early spring and forwarded via the section president to the APSA administration and the formal award made at the section business meeting in late summer.

Eligible books are normally published in traditional form by commercial or academic publishers; but reports, essays and electronically published materials may also be deemed eligible at the discretion of the Graber Award committee. Likewise the committee may choose to make the award for a series of related books.