UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —Vineeta Yadav, Penn State associate professor of political science, has received the Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research for her book, “Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties” (Oxford, 2021).

The Stein Rokkan Prize is presented annually by the International Science Council, the University of Bergen, and the European Consortium for Political Research to recognize the work deemed by the prize jury to be that year’s most substantial and original contribution in comparative social science research. The award — named to honor the legacy of Stein Rokkan, a groundbreaking comparative political and social science scholar — is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious international academic awards in political science.

“Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties” draws on large amounts of different types of data to answer crucial questions on the fate of civil liberties under religious governments in Muslim-majority countries. The book is the first comprehensive statistical analysis of religious organizations and parties in Muslim-majority countries to be conducted, and the first to measure their strength as well.

“’Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties’ is broad in its scope, original and innovative,” the prize jury noted in a release announcing the award. “(The book) is theoretically ambitious, methodologically rigorous, and empirically rich … exemplifying the virtues that the Stein Rokkan Prize is intended to honor.”

Yadav’s research focuses on the comparative study of political parties and business and religious interest-groups in developing countries, and the consequences of their interactions for governance, policy outcomes, and democracy. She has a special interest in South Asian politics. Her previous books include “Political Parties, Business Groups and Corruption in Developing Countries” (Oxford, 2011), which won the American Political Science Association’s 2013 Epstein Best Book award and the 2012 Alan Rosenthal Book award; “Democracy, Electoral Systems, and Judicial Empowerment in Developing Countries” (Michigan, 2014); and “The Politics of Corruption in Dictatorships” (Cambridge, 2016).

Yadav’s work has also appeared in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Political Research Quarterly, Party Politics, International Interactions, Asian Survey, and Journal of Public Affairs and received support from the National Science Foundation and India’s Azim Premji Foundation. She is currently working on projects analyzing the rise and consequences of populist parties in developing democracies; how politicians’ personal characteristics influence political outcomes using experiments and surveys on political elites; and the impact of elite characteristics and rebel governance on development using lab-in-the-field experiments.

“We are very proud of Vineeta Yadav’s pathbreaking work on religious parties and congratulate her on receiving the Stein Rokkan prize,” said Lee Ann Banaszak, professor and head of the Penn State Department of Political Science. “Professor Yadav’s theoretically innovative and methodologically rigorous work advances our understanding of how religious parties influence civil liberties when they enter government. She truly is one of our rising stars in the study of comparative politics.”