Paul Beck

Paul Allen Beck is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Ohio State University – and Professor of Political Science, Communication, and Sociology.  From 2004 to 2008, he was Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Ohio State.  His research and teaching interests are focused on political parties, voting behavior, and public opinion. His current research, initially funded with a grant from the National Science Foundation, focuses on the roles of the mass media, interpersonal discussion networks, and secondary organizations as primary sources of information for voters in elections in modern democracies, including the United States. He was co-principal investigator of national survey studies of the 2004 and 2012 electorates and co-founder of the Comparative National Election Project (CNEP), which brings the U.S. into comparison with more than twenty other democracies. Currently, he is working as co-editor on a book from the CNEP project and on a book on recent American electoral politics.  His many articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, British Journal of Political Science, and other leading journals. Among other books, he was author of Party Politics in America (1997) and co-editor of Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (1984). Beck was honored by the Ohio State University in 2004 as a Distinguished Scholar and in 2000 for Distinguished University Service.  He received the American Political Science Association’s 2005 Goodnow Award for distinguished service to the profession and 2007 Eldersveld Award for lifetime professional contributions to the field of political organizations and parties. His commentaries on American politics are featured regularly in American and foreign media and in community talks.