Languages
English (native speaker), French (somewhat rusty native speaker), Italian (basic spoken and written).
Short Biography
In September 2006 Dr Franklin became the first holder of the Stein Rokkan Chair| in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Fiesole (near Florence), Italy, while on leave from Trinity College Connecticut. At Trinity he is now the John R. Reitemeyer Professor Emeritus of International Politics and is also past Chair of the Political Science Department.
He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1970 and his B.A. from Oxford University (Balliol College) in 1964. He moved to Trinity in 1998 having previously taught at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, from 1969 to 1989 and at the University of Houston, Texas, from 1989 to 1998.
In 2001-2 Professor Franklin was a Guggenheim Fellow at Harvard University and in 1984-5 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Iowa. He also has held visiting appointments at the universities of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Chicago (Illinois), Edinburgh (Scotland), Geneva (Switzerland), Oxford (England), and Sciences Po (Paris, France).
Dr. Franklin's main teaching and research interests lie in British, European and American government and political economy, political methodology, and the attitudes and behavior of elites and mass publics.
In 2008 he was awarded a 2.4 Million Euro three-year FP7 grant by the European Union's DG Research to direct a collaborative design study Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union (PIREDEU). Coordinated at the European University Institute's Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), the collaboration involves fifteen institutions in 9 EU countries and collaborators in all 27 EU countries. As part of this project a feasibility study will be conducted in connection with the 2009 elections to the European Parliament - the European Election Study 2009.
He was founding organizer of the Computer Group of the European Consortium for Political Research in 1973, of the Public Opinion and Participation Section of the European Union Studies Association in 2003, and was founding Convener of the European Union Politics Group of the American Political Science Association from 1994 until its merger with the European Politics and Society Section (of which he is past chair) in 2001.
He has fourteen books published or in press, including The Economy and the Vote: Electoral Responses to Economic Conditions in 15 Countries (Cambridge University Press 2007); Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies Since 1945 (Cambridge University Press: 2004); The Future of Election Studies, edited with Christopher Wlezien (Pergamon Press: 2002); Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union, with Cees van der Eijk et al. (University of Michigan Press, 1996); Parliamentary Questions, edited with Philip Norton(Oxford University Press: 1993); Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Nations, with Thomas T. Mackie et al. (Cambridge University Press, 1992); The Community of Science in Europe (Gower: 1987) and The Decline of Class Voting in Britain (Oxford University Press, 1985). He has published numerous chapters, monographs and reports, together with some fifty articles in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, European Union Politics, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political Studies, West European Politics, and other journals.
Professor Franklin has been a Director of the European Election Studies project since 1987 and has served on the Advisory Boards of one French and various British Election Studies. He is a past or present member of the editorial boards of Comparative European Politics, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, the Journal of Elections Public Opinion and Parties, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Social Science Quarterly, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of European Union Politics. He has been an invited nominator for Macarthur awards and for Guggenheim fellowships, and a selector for Fulbright fellowships and National Science Foundation dissertation awards.