Bio
Mark N. Franklin
In September 2006 Mark Franklin became the first holder of the Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute (EUI) in Fiesole (near Florence), Italy, while on leave from Trinity College Connecticut where he is now the John R. Reitemeyer Professor Emeritus of International Politics. In September 2011 he will move to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Visiting Scholar while continuing as a Project Director at the EUI's Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS). He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1970 and his B.A. from Oxford University (Balliol College) in 1964. Before moving to Trinity College Connecticut in 1998 he had 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 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 was conducted in connection with the 2009 elections to the European Parliament - the European Election Study 2009.
Professor Franklin 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 fifteen books published or in press (four of them single-authored), including Elections and Voters (Pagrave 2009) The Economy and the Vote (Cambridge 2007); Voter Turnout (Cambridge 2004); The Future of Election Studies (Pergamon 2002); Choosing Europe? (Michigan 1996); Electoral Change (Cambridge 1992; ECPR "Classic in Political Science" 2009); The Community of Science in Europe (Gower: 1987) and The Decline of Class Voting in Britain (Oxford 1985).
He has published numerous chapters, monographs and reports, together with some sixty 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.
Dr. Franklin is incoming co-editor of the international Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties and is a past or present member of the editorial boards of that joural, Comparative European Politics, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, European Union Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Social Science Quarterly. He has been a Director of the European Election Studies project since 1987, has served as an advisor for the British, Canadian, French and Italian Election Studies, and is the founding Chair of the Consortium for European Research with Election Studies (CERES). 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.
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