Paul Pierson

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Paul Pierson (born 1959) is an American political scientist, noted for his research on comparative public policy and political economy, the welfare state, and American political development.

Pierson is a native of Eugene, Oregon, where both of his parents taught at the University of Oregon. He graduated with a B.A. in political science from Oberlin College in 1981, and then attended graduate school at Yale University, completing an M.A. and M.Phil in 1986 and a PhD degree in political science in 1989.

Pierson taught at Harvard University from 1989 to 2004, when he moved to the University of California, Berkeley and where he is presently a professor of political science and the Avice Saint chair in public policy. He is chairman of the department July 2007 - July 2010. He was a visiting professor at the European University Institute in 1997.

Pierson's first book, Dismantling the Welfare State?, was a revision of his doctoral dissertation and won the American Political Science Association's Kammerer Prize for the best work on American national politics published in 1994. His journal article “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics” won the Heinz Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review in 2000.

Pierson was president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association for 2003-04.

Pierson is married to Tracey Goldberg, a landscape architect. They live in Berkeley, CA with their two children, Sidra and Seth.

Selected publications

• The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism. 2007. Princeton University Press. (edited with Theda Skocpol).
• Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. 2005. Yale University Press. (with Jacob Hacker).
• Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. 2004. Princeton University Press.
• "Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science." In Political Science: The State of the Discipline, eds. I. Katznelson and H. Milner. W.W. Norton. (written with Theda Skocpol).
• The New Politics of the Welfare State. 2001. Oxford University Press. (editor).
• "Path Dependence, Increasing Returns, and the Study of Politics." 2000. American Political Science Review 94(2): 251-267.
• "Not Just What, but When: Timing and Sequence in Political Processes." 2000. Studies in American Political Development 14(1): 73-93.
• European Social Policy: Between Fragmentation and Integration. 1995. Brookings Institution Press. (edited with Stephan Leibfried).
• Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment. 1994. Cambridge University Press.