Rate My Professor Larry Bartels

Larry M. Bartels is the Donald E. Stokes Professor of Public and International Affairs and Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Emeritus, at Princeton University in the Department of Politics. His scholarship and teaching focus on public opinion, electoral politics, public policy, and political representation. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude with distinction in political science and an M.A. in political science from Yale University in 1978, followed by a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983. Bartels began his academic career at the University of Rochester, serving as instructor from 1983 to 1984, assistant professor from 1984 to 1986, and associate professor from 1986 to 1991. He joined Princeton University in 1991 as Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School until 1999, then as Donald E. Stokes Professor of Public and International Affairs until 2011, concurrently holding a professorship in politics and public affairs. Since 2011, he has been the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University, promoted to University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Law in 2022, and co-directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

Bartels is the author of several influential books, including Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton University Press, 1988), Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton University Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2008; second edition, 2016), Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (with Christopher H. Achen, Princeton University Press, 2016), and Democracy Erodes from the Top: Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe (Princeton University Press, 2023). He has published numerous articles in leading journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, and contributed commentaries to the New York Times and Washington Post. His honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences (2012), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995), American Philosophical Society (2019), and American Academy of Political and Social Science (2010); the Warren E. Miller Prize (2014) and Career Achievement Award from the Society for Political Methodology (2021); Vanderbilt’s Earl Sutherland Prize (2017); Guggenheim Fellowship (1996–1997); and National Science Foundation grants. He served as past vice president of the American Political Science Association and is a trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation.