Matthew Søberg Shugart
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Matthew Søberg Shugart is an American
political scientist Political science is the science, scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of politics, political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated c ...
. He is a Distinguished Professor of political science at the
University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
. He is also an Affiliated Professor at the
University of Haifa The University of Haifa ( he, אוניברסיטת חיפה Arabic: جامعة حيفا) is a university located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1963, the University of Haifa received full academic accreditation in 1972, becoming Is ...
. Shugart specializes in
electoral systems An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections ma ...
,
party system A party system is a concept in comparative political science concerning the system of government by political parties in a democratic country. The idea is that political parties have basic similarities: they control the government, have a stabl ...
s, and the design of political institutions, primarily through empirical studies of political systems across large numbers of countries. Shugart is also an
orchardist An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of larg ...
, and runs the ''Fruits and Votes'' blog on electoral systems and fruit growing.


Education and positions

Shugart attended the
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...
, where he graduated with a
B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
degree in political science in 1983. He continued to study political science at the University of California, Irvine, obtaining an
M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
degree in 1985 and a
Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...
in 1988. In 1989, Shugart became a professor in the Department of Political Science and School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at The
University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
. In 2013, he moved to The University of California, Davis. In June 2016, Shugart became an Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa, and in 2018 he was made a Distinguished Professor at The University of California, Davis. He has held temporary or visiting positions at several universities in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Israel.


Research

In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, Shugart has been an author or editor of numerous books. His first book, coauthored with
Rein Taagepera Rein Taagepera (born 28 February 1933) is an Estonian political scientist and former politician. Education Born in Tartu, Estonia, Taagepera fled from occupied Estonia in 1944. Taagepera graduated from high school in Marrakech, Morocco and the ...
, was ''Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems'', published in 1989. The book is an empirical study of electoral systems and electoral rules, which determine how votes cast in an election are converted into seats in a legislature. One of the central variables that Taagepera and Shugart study is electoral district magnitude and its effects; they demonstrate that in plurality voting systems a larger district magnitude means a less proportional legislature, whereas in proportional voting systems a larger district magnitude means a more proportional legislature. They study this proportionality by developing a notion of the discrepancy between the proportionality of the system and perfect proportionality, noting that no electoral system can be perfectly proportional. ''Seats and votes'' presents comparisons between specific cases, including detailed discussions of
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
,
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
, and
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, as well as general principles, such as the observation that the number of members in the
lower house A lower house is one of two Debate chamber, chambers of a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has co ...
of a legislature tends to resemble the cube root of the total population. ''Seats and Votes'' has been identified as one of the first systematic empirical studies of electoral systems, building on earlier work by
Maurice Duverger Maurice Duverger (5 June 1917 – 16 December 2014) was a French jurist, sociologist, political scientist and politician born in Angoulême, Charente. Starting his career as a jurist at the University of Bordeaux, Duverger became more and ...
, Douglas W. Rae, and
Arend Lijphart Arend d'Angremond Lijphart (born 17 August 1936) is a Dutch-American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, elections and voting systems, democratic institutions, and ethnicity and politics. He is Research Professor Emeritus ...
. In 2017, Shugart and Taagepera coauthored a second book, ''Votes from Seats: Logical Models of Electoral Systems''. In ''Votes from Seats'', Shugart and Taagepera again study of the relationship between electoral systems and party systems, this time presenting four power laws which use the size of a country's assembly and the magnitude of its districts to predict core features of its party system. In 1992, Shugart and John M. Carey published the book ''Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics''. ''Presidents and Assemblies'' is a large-scale study of presidential and parliamentary government types, as well as the plethora of hybrid regimes that combine features of each. James L. Sundquist wrote that ''Presidents and Assemblies'' is "an encyclopedic, yet concise, compilation of the major structural variations in governments all over the world". Shugart and Carey evaluate the stability of presidential and parliamentary systems, in light of the argument by analysts of the
third wave of democratization In political science, the waves of democracy are major surges of democracy that have occurred in history. Although the term appears at least as early as 1887, it was popularized by Samuel P. Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard Universi ...
like
Juan Linz ''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, t ...
that presidential systems are inherently less stable than parliamentary systems; to the contrary, Shugart and Carey show that presidential systems have not broken down more often than parliamentary systems. Related to their focus on hybrid regimes, Shugart and Carey study the variation that exists within presidential regime types, and the relationship between these institutional decisions and the fragmentation of the country's party system as well as the potential for conflict between its executive and legislature. Translations of chapters from ''Presidents and Assemblies'' have been published in languages including Italian, Russian, Polish, and Portuguese. Shugart and his coauthor David J. Samuels also examined executive-legislative relations in detail in their 2010 book ''Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers: How the Separation of Powers Affects Party Organization and Behavior'', in which they further studied the effects of institutional rules on competition between parties. In addition to authoring books, Shugart has edited several volumes: ''Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America'' (2017, with Scott Mainwaring), ''Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds?'' (2001, with Martin P. Wattenberg), and ''The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems'' (2018, with Erik Herron and Robert Pekkanen). He was also an author of the 2014 book ''A Different Democracy: A Systematic Comparison of the American System with Thirty Other Democracies'' with Steven L. Taylor, Arend Lijphart, and
Bernard Grofman Bernard Norman Grofman (born December 2, 1944) is a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. He is an expert on redistricting and has been a special master on several district map redrawings. From the University of Chicago he ...
. Shugart has twice received the George H. Hallett Award, which is given by the Representation and Electoral Systems Section of the
American Political Science Association The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903 in the Tilton Memorial Library (now Tilton Hall) of Tulane University in New Orleans, ...
to "the author of a book published at least ten years ago that has made a lasting contribution to the literature on representation and electoral systems". In 1999, Shugart and Rein Taagepera were given the Hallett Award for their 1989 book ''Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems''. In 2014, Shugart again won the Hallett Award for his 1992 book ''Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics'', co-authored with John M. Carey. Shugart and Taagepera also won a 2018 Choice outstanding academic title award for ''Votes from Seats''. Since 2005, Shugart has run the blog ''Fruits and Votes'', which covers both voting systems and fruit growing, and has been recommended by
FairVote FairVote, formerly the Center for Voting and Democracy, is a 501(c)(3) organization that advocates electoral reform in the United States. Founded in 1992 as Citizens for Proportional Representation to support the implementation of proportional r ...
for its election analysis.


Selected awards

*George H. Hallett Award, American Political Science Association (1999) *George H. Hallett Award, American Political Science Association (2014) *Choice outstanding academic title award (2018)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shugart, Matthew Soberg 1960 births American political scientists University of California, San Diego faculty Living people