James N. Druckman
James N. Druckman is the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. He was formerly the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and the Associate Director of the Institute for Policy Research. He is also an Honorary Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Research focuses on political preference formation and communication. Developed a theory of how citizens form political opinions and how political and media elites affect those opinions. Showed that audiences will support the right of a hate group to demonstrate when its rally is described in terms of free speech but will oppose the rally when framed as a public safety issue. Going beyond previous scholarship, work has focused on situations where a single frame is invoked, studied political situations, which typically involve competing frames, and isolated causal forces behind success in those situations. Based on the knowledge that developing national policy depends on understanding public attitudes and how they change as people become more informed, Americans' changing knowledge and attitudes about alternative energy are examined. Studied the impact of public opinion on American policy-makers, using public statements, private polls, memoranda, and other archival materials from three presidents to explore how politicians conceive of and use public opinion when making decisions. Studies the impact of the Internet on electoral politics, having monitored and performed a content analysis of more than 700 candidate websites over the past three election cycles.
Druckman has published over 90 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, and psychology journals. He co-authored the book Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation (University of Chicago Press) co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. He has served as editor of the journals Political Psychology and Public Opinion Quarterly and the University of Chicago Press's series in American Politics. He currently is the co-principal Investigator of Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS). He also sits on numerous advisory boards, organizing committees, prize committees, and editorial boards.
Druckman's work has been recognized with numerous awards, including over 15 best paper/book awards; he also has received grant support from such entities as the National Science Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Phi Beta Kappa. He received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. His teaching/advising has been recognized with the Outstanding Award for Freshman Advising and an Outstanding Faculty citation by Northwestern's Associated Student Government.