Kaplan Prize

Morton A. Kaplan Prize

Since 1994, the Committee on International Relations has recognized and awarded the Kaplan Prize to the best master’s thesis written by a recently graduated Honors student from the program. The prize is named in honor of Morton A. Kaplan (1921-2017), former chair of the Committee on International Relations and Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Previous Kaplan prize winners are now researchers at prestigious institutions, journalists, and other thought leaders.

Past Winners

2022	João Victor da Silva	"Domestic Politics Constrain How Great Powers Pursue Monetary Hegemony: A Comparison Between the United States and China Currency Swap Policies"
2021	Anagha Komaragiri	"Rethinking the Slum-Free City: Slum Redevelopment as PoliticalCapital in Mumbai, India"
2020	Suji Moon	"Good for Democracy? The Halo Effect of Impeachment"
2019	Akbota Karibayeva	"Empowered for Good: Explaining Why Women’s Wartime Empowerment Can Become Permanent"
2018	Patrick Leonard	"Segregation and the Spatial Distribution of Violence in the Northern Ireland Conflict”
2017	Nasir Almasri	"Still Dying to Win: The Coercive Logic of Suicide Attacks against Autocracies”
2016	Nanxi Zeng	"Practicing Nationalism in Historical Writing: Japan’s Changing Image in Official Chinese Historical Narratives, 1950s to 1990s"
2015	Dayna Dion	"Transnational Human Rights Advocacy: A Force for Change or Exercise in Futility?"
2014	David Kaner	"Mark the Earth with Ruin: Official Memory and Memorialization in Post-Genocide Cambodia and Rwanda"
2013	Andrew Rath	"Clientelism and Programmatic Politics: The Political Economy of Export Taxes in Argentina"
2012	Thomas Heyboer	"The Advantages of Patient Capital in Crisis"
2011	Jason Grant Stone	"Reconceptualizing Cleavage Structures and Ethnonationalist Part Formation in an Ethnocracy: Ethnic Outbidding, the JHU and Ethnoreligious Nationalism in Sri Lanka"
2010	Stewart Timothy Knox	"An Open Book?: A Look at How Democratic Security-Seekers Signal their Intentions"
2009	David Blagden	"Globalization and the Convergence of Power"
2008	Maggie Morgan	"A Global and Regional Analysis of the Role of Regime Type in Civil War"
2007	Michael Smith	"Shouting Into the Wind: Examining the Structural Weakness of Developing Countries In the Global Trade Order"
2006	Alexandra Hope Croswell	"Systemic Change and Terror: Understanding the Causal Mechanisms of 9/11"
2005	Sebastian Schmidt	"To Order the Minds of Scholars: The Discourse of the Peace of Westphalia in International Relations Literature"
2004	Arek Kaczmarek-Ison	"Post-Materialism and Value Theory of International Relations"
2003	Sarah Jane Dinan	"Father Russia or Brother Russia? How Russia Understands its Relationship with the Former Soviet Republics"
2002	Dominik Meier	"The European Security and Defense Identity and Its future. An Outlook for the 21st Century"
2001	Takafumi Noguchi	"A Game Theoretical Approach to UN Non-coercive Conflict Management in International Crises, 1945-1994"
2000	Dong Chun Soh	"Liberal Order Building and Transnational Technocracy: The Case of South Korean Economic Development"
1999	Alexander Downes	"The Holy Land Divided? Theory and Practice for a Successful Partition in Palestine"
1998	Jennifer Fitzgerald	"Reframing Nationalism Reframed: Non-Violent Quadratic Relationships in Post-Communist Eastern Europe"
1997	Colin Woodard	"Balkan Ghosts and their Masters: The Politics of Ethno-Nationalism in Romania"
1996	Ahmed Hirsch	"UNRWA 1950-1994: A Challenge to Monopoly Sovereignty"
1995	Stefano Ponte	"Structural Adjustment Programs and Agricultural Performance: Beyond the Policy Factor. Lessons from Kenya and Tanzania"
1994	Michael Corradino	"The Thrill of Victory and Agony of Defeat for U.S. Exporters in the Uruguay Round"