Lafayette Professor John Kincaid Awarded High Honor by the American Political Science Association

Lafayette professor John Kincaid has been named Distinguished Federalism Scholar for 2001 by the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Kincaid is the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and director of the College’s Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government. The award recognizes his distinguished scholarly contributions to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations.

The APSA is the major professional society for the study of politics, government, and public policy in the United States and around the world. Kincaid will receive the award at the association’s annual meeting Aug. 30-Sept. 1 in San Francisco, Calif.

“John Kincaid has made a major contribution to the advancement of knowledge about federalism and richly deserves the award,” says Frank J. Thompson, chair of the APSA Award Committee and dean of the Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the State University of New York’s University at Albany.

Kincaid joined the Lafayette faculty in 1994. He is co-editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, which is devoted to the increase and diffusion of knowledge about federalism and intergovernmental relations. He is also editor of a 50-book series on the Governments and Politics of the American States being published by the University of Nebraska Press; elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration; member of the editorial board of the State Constitutional Law Bulletin; 1991 recipient of the Donald Stone Distinguished Scholar Award from the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society of Public Administration; coeditor of Competition Among States and Local Governments: Efficiency and Equity in American Federalism (1991); editor of Political Culture, Public Policy and the American States (1982); and author of various works on federalism and intergovernmental relations.

This summer the Meyner Center will host 18 educators from 18 foreign nations this summer for the 2001 Fulbright Summer Institute on “The U.S. Constitution: Origins, Evolution, and Contemporary Issues.” Kincaid will oversee the institute, whose faculty will include scholars from various U.S. institutions, including Lafayette. Funded by a $176,000 grant from the U.S. State Department, the program will be conducted June 29 to August 11.

Kincaid is currently directing a two-month education program on federalism for Marina Spiliotopoulou, Counsel of the Republic in the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Cyprus. Emphasizing law and law enforcement in the United States, the program is administered through AMIDEAST in Washington, D.C., and is a component of the U.S. Fulbright Cyprus-America Scholarship Program, an international training project funded by the U.S. State Department. It began April 1 and will conclude May 31.

Kincaid was executive director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR), Washington, D.C., from 1988-94, following two years as director of research at the commission. In 1994-95 he was a Kestenbaum Fellow there. ACIR was established in 1959 by the 86th Congress as a permanent, bipartisan body of 26 members, to give continuing study to the relationship among local, state, and national levels of government.

Kincaid holds a Ph.D. in political science from Temple University. He was associate professor of political science at the University of North Texas from 1979-94 and has also taught at Arizona State University, Seton Hall University, and St. Peter’s College. He has lectured and consulted on issues of constitutionalism, federalism, intergovernmental relations, and regional and local governance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.