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Marina Spiliotopoulou, Counsel of the Republic in the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Cyprus, will be hosted for a two-month education program on federalism by the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government at Lafayette.
John Kincaid, the Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service, is director of the Meyner Center. He will direct the program, emphasizing law and law enforcement in the United States, from April 1 through May 31.
Administered through AMIDEAST in Washington, D.C., Spiliotopoulou’s program is a component of the U.S. Fulbright Cyprus-America Scholarship Program, an international training project funded by the U.S. Department of State.
Kincaid says, “Dr. Spiliotopoulou would like to apply principles of federalism learned in the United States to the situation in Cyprus, where there has been much discussion of federalism as a means to re-unite the Greek and Turkish communities on the island. Federalism has also become important for Cyprus because the European Union is considering the admission of the Republic of Cyprus.”
Cyprus has been bitterly and militarily divided between the Greek Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since 1974. Nicosia is the world’s last divided capital, with a wall running through the city dividing the Greek and Turkish communities. The United States, like most nations, does not recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Given the strategic importance of Cyprus, the United States works with both sides in its efforts to prevent war on the island, and war between Greece and Turkey, and, ultimately, to resolve the island’s political problem.
Spiliotopoulou earned a law degree from Athens University in 1991 and a Ph.D. from the University of Thrace in 1996. She will also study with three of Kincaid’s colleagues in Lafayette’s Department of Government and Law. She will study election districting with Associate Professor James E. Lennertz; will learn about the U.S. Supreme Court and federal judiciary with Bruce Allen Murphy, Kirby Professor of Civil Rights; and will study the election processes with Assistant Professor Alexandra Sheaves.
Spiliotopoulou will also meet with federal, state, and local public officials in the Lehigh Valley, Harrisburg, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
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.
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 as Kestnbaum 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 United Kingdom.