Ms. Chelsea Chia-chen Chou, a doctoral student at Cornell University, has won the best graduate student paper award for her paper “The politics of voluntary expansion of social rights” presented at the 23rd annual meeting of the Association of Chinese Political Studies (http://www.acpsus.org) at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts this summer.
The ACPS Graduate Student Best Paper Award Committee, consisting of Prof. He Li (Chair, Merrimack College), Prof. Vera Fennell (Lehigh University), and Prof. Chloe Froissart (Rennes 2 University), observed that her paper tackled a very important question, specifically how are interests articulated in autocratic regimes, especially non-elite interests. In the committee’s view, her paper showed a tremendous amount of research, a firm familiarity with the literature, and a solid knowledge of the evolution of China’s bureaucratic state structure. They felt her argument was well-balanced, showing that urban and qualified workers have more benefited from policy development than migrant under-qualified workers. Overall, they deemed her paper academically rigorous, well-organized, and rich empirically.
As the winner, Chelsea receives a $100 prize from Professor Jean-Marc F. Blanchard (the creator of the award and current ACPS President) and a certificate at the next ACPS meeting.