R. Michael Alvarez, the Flintridge Foundation Professor of Political and Computational Social Science at Caltech, has been honored with the Society for Political Methodology’s Career Achievement Award for his work in modeling electoral dynamics and his contributions to the field. Established in 1983 as a branch of the American Political Science Association, the Society for Political Methodology, according to its website, is “the leading academic organization globally for quantitative political science, addressing the needs of an international membership committed to developing and establishing empirical tools for political analysis.”
Alvarez has maintained a long-standing connection with the society. “Over the last forty years, the society has expanded significantly. It began when I was a graduate student with just a few dozen attendees at the annual meeting and perhaps a couple of graduate students,” Alvarez shares. “Now, hundreds attend the meetings, and the society has developed regional conferences.”
Alvarez pursued his graduate studies at Duke University. “There, I had a network of mentors who truly facilitated my quantitative and mathematical methodologies in political science. John Aldrich [currently the Pfizer-Pratt University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Duke], specifically, who was my advisor and mentor, introduced me to the society and encouraged my attendance at its meetings. This connection was vital for my professional and intellectual growth,” Alvarez notes.
Feeling indebted to the society, Alvarez was eager to reciprocate. Together with Caltech’s Jonathan Katz, the Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics, who received the society’s career achievement award last year, Alvarez served as an editor for the society’s journal, Political Analysis, from 2010 to 2017. One of the significant advancements they introduced as editors was the policy requiring contributors to provide their datasets and coding alongside their manuscripts. “We maintained a policy ensuring that research should be reproducible,” Alvarez explains. “Not only did we enact this requirement, but we also had a doctoral student at Caltech who would run the code and data for every article to confirm that it functioned correctly and yielded the results stated in the article.”
Alvarez and Katz also innovated a social media presence for the journal. “We were early adopters of Twitter and attended annual meetings alongside other journal editors, providing presentations on the importance of utilizing social media and maintaining a robust online presence,” Alvarez recounts.
From his undergraduate days, Alvarez recognized his passion for leveraging quantitative methodologies in the analysis of political behavior in the United States. “With quantitative methods, we can formulate and address pressing questions, not just about American political behavior, which is my focus, but also on the origins of international conflicts or the causes of ethnic strife,” Alvarez clarifies. “Many inquiries and theories lend themselves to testing through data. As data have gained prominence in our world, an abundance of information has become accessible. The significance of quantitative analysis in political science, as well as in other social sciences, has surged dramatically.”
In his role as co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project and host of the Election Science Office Hours podcast, Alvarez has played a crucial role in assessing and improving voting technologies to ensure free and equitable elections. With Frederick Eberhardt, a philosophy professor at Caltech, Alvarez also co-directs the Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy (LCSSP), which integrates the realms of scientific research with scientific policy and ethics, fostering dialogues both within and outside academia to comprehend the effects of progressive scientific research and possible regulatory measures. From generative artificial intelligence to conspiratorial thought to engineered microorganisms, Alvarez motivates collaborations across diverse fields.
Jeff Gill, director of the Center for Data Science at American University and a distinguished professor in government, mathematics, and statistics, portrays Alvarez as “an extraordinary and long-term contributor to our understanding of political methodology and elections. His significant work is regarded as foundational in the discipline. I feel privileged and thankful to have him as an influential figure in my own career.”
The Society for Political Methodology acknowledges Alvarez for his “foundational input into public opinion analysis, voting behavior, electoral administration, and computational modeling,” as well as his leadership “in fostering transparency and rigor within political science” and his dedication “to nurturing junior scholars.”
“I was elated to receive this recognition,” Alvarez states.