Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University. In 2019, he served as the Winant Visiting Professor at the Rothermere American Institute, Balliol College Oxford. He has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and he has held the Chair in American Civilization at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2004, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Skowronek has written extensively about American national institutions. He is interested in the historical construction of contemporary problems, and his work has helped to foster the field of American political development. His research interests focus substantively on American state formation and on the politics of presidential leadership.

Skowronek’s publications include Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive (2021, with John A. Dearborn and Desmond King), The Policy State: An American Predicament (2017, with Karen Orren), Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (1982), The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton (1997), The Search for American Political Development (2004, with Karen Orren), and Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal (third edition 2020). Among other activities, he was co-founder (with Karen Orren) of the journal Studies in American Political Development, which he edited between 1986 and 2007, and he provided the episode structure and thematic content for the PBS miniseries: The American President (Kunhardt Productions).

CV (updated September 2024)

Contact

Email: stephen.skowronek@yale.edu

Mailing: 
Stephen Skowronek
Yale University Department of Political Science
PO Box 208301
New Haven, CT 06520-8301