Graduate Student, Political Science
University of Pennsylvania, Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism
PhD Candidate
University of Pennsylvania
Thesis Title: Democratic Exclusion: Disfranchisement and Democratization in the USA, UK, and France
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Brendan O'Leary
Rogers M. Smith John Lapinski |
About
I am currently a political science Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. My dissertation looks at the right to vote from a comparative and historical perspective, with a focus on exclusions from the right to vote in American political development in particular. My research revisits and critiques dominant understandings of democratization by focusing on the different forms of exclusion that democratizing processes have historically enabled. While all democrats defend a normative commitment to a sovereign people, the dynamics of democracy often impose pressures on parties and candidates to change electoral rules in ways that result in the enfranchisement of some groups at the expense of others. My dissertation, “Democratic Exclusion: Trajectories of the Suffrage in the United States, United Kingdom, and France,” asks why, for any historical period, some categories of persons are secured in the right to vote while others are simultaneously disfranchised.
I have previously been the Boies Family Fellow through the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism, and held a Sawyer-Mellon doctoral fellowship through the Penn Program in Ethnic Conflict. I received my B.A. from Concordia University, Montreal, and my M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Contact Information
| Address: | Political Science Department |
| Telephone: |
215-510-7102 |
