The APSA-IPSA Theodore J. Lowi First Book Award is presented annually to honor a book in any field of political science that exemplifies qualities of broad ambition, high originality, and intellectual daring, showing promise of having a substantive impact on the overall discipline, regardless of method, specific focus of inquiry, or approach to the subject.
Citation from the Award Committee:
The committee selected Professor Max Gallien’s book, Smugglers and States: Negotiating the Maghreb at Its Margins. The book reveals how governments tacitly permit illicit cross-border trade and devise informal arrangements to regulate it. Gallien examines the peripheral regions of Morocco and Tunisia where State presence is weak. As the driving force of the cross-border economy, smuggling acts as a job creator and social regulator. Gallien’s theory on smuggling adaptation reveals how groups reorganize to maintain their position in the local economy.
With rich empirical detail, this study innovates in the regulation of cross-border crime in addition to initiating an original reflection on the withdrawal, substitution or maintenance of the State. Smugglers and States provides insights in regions where economic inclusion of many livelihoods exist outside the law. The book represents an important contribution to cross-borders studies in the context of greater control, political pressure and securitization.
Max Gallien is a political scientist specializing in the political economy of development, with a focus on informal economies, taxation, and smuggling. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex and a Research Lead at the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), where he co-leads the research program on informality and taxation. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and an MPhil from the University of Oxford. He is the co-editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Smuggling” (Routledge, 2022). He lives in London.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Serge Granger of the University of Sherbrooke (Chair), Dr. Emilia Palonen of the University of Helsinki, Dr. Gail McElroy of Trinity College Dublin, Dr. José Antonio Cheibub of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Francesca Longo at the University of Catania.