Research
The faculty in the Department of Political Science at Western Michigan University are actively engaged in research dealing with American politics, comparative politics, and political theory, broadly defined. Listed below are brief descriptions of their research areas.
Dr. John Clark has broad interests in American politics with an emphasis on political parties and elections, legislative politics, and the politics of the American South. He co-edited “Southern Political Party Activists” (University of Kentucky Press) and “Party Organization and Activism in the American South” (University of Alabama Press), which won the 1999 V.O. Key Award as the best book on southern politics. He has authored or coauthored more than thirty book chapters and articles in scholarly journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and Political Research Quarterly.
Dr. Paul Clements is interested in social science methodology, management systems in international development assistance, climate change, and the political economy of development. He directs the Master of International Development Administration Program and the Graduate Certificate Program on Climate Change Policy and Management. His book, "Rawlsian Political Analysis: Rethinking the Microfoundations of Social Science" (University of Notre Dame Press), considers a social science that takes fairness to be as basic as interests. He has also published on the ethics of climate change, climate migrant policy, politics in Africa and India, and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He has lived in Africa, India and Hong Kong and worked on evaluation systems in many countries around the world.
Dr. Kevin Corder focuses on the intersection of politics and economics. He participated in a Fulbright exchange in 2013, spending three months in Malta and the United Kingdom to study public and private sector changes in the banking industry. Corder’s work on U.S. economic policy making has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Public Administration Review and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. In addition to his work on public policy, Corder also studies women’s voting in the U.S. He and Christina Wolbrecht are the authors of "Counting Women’s Ballots," a comprehensive assessment of women’s voting in the 1920s and 1930s, and "A Century of Votes for Women," exploring the voting behavior of women from the time they entered the electorate until the 2016 presidential election.
Dr. Lauren Foley, focuses on law, racial politics, and American political development. Her book On the Basis of Race: How Higher Education Navigates Affirmative Action Policies (NYU Press, forthcoming 2023) studies how organizations have both resisted and complied with legal mandates in their racial policymaking. Her work has also appeared in Studies in Law, Politics, and Society and the Journal of Law and Education. She is currently working on her second book project on universities, equality, and American constitutional development.
Dr. Emily Hauptmann focuses on how public and private research funding affects what political scientists study and how they study it. She works in several areas, including the history and sociology of higher education in the U.S., democratic political theory and science studies. Her articles have appeared in Political Theory, The American Political Science Review, PS: Political Science and Politics, The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, The International History Review, Science in Context and New Political Science. As of September of 2025, she will join the Editorial Board of PS. Her most recent book, Foundations and American Political Science (University Press of Kansas, 2022), explores the relationship between external funding and conceptions of research and knowledge in postwar political science.
Dr. Gunther Hega, a native of Germany, is a specialist in Western European Politics. His research has centered on the German-speaking portions of Central Europe. He has taught summer courses at the University of Tübingen in southern Germany and has served as faculty supervisor for WMU's study abroad program at the University of Bonn, which he helped establish. He won a European Union instructional grant to promote and expand the study of the EU at WMU.
Dr. Mark Hurwitz's research is in the field of American Politics, with specific focus on judicial politics in federal and state courts, judicial behavior, judicial selection and diversity. Hurwitz has published his research in The American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and State Politics & Policy Quarterly, among others. He served as a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of Justice System Journal. He is the recipient of research grants from both public and private funding agencies, including NSF and the National Institute of Justice. He currently is the Executive Director of the Southern Political Science Association.
Dr. Priscilla Lambert's, research interests include gender and constitutions, Japanese politics, and the comparative politics of welfare states. She has published articles on these topics in peer-reviewed journals including Comparative Politics, Gender and Politics, the Journal of Japanese Studies, Social Politics, Politics, Groups and Identities, and the Journal of Politics in Latin America. Her book, Gender, Constitutions and Equality: A Global Comparison (Routledge 2023) was funded by a National Science Foundation grant.
Dr. Mahendra Lawoti's research covers democratization, political institutions, ethnic politics and socio-political mobilization in Nepal and South Asia. He has conducted research in Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka. He has authored, co-authored, edited and co-edited ten books and published numerous journal articles, book chapters and opinion pieces. His book, “Towards a Democratic Nepal” (Sage) was reprinted multiple times and translated into Nepali in 2007. He served two terms as the president of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (2006-10).
Dr. Agatha Slupek's research interests lie in the areas of feminist political thought, democratic theory, aesthetics, and emotions and politics. Her writing has appeared in Polity and in Contemporary Political Theory. She is at work on her first book manuscript, tentatively titled Feminism and Fury: Justice, Vengeance, and the Performance of Politics, which examines how women creatively pursue justice in conditions of intimate, social, and institutional betrayal.
Dr. Yuan-kang Wang's research examines the nexus between international relations theory and East Asian security. He is author of “Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics” (Columbia University Press), which debunks the myth of Confucian pacifism in Chinese grand strategy, use of force, and war aims. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on historical China’s foreign relations, US-China relations, and Taiwan security.
Dr. Peter Wielhouwer is a nationally recognized scholar on campaigns and elections, faith and politics and racial politics. Widely published in professional journals, including the Journal of Politics and the American Journal of Political Science, and scholarly books, including “The Oxford Handbook of Religion in American Politics” (Oxford University Press), he is an occasional political consultant and regularly speaks on faith and politics and American politics at places such as universities, professional organizations, churches and faith-based organizations.