Jacobs, Lawrence R2021-01-092021-01-092012-10-11https://hdl.handle.net/11299/217680DR. PAUL PIERSON JOHN GROSS PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY It has been nearly a century since business interests have been as powerful in American politics as they are today. This is bad news for American democracy and for American business. Professor Pierson explains why and how American government and business can move toward a more sustainable direction. PAUL PIERSON Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. From 2007-2010 he served at UC Berkeley as Chair of the Department of Political Science. Pierson was also president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association for 2003-04. He is noted for his research on comparative public policy and political economy, the welfare state, and American political development. Prior to moving to Berkeley, CA, Pierson taught at Harvard University from 1989 to 2004. Pierson graduated with a B.A. in political science from Oberlin College in 1981. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, completing an M.A. and M.Phil. in 1986 and his Ph.D. in political science in 1989. Pierson's first book, Dismantling the Welfare State?, was a revision of his doctoral dissertation and won the American Political Science Association's Kammerer Prize for the best work on American national politics published in 1994. His journal article "Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics" won the Heinz Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review in 2000. His most recent book is Winner-Take-All Politics in which he and his co-author Jacob S. Hacker argue that the dramatic increase in inequality of income in the United States is not the natural result of increase competition from globalization, but of the work of political forces.enPresentation