Jana Morgan is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and the politics and international relations associate editor for the Latin American Research Review. 

 

Professor Morgan has published extensively on issues of inequality, exclusion, and representation across the Americas. Democracies have frequently failed to confront entrenched hierarchies along the axes of race, class, and gender. Morgan's work seeks to call attention to these shortcomings and uncover their consequences. In doing so, her research, teaching and public-facing work emphasize how weaknesses in the practical functioning of democracy have significant costs for the lived experiences of ordinary citizens and for the stability and survival of democratic regimes.

Her first book, Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse, shows how failures to sustain fundamental linkage mechanisms cause party systems to collapse and open the door to populist outsiders. The book, which is based on nearly 18 months of field research in Venezuela as well as comparative historical analysis of seven additional cases, won the Van Cott Outstanding Book Award from the Political Institutions Section of the Latin American Studies Association and received an honorable mention for the Fernando Coronil Biennial Book Award from the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association.

 

Morgan's second book (with Christopher Witko, Nathan Kelly, and Peter Enns), Hijacking the Agenda: Economic Power and Political Influence, was honored with the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the Best Book on U.S. national policy from the American Political Science Association. In Hijacking the Agenda, Morgan and her collaborators use large scale text analysis as well as in-depth case studies to document how inequalities in the US interest system perpetuate policymaking processes that privilege the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans.

 

Her current book project examines how ethnoracial hierarchies threaten the societal foundations for democracies across the Americas. This project (with Nathan Kelly) draws on cross-national analysis of survey data from Latin America, over a year of field research in Peru, and survey experiments in Peru, Colombia, and the United States. Beyond her books, Morgan's other writing has been published in various outlets, including the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, Latin American Research Review, Perspectives on Politics, Political Studies, and Politics & Gender. 

 

Morgan has also won several residential fellowship invitations from the Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, DC, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Her work has received external funding from organizations including the Pew Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays program. Morgan's other awards include a Research Mentor Award from the Graduate Student Senate at the University of Tennessee, the Seligson Prize from the Latin American Public Opinion Project, and the Leon Weaver Best Paper Award from the Representation and Electoral Systems section of the American Political Science Association.

 

Morgan often shares her work at universities, think tanks, and government agencies across the United States and Latin America. She is on the editorial boards for Political Behavior and The Russell Sage Foundation Journal. and insights from her scholarship have been featured in blogs and the popular press.