Uppsala University: Robert Goodin awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science

Professor Robert Goodin, Australian National University, is the recipient of the 2022 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, often referred to as the ‘Nobel Prize in Political Science’. He is awarded the prize for a number of works over several decades in which he “with acuity and success endeavoured to blend political philosophy with empirical political science to increase the understanding of how decent and dignified societies can be shaped”.

Goodin took his DPhil in Politics at Oxford University in 1975 and has a classical education in political philosophy, an area of particular strength at Oxford. Goodin has now been with the Australian National University for many years.

He is a political thinker whose entire scholarly life has been shaped by the conviction that human progress is possible and that carefully designed public policy is one of the main tools we have for achieving it. He could thus be called one of the ‘social engineers’ of political philosophy, and one of his lasting contributions has indeed been to develop ‘institutional design’ as a field of research. Government institutions must be designed in the right way to uphold the moral values upon which they are founded. In short, welfare policy requires politicians to understand both the moral principles and the practical design. And for that, they need research.