In the fall of 2022, one of our faculty members, Dr. Scott Meachum, was awarded the McBrayer Award at the Georgia Political Science Association annual conference.
The McBrayer Award is awarded in years when a paper of outstanding scholarship within the discipline is presented in its entirety on the GPSA annual meeting program and subsequently recognized as such at the discretion of the Editorial Board and Editor(s) of Questions in Politics, the scholarly journal of the GPSA. Recipients are awarded $300.
Dr. Meachum's paper, titled "Joining the Club? The Politics of Government Recognition," is an article that "looks at why and when states recognize new governments that have come to power through extra-legal means (e.g., coup, civil war, revolution). Under international law a new government must be recognized as legitimate by other states, and in the article, I argue that recognizing states can and will use these recognition opportunities to further their own political goals. I find that states do use recognition to weaken perceived enemies but do not seem to use recognition to help their friends or allies. There has not been a lot of work done looking at recognition of governments from an empirical standpoint, so this particular article sheds light on an important and understudied phenomenon."
When asked about the award, Dr. Meachum said that "[p]ersonally it's always nice to have your work recognized. This article started as part of my dissertation, so I've literally been working on it for years, and it's great to have a final product and to have other people acknowledge the value of that work."
Department Head Dr. Dlynn Armstrong Williams, a 2018 McBrayer recipient herself, is "so excited that Scott's scholarship was acknowledged by his peers at the GPSA. His receiving the McBrayer Award makes him the fifth PSIA faculty member in the past several years to be so recognized — a glowing testament to the high regard the Georgia academic community has for the members of our department. Kudos to Scott for a job well-done!
If you want to read Dr. Meachum's award-winning paper, we have linked it here for your convenience: gpsa-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Meachum.pdf