Cooley, Alexander 1972- (Alexander Anthony Cooley)

PERSONAL:

Born July 24, 1972. Education: Swarthmore College, B.A., 1994; Columbia University, M.A., 1995, M.Phil., 1998, Ph.D., 1999.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Columbia University, Barnard College, 414 Lehman Hall, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598; fax: 212-854-3024. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic. Columbia University, Barnard College, New York, NY, assistant professor, then associate professor, 2008—. Columbia University President's fellow, 1995-96 and 1996-97; Social Science Research Council dissertation fellow, 1997-98; Harriman Institute Mosley-Backer fellow, 1998-99; German Marshall Fund of the United States Transatlantic fellow, 2004-05.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Recipient of research grants; Marshall Shulman book prize, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Harvard University, 2006, for Logics of Hierarchy.

WRITINGS:

Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupations, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2005.

Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals and journals, including the New York Times, Barnard in the News, Armed Forces & Society, IRI Review, Foreign Affairs, Review of International Political Economy, International Security, PONARS Policy Memo, and the International Herald Tribune. Review editor for Review of International Political Economy, 2004—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Alexander Cooley is an academic. Born on July 24, 1972, Cooley earned a bachelor of arts degree from Swarthmore College in 1994. He pursued his entire graduate education at Columbia University, where he earned a master of arts degree in 1995, a master of philosophy degree in 1998, and a Ph.D. in 1999.

While a graduate student, Cooley served as a Columbia University President's fellow for two consecutive terms between 1995 and 1997. From 1997 to 1998 he was a Social Science Research Council dissertation fellow. The following academic year, he was a Harriman Institute Mosley-Backer fellow. Upon completion of his dissertation, Cooley began working as an assistant professor at Columbia University's Barnard College, being promoted to associate professor in 2008. During this time, he was a German Marshall Fund of the United States Transatlantic fellow from 2004 to 2005.

Cooley began serving as the review editor for Review of International Political Economy in 2004. Additionally, he contributes to a number of periodicals and academic journals, including the New York Times, Barnard in the News, Armed Forces & Society, IRI Review, Foreign Affairs, Review of International Political Economy, International Security, PONARS Policy Memo, and the International Herald Tribune.

Cooley published his first book, Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupations, in 2005. The book shared the 2006 Marshall Shulman book prize, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies at Harvard University. The book examines international relations between Central Asian countries in the period after the fall of the Soviet Union by looking at the ways that parts of the countries' post-Soviet economies differed.

Robert Legvold, writing in Foreign Affairs, noted that Logics of Hierarchy "is a fresh and lean theory, which Cooley would extend to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq" as well as other locales. Katja Weber, writing in the Political Science Quarterly, found that "there are three reasons sure to secure this thought-provoking book an important place in the political science literature." These include parsimony, generalizability, and predictive power. Weber concluded that "this timely book promises applicability to current events. As Cooley demonstrates himself, his firm-type model can shed light on recent forms of monetary integration (currency unions, dollarization, currency boards), the rise of tax havens, and credit-rating agencies." The writer of the Marshall Shulman award announcement on the Harvard University American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies Web site called the book "an elegant theoretical interpretation of the politics" of Central Asia in the post-Soviet era. The same commentator described the writing as "creative, well-researched, and well-argued."

Cooley published his second book, Base Politics: Democratic Change and the U.S. Military Overseas, in 2008.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Foreign Affairs, January 1, 2006, Robert Legvold, review of Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupations, p. 159.

International History Review, December, 2006, Nicholas Onuf, review of Logics of Hierarchy, p. 924.

Political Science Quarterly, winter, 2006, Katja Weber, review of Logics of Hierarchy, p. 700.

ONLINE

Columbia University, Barnard College, Political Science Department Web site,http://www.econ.barnard.columbia.edu/~polisci/ (March 28, 2008), author profile.

Harvard University American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies Web site, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~aaass/ (March 28, 2008), author profile and award announcement.