Mares, Isabela

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Mares, Isabela

PERSONAL:

Education: Harvard University, Ph.D., 1999.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Columbia University, Department of Political Science, 7th Fl., International Affairs Bldg., 420 W. 118th St., New York, NY 10027. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic and political scientist. Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, assistant professor of political science, then associate professor of political science; Columbia University, New York, NY, associate professor of political science, 2006—. Harvard University, Max Weber fellow, 1992-94, John D. Montgomery Prize fellow, 1992-94; Mellon Foundation fellow, 1995-97; American Institute for Contemporary German Studies Robert Bosch Foundation fellow in Comparative Public Policy and Institutions, 1998; Georgetown University Center for German and European Studies research fellow, 1998-99; 9th Summer Institute on Institutions and Economic Performance in Advanced Economies since 1945, Ger- man-American Academic Council fellow, 1998-99; German Marshall fellow, 2001-02; Stanford University, Hellman faculty fellow, 2003-04, Victoria Schuck faculty scholar, 2003-06.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Sage Prize, Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, for best paper in comparative politics presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association; Gregory Luebbert Award, American Political Science Association, 2004, for the best book in comparative politics, for The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development; Gregory Luebbert Award, American Political Science Association, 2004, for the best article in comparative politics; winner of the First Best Book in European Studies, Council for European Studies.

WRITINGS:

The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Taxation, Wage Bargaining and Unemployment, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals and academic journals, including World Politics, International Organization, Governance, Politics and Society, and Comparative Political Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Isabela Mares is an academic and political scientist. She completed her formal education in 1999 by earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University. She went on to become an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She was later promoted to associate professor of political science. In 2006, however, she moved across the country to accept a position as an associate professor of political science at Columbia University. Her research interests include labor politics in advanced industrial democracies, European political development and political economy, welfare states, and comparative politics.

Mares published her first book, The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development, in 2003. The book examines the idea that the business community in general is not necessarily a contrary force against the development of a welfare state. Mares points out that business interests throughout the twentieth century were one of the primary forces to shape social policies. Mares's stand on the issue offers an alternative view to the standard belief among most published works on the development of the welfare state. Mares uses the stalwart examples of France and Germany to show theoretically how business preferences in those countries over the twentieth century prove her thesis. Mares proposes that companies promote social policy by sharing common ideals with their employees, where the workers are compensated for improving their own job performance skills, rewarding both the company and the individual laborer. Mares provides an equation that can be used to measure the company's risk—from investing in their individual employees—to judge the odds that, after the investment is made, the employee will or will not leave the company. Mares uses four chapters of the book to highlight theoretical measures.

Nathalie Janson, writing in the Independent Review, found Mares's discussion of twentieth-century France and Germany's major social-policy reforms to be "detailed and well documented but at the same time tedious to read." Janson observed that "the author's methodology is also certainly a major flaw. She seems to endorse a classic Popperian approach in testing new theoretical assumptions, but she does not rely on a classical statistical approach to make the tests, resorting instead to the presentation of highly detailed historical evidence."

In 2006, Mares published her second book, Taxation, Wage Bargaining and Unemployment.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, November 1, 2004, Janet C. Gornick, review of The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development, p. 808.

Business History, January 1, 2006, Hugh Pemberton, review of The Politics of Social Risk, p. 148.

Business History Review, autumn, 2004, Jan-Otmar Hesse, review of The Politics of Social Risk, p. 583.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, March 1, 2004, D.B. Robertson, review of The Politics of Social Risk, p. 1339; December 1, 2006, D.B. Robertson, review of Taxation, Wage Bargaining and Unemployment, p. 690.

Contemporary Sociology, January 1, 2005, Duane Swank, review of The Politics of Social Risk, p. 57.

Independent Review, spring, 2006, Nathalie Janson, review of The Politics of Social Risk, p. 609.

Journal of Economic Literature, March 1, 2004, review of The Politics of Social Risk, p. 277.