Ira I. Katznelson (born 1944) is an American
political scientist and
historian, noted for his research on the liberal state, inequality, social knowledge, and institutions, primarily focused on the United States. His work has been characterized as an "interrogation of political liberalism in the United States and Europe—asking for definition of its many forms, their origins, their strengths and weaknesses, and what kinds there can be".[2]
Katznelson has written or co-written ten books, co-edited several others, and published over sixty journal articles.
He questions "when and why liberal democracies become normatively appealing (less closed and more tolerant) and more effective (less vulnerable and more secure)."[1] He is particularly interested in the connections and transitions between the political traditions of
liberalism and
republicanism in the United States.[16] His work goes beyond the study of U.S. politics to include
international relations,
political theory,
comparative politics, and
comparative history.[17]
His book Liberalism’s Crooked Circle: Letters to
Adam Michnik (1996) won
American Political Science Association's (APSA)
Michael Harrington Prize. Desolation and Enlightenment (2003) won the David and Elaine Spitz Award of the Conference of Political Thought, given to the best book in liberal or democratic theory, and the
David Easton Award of APSA's Foundations of Political Thought Section. In March 2014, Katznelson was awarded the
Bancroft Prize for his book Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time.[18]
Political Science: The State Of The Discipline. 2002. W.W. Norton. (edited with Helen Milner).
Desolation And Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total War, Totalitarianism, And The Holocaust. 2003.
Columbia University Press.
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History Of Racial Inequality In Twentieth-Century America. 2005. W.W. Norton.
Preferences and Situations: Points of Intersection between Historical and Rational Choice Institutionalism. 2005. Russell Sage Foundation. (written with Barry Weingast).
The Politics of Power: A Critical Introduction to American Government, 6th ed. 2006. (written with Mark Kesselman and Alan Draper).
ISBN978-0-15-570735-1
Kalyvas, Andreas; Katznelson, Ira, eds. (2008). Liberal beginnings : making a republic for the moderns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN9780521899468.[20]
Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. 2013. Liverlight.
^Valelly, Richard M. (October 2005). "Ira Katznelson: Toward a Useful Historical Political Science of Liberalism". PS: Political Science & Politics. 38 (4): 797–800.
doi:
10.1017/S1049096505210429.
S2CID145483023.