Melissa Schwartzberg
Associate Professor of Political Science
(212) 854-6485
ms3125@columbia.edu
718 IAB
Research Interests
- Ancient political thought
- Democratic theory
- Constitutionalism
- Rousseau
Melissa Schwartzberg (Ph.D., New York University, 2002) is a political theorist whose research centers on the historical origins and normative consequences of rules governing democratic decision-making. Her first book, Democracy and Legal Change (Cambridge, 2007), retrieves and defends the historically salient view that democracies regularly change their laws, while exploring the circumstances under which democracies have enacted immutable rules. She is writing a second book, Counting the Many, on the historical development and justifications of supermajority rules. She also has a special interest in Athenian democracy and in eighteenth-century theories of institutional design. She has published articles in journals including Political Theory, Journal of the History of Ideas, American Political Science Review, Political Studies, and PS: Political Science and Politics. From 2002-2006, she was an assistant professor of political science at The George Washington University.Sample Publications
Selected Publications
Democracy and Legal Change. Cambridge UP, 2007.