Robert Goodin awarded 2022 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science

Robert Goodin from the ANU School of Philosophy has been awarded the 2022 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science.

First awarded to leading democratic theorist Robert Dahl of Yale University in 1995, the Johan Skytte Prize has been described as the political science equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The prize valued at 500,000 Swedish Kronor (AU$71,292) is presented by the Johan Skytte Foundation, whose heritage dates back some 400 years, in recognition of "the scholar who in the view of the Foundation has made the most valuable contribution to political science."

Robert Goodin, who graduated from Oxford in 1975 and was a Professor of Government at the University of Essex, joined The Australian National University for the first time in 1982, joining permanently in 1989. He becomes the first recipient of the prize at an Australian University.

“Of course it is a huge honour, very much the capstone of my career,” says Goodin. “It is also a tribute to the role that philosophers such as myself can play among political scientists interested in questions of public policy with clear value dimensions to them.”

Professor Goodin wins the prize for his impressive work in which he “with acuity and success endeavoured to blend political philosophy with empirical political science to increase the understanding of how decent and dignified societies can be shaped.”

Though Professor Goodin’s work covers a myriad of subjects, he often returns to those topics that (to paraphrase the award citation) go to the heart of shaping a decent and dignified society, driven by his belief that human progress is possible, and public policy equips us to realise its potential. Progress and dignity in society have been issues brought into sharp focus by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, a period of history when governments have made substantial interventions and people have been made acutely aware of the responsibility to protect one another.

“Perhaps my most important – anyway, most widely applicable – philosophical contribution came in my book Protecting the Vulnerable,” says Goodin. “I have been gratified (without for a moment claiming any direct influence) that my phrase has been reappearing increasingly often in discussions of social policy and, with the onset of COVID-19, in public health contexts, where masking and vaccination were quite rightly promoted as measures to protect the vulnerable members of the community.”

Born in the United States, Professor Goodin remembers growing up during a period of turmoil and change in American society, the 1960s, amid struggles over Civil Rights and the Vietnam War. The anti-war movement in particular he recalls energised him. The 1960s was also the decade the environmental movement took off. Greater awareness of environmental issues, sparked by works like Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring in 1962, helped a nascent movement cement its place, with the Sierra Club adding over 600,000 members in the decade, and 20 million Americans taking to the streets in 1970 for the very first Earth Day. Professor Goodin’s undergraduate research project looked at US preparations for the conference that founded the UN Environment Program. Those preparations did not always reflect that spirit of optimism of the time, Goodin recollects.

“I still remember well the leader of the US delegation to those negotiations turning to me, as the meeting began, and saying 'I hate for an idealistic kid to see this...'”

Maybe some things haven’t changed, but Goodin continues to work on issues very much at the forefront of public discourse.

“Mine was a generation of very political political philosophers.  And the issues I have written about over the years have very much been those thrown up by current affairs,” says Goodin. “The pattern continues to this day, the two books I am currently writing concern 'consent' (growing out of #MeToo) and 'structural injustice' (growing out of Black Lives Matter).”

Among the work that stood out in awarding the prize to Professor Goodin, was his contribution to growing the field of research in ‘institutional design’.

“The phrase 'institutional design' might seem to suggest – misleadingly – that there is some vaguely mechanical way of setting things up to guarantee that the right (morally best, socially optimal) outcomes emerge.  There are of course better and worse ways of crafting social institutions, to make them more rather than less attentive to the claims of the further future and of the most vulnerable among our contemporaries.  But the 'how to do it' is pretty obvious, really,” says Professor Goodin. “What I am proudest of are the arguments I have been able to marshal to help motivate people to want to do it.  One of the key moves – introduced in my book Motivating Political Morality and elaborated in my co-authored book on the Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism – is simply to remind people of the uncertainty that even reasonably comfortably-off people face looking to the future.  There is a very real possibility, however well off you are now, that you might need some of these programmes of state assistance at the most unexpected moment.”

Professor Goodin first came to ANU in 1982 to work as part of the interdisciplinary Social Justice Project, alongside the distinguished Peter Wilenski (who was subsequently appointed as Australia’s Ambassador to the United Nations in 1988) and one of Australia’s most lauded historians, Stuart Macintyre. Recalling the small and collaborative community within social sciences and thoroughly enjoying his interactions with a wide range of disciplines, he returned permanently in 1989.

“I have been blest with a truly remarkable range of mentors and collaborators over the years – it would be invidious to single out any of them in particular,” says Goodin. “I should nonetheless pay particular tribute to the fabulous Visiting Fellows programme within the Research School of Social Sciences that, year in and year out, brings some of the most outstanding scholars from around the world to spend a month or two at ANU.  Often they like it so much they keep coming back – the most outstanding example was Claus Offe, who kept coming back every couple of years for fully fifteen years, deeply influencing my work on social policy on every one of those occasions.”

An English translation of the prize motivation letter published in Svenska Dagbladet on April 25 2022 is available on the Johan Skytte Prize website: https://www.skytteprize.com/goodin_motivation/