Bio for Michael Munger

Professor, and Chair, Department of Political Science

Professor, Departments of Economics and Public Policy

Duke University

Prof. Munger received his Ph.D. in Economics (Dissertation committee: Barry Weingast (chair), Douglass North, and Arthur Denzau) at Washington University in St. Louis in 1984. Following his graduate training, he worked as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission. His first teaching job was in the Economics Department at Dartmouth College, followed by appointments in the Political Science Department at the University of Texas at Austin (1986-1990) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1990-7). He moved to Duke in 1997. He was promoted to Full Professor, and sentenced to be department chair, in 2000. Prof. Munger’s third term as Chair will end in 2010. He has won three University-wide teaching awards (the Howard Johnson Award, an NAACP “Image” Award for teaching about race, and admission to the Bass Socity of Teaching Fellows).

His research interests include the study of ideology, legislative institutions, elections, and public policy, especially campaign finance. In addition to more than 80 articles and papers published in professional journals and edited volumes, Prof. Munger has coauthored or coedited (with Melvin Hinich) three books, Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (University of Michigan Press, 1994), Analytical Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Empirical Studies in Comparative Politics (Kluwer Academic Press, 1998). His fourth and most recent book, Analyzing Policy: Choices, Conflicts, and Practices, was published in August 2000 by W.W. Norton. Current research interests include the evolution of the ideology of racism in the antebellum South, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, and a study of complexity in an experimental setting using human subjects. He blogs at Kids Prefer Cheese and Division of Labour.

Prof. Munger has served in a number of administrative positions. He was the Director of the Master of Public Administration Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, which was a program for educating experienced professionals for careers in local public service, including city or county management, or management in non-profit organization. Munger served as President (1996-8) of the Public Choice Society, an interdisciplinary academic society with members in 16 nations. Public Choice members research legislatures and political economy from a “rational choice” perspective. He is currently serving as North American Editor of the refereed academic journal Public Choice.

In 2008, Prof. Munger gave the Keynote Speech at the Libertarian National Convention in Denver, Colorado. Later that year, Prof. Munger was nominated, and ran in the general election, for the office of Governor of North Carolina. He lost. But he is working on a book on the experience, tentatively titled, “You Aren’t Going to Win, Are You?”

Prof. Munger makes a weekly live radio appearance, usually from 5-6 pm on Thursdays, on the Bill LuMaye show on Raleigh’s NewsTalk 680 AM, WPTF. And a taped interview on economics and politics can be heard every Tuesday on Robby Kendall’s Daily Talk Show at 11 am on WTXY, Columbus County/Whiteville. A selection of his most popular articles can be found at Liberty Fund; numerous podcasts are available on iTunesU.