This year’s Johan Skytte Prize winner announced

Professor Robert Axelrod at Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, is the winner of the 2013 Johan Skytte Prize in political science. He is awarded the prize for “profoundly having changed our presumptions about the preconditions for human cooperation”. The Johan Skytte Prize is one of the finest and most prestigious prizes in political science.

The Johan Skytte Prize is awarded for the 19th year by the Johan Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University in a ceremony taking place in Uppsala on the 28th of September 2013.

Robert Axelrod’s most cited and famous book “The Evolution of Cooperation” came out in 1984, preceded by a prize-winning article in Science 1981 co-authored together with biologist William D. Hamilton. The fundamental question of under which conditions cooperation and not conflict could become a beneficial strategy when self-interest is the individually driving force is at the centre of Robert Axelrod’s works. He shows that for reciprocity to develop, durable and long-term relations of an infinite nature are determinant.

Robert Axelrod has opened new research frontiers through his work and contributed to form political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, biology and computer science. His conclusions are decisive for improving our understanding of international relations, negotiations, complex organisations, and political decision-making bodies.

About the Johan Skytte Prize:

In 1622, Johan Skytte, then Vice-Chancellor of the University, established the Johan Skytte chair in Eloquence and Government, which is probably the world’s oldest active professorship in political science. The lands included in the original donation continue to finance research and the Johan Skytte Prize. The prize is awarded each year by The Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University to the person who has made the “most valuable contribution to political science”.

Read more about the prize on the Johan Skytte Prize Committee website.

For more information, please contact:
Li Bennich-Björkman, Johan Skytte professor in eloquence and political science, chair of the Prize Committee, tel: +46 708 - 289 519, e-mail: li.bennich-bjorkman@statsvet.uu.se