Vicente Valentim wins 2025 Stein Rokkan Prize

The jury of the 2025 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research recognised Vicente Valentim’s The Normalization of the Radical Right: A Norms Theory of Political Supply and Demand (Oxford University Press, 2024) as a lucid, rigorous, and timely contribution to the study of contemporary politics.

The Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Social Science Research is awarded annually for a substantial and original contribution to the field. The prize was established in memory of Stein Rokkan, a pioneer of comparative political and social science research, renowned for his groundbreaking work on the nation-state and democracy.

A brilliant researcher and a professor at the University of Bergen where he spent most of his career, Rokkan was also President of the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and one of ECPR's founders. The Stein Rokkan Prize is run jointly by the International Science Council (ISC), the University of Bergen and ECPR.

From our jury

About the author

Vicente Valentim is an assistant professor of political science at IE University, Spain. He studies what citizens think is acceptable to do in a democracy, why that is, and how it changes.

His prize-winning book has also won the Robert A. Dahl Award and the Democracy & Autocracy best book award, both from APSA.

Vicente is also the recipient of the 2025 A.SK Bright Mind Award, of the 2025 CES Moyer Young Scholar Award, of the 2025 Distinguished Scholar Award from APSA's Political Psychology section, of the 2022 Jean Blondel Best Thesis Prize, and of the 2024 Joseph L. Bernd Award for best article in the Journal of Politics, among other honours. Find more information about him and his work here.

In his own words

I cannot overstate how thrilled I am with this award. So many of the scholars I most admire feature among the list of previous winners. It is an incredible honour to join them.

Stein Rokkan’s scholarship reminds us of the importance of combining theoretical and empirical rigour to understand the most important political processes of current times. My book is inspired by this tradition in its effort to provide a norms-based theory of the rise of far-right politicians and illiberal politics. In studying these processes, I have been motivated by a broader concern with how the politics of democratic societies evolves — sometimes in very quick and unforeseen ways.

I am profoundly grateful to many colleagues, mentors, and friends who inspired me along the way and who were crucial in shaping the book into what it eventually became.

The jury members

• Shane Martin University of Essex
• Maria Thürk Uppsala University
• Amy Mazur Washington State University
• Georg Picot University of Bergen

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