Assistant Professor of Government Jamila Michener’s book, “Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics” has been named the winner of the 2019 Virgina Gray Best Book Award.
The prize, sponsored by the American Political Science Association, is awarded annually to the “best political science book published on the subject of U.S. state politics or policy in the preceding three calendar years,” according to the association’s website.
Michener’s research focuses on poverty, racial inequality and public policy. “Fragmented Democracy” examines how Medicaid affects democratic citizenship by focusing on the ways that beneficiaries of Medicaid perceive the government and how those perceptions structure their participation in politics. The book focuses on the perspectives of those who are living in or near poverty, subjects who are disproportionately Black or Latino and people who are reliant on the government for vital resources.
Michener’s research has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Ford Foundation. She received her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. Prior to working at Cornell, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at the University of Michigan.
