Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award

August 3, 2023

The American Political Science Association (APSA) has awarded the 2023 Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award to Professor Alison Smith for her book, Multiple Barriers: The Multilevel Governance of Homelessness in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2022).

University of Toronto Press describes the book as exploring “the forces that shape intergovernmental and multilevel governance dynamics to help better understand why, despite the best efforts of community and advocacy groups, homelessness remains as persistent as ever. Drawing on nearly 100 interviews with key actors in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as extensive participant observation, Smith argues that institutional differences across cities interact with ideas regarding homelessness to contribute to very different models of governance. Multiple Barriers shows that the genuine involvement of locally based service providers, with the development of policy, are necessary for an effective, equitable, and enduring solution to the homelessness crisis in Canada.”

The Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award is given annually by the Canadian Politics Section of the American Political Science Association to honour a significant contemporary contribution to the scholarship on Canadian politics, or Canada in a comparative perspective, or a comparative analysis of Canada with other countries, particularly the United States. Seymour Martin Lipset was one of the world’s most prominent social scientists. Author or co-author of 25 books, he wrote more than 350 scholarly articles in the fields of political sociology and political science. Canada was central to his life’s intellectual work.

The awards ceremony will take place as part of the Canadian Politics Section’s meeting during APSA’s annual conference on August 31 at 7:30 PM with a reception to follow.