Scudder and Grillos Paper on Deliberation wins Best Paper Award!
The Democratic Innovations Standing Group of the European Consortium (ECPR) for Political Research has awarded a 2025 Best Paper Award to Mary F. (Molly) Scudder and Tara Grillos for their paper “Cynicism as Contagion, Deliberation as Inoculation?” presented at the ECPR General Conference. This award reflects the high quality of research presented and the strong alignment with the section theme, “Coupling and Connecting Democratic Innovations.”
Scudder and Grillos’s paper offers a novel theoretical account of cynicism as a contagious force that can erode generalized trust and cooperation among citizens. Distinguishing between trust and trustworthiness, the authors use game theory to show how cynicism can trap individuals in a downward spiral that is difficult to escape without intervention. Evaluating empathy-based, withdrawal-based, and deliberative responses, they argue that deliberation is uniquely capable of interrupting this cycle and fostering a virtuous circle of trust. The paper makes a timely contribution to debates on affective polarization and the democratic potential of deliberative innovations.
Mary F. Molly Scudder is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Purdue University, whose research focuses on democratic theory, deliberation, listening, and inclusion. She is the author of Beyond Empathy and Inclusion- The challenge of listening in democratic deliberation (Oxford University Press) and co-author of The Two Faces of Democracy: Decentering Agonism and Deliberation (Oxford University Press), and her work bridges normative theory and real-world democratic practice. Most recently, she co-edited a special issue of Political Communication titled Democratic Listening: Principles, Practices, and Possibilities.
Tara Grillos, also an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University and co-director of the JMK Experimental Social Science Research Lab, specializes in experimental methods, participatory governance, and collective action, with extensive research in Latin America, and East Africa. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and has appeared in leading journals including Nature Sustainability, the British Journal of Political Science, the American Journal of Political Science, World Development, and others. Together, their collaboration exemplifies how theoretical innovation and empirical insight can advance understanding of democratic renewal.