Robert Fishman

Professor of Sociology
(PhD, Yale University, 1985)
230 Hesburgh Center
574-631-8531
email: rfishman@nd.edu
www.nd.edu/~soc2/socfac/fishman/rfishman.html

Geographic focus: Europe (especially Spain and Portugal).

Thematic interests: Democratization and the quality of democracy; social ties and politics; states and regimes; European politics and society.

Current research: Writing a comparative book on democratic practice in Portugal and Spain emphasizing the enduring legacies of those countries’ near polar opposite paths to democracy in the 1970s, and a collaborative cross-national project on social and political determinants of the evolution in priestly vocations.

Selected publications:Coeditor, The Year of the Euro: The Cultural, Social, and Political Import of Europe’s Common Currency (2006); Democracy’s Voices: Social Ties and the Quality of Public Life in Spain (2004); Working Class Organization and the Return to Democracy in Spain (1990, recently translated into Spanish); “Rethinking State and Regime: Southern Europe’s Transition to Democracy,” World Politics (April 1990), reprinted in Geoffrey Pridham, ed., Transitions to Democracy (1995).

Working papers: #317: On the Continuing Relevance of the Weberian Methodological Perspective (with Applications to the Spanish Case of Elections in the Aftermath of Terrorism).