About

The information on this page is current as of the time this individual was an on-campus member of the Kellogg community but is not necessarily up-to-date.

Sean McGraw  is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He worked with Fr. Tim Scully, CSC, in founding the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) teacher training program. Since then, ACE has grown from a small service organization to a large-scale contributor to Catholic education in the United States, training more than 1,200 teachers and 125 administrators.

His research focuses on the Irish political system, especially party competition and the changes in the political landscape at a time of unprecedented social and economic change.

McGraw has recently finished his first book, How Parties Win: Shaping the Irish Political Arena (Michigan University Press, forthcoming 2014). How Parties Win takes advantage of the Irish case to help explain how major parties seek to preserve their long-term electoral predominance in the face of dramatic social and economic change by shaping the choices available to voters during elections. McGraw has projects related to two parliamentary surveys he personally conducted in Ireland within the last 4 years. One of his next projects is a comparative study of the role of religion in civic life in the United States, England, Northern Ireland and Ireland in collaboration with scholars from Notre Dame and Harvard. 

Thematic Interests

Comparative politics, party competition, electoral politics, civil society and social capital, and Catholic education

Current Research

Electoral strategies in modern Ireland; the relationship between civil society and social capital and the role of religion.

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