Zahariadis, Nikolaos 1961–

PERSONAL:

Born June 21, 1961.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1530 3rd Ave. S., Birmingham, AL 35294-1152. E-mail—nzaharia@uab.edu.

CAREER:

Political scientist, educator, and writer. University of Alabama at Birmingham, associate professor of political science and director of the political science program.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grant recipient, including grants from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, the Japan Local Government Foundation, and the Foundation for Hellenic Studies.

WRITINGS:

Markets, States, and Public Policy: Privatization in Britain and France, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1995.

Theory, Case, and Method in Comparative Politics, Harcourt Brace College Publishers (Fort Worth, TX), 1996.

(Editor) Contending Perspectives in International Political Economy, Harcourt Brace College Publishers (Fort Worth, TX), 1999.

Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy: Political Decision Making in Modern Democracies, Georgetown University Press (Washington, DC), 2003.

Essence of Political Manipulation: Emotion, Institutions, and Greek Foreign Policy, P. Lang (New York, NY), 2005.

State Subsidies in the Global Economy, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2008.

Contributor to periodicals, including Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and International Studies Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nikolaos Zahariadis has published extensively in the areas of European public policy, political economy, foreign aid, and nationalism and security in Southeastern Europe. In his first book, Markets, States, and Public Policy: Privatization in Britain and France, the author examines privatization and argues that policy entrepreneurs have reason to augment the power of the state despite economists arguing against control of market outcomes.

Writing in chapter one of his book, the author notes that states "are embracing policies designed to sell State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) as part of a general package of reforms aimed at redefining the appropriate economic role of the state." The author continues by pointing out that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher started a small privatization program in 1979 that ended up burgeoning, while a few years later French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac was aiming at reducing the country's public sector. The author notes: "In both countries, governments announced and implemented the most ambitious privatization programs to date in the industrialized West."

Anthony Daley, writing in the American Political Science Review, noted: "This book has much to recommend it. It attempts to comprehend the policy process for an ideologically charged issue. It argues cogently against purely deductive theoretical reasoning from the public choice and property rights perspectives to suggest that privatization politics is more complicated, at least partially because interests cannot be assumed. It skirts the thorny issue of ‘national styles of policy making’ (for which exceptions can always be found) and instead examines the details of individual economic sectors."

In Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy: Political Decision Making in Modern Democracies, the author uses multiple streams theory to analyze parliamentary government policy making. "By rigorously and imaginatively applying a widely respected analytical model, Zahariadis's book makes a substantial contribution," noted Craig Ramsay in Perspectives on Political Science. In the book, the author discusses the distinct rules and regulations of the three streams: problems, policies, and politics. In the process, he analyzes the domestic and foreign policy of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Greece and compares them to the United States. The author writes in Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy: "In this book, I put forth a theory of manipulation that explores the dynamics of policy choice under conditions of ambiguity. I adapt a multiple streams model, which was developed by Kingdon (1995), to explain agenda setting in the United States, and I extend it to policy formation (agenda setting and decision making) in parliamentary systems."

Essence of Political Manipulation: Emotion, Institutions, and Greek Foreign Policy presents the case that emotion and its manipulation can help explain foreign policy. Using the Greek policy toward the Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia (FYRM), the author looks at how perspectives used to explain domestic policy can also be applied to foreign policy. He also writes about small countries, which he sees as being less likely to adjust to circumstances, contrary to many analysts' views. The author also presents a theoretical understanding of the foreign policy of small powers, and discusses ethnic nationalism in eastern Europe in general and the problems of Western response to it.

According to Akis Kalaitzidis in a review for Mediterranean Quarterly, "Zahariadis's Essence of Political Manipulation provides a great insight as to why consecutive Greek governments choose foreign policies that failed to solve the Macedonian problem. His book makes a clear case of how emotions and institutions interact to influence the thinking and shaping of the foreign-policy agenda of a country like Greece." Writing in the Political Science Quarterly, Symeon A. Giannakos, noted: "Clearly, the author makes a strong case for his thesis, and his analysis provides a vivid and reliable laboratory in which readers can delve into the nuances of theoretical models and the way they relate to the practice of foreign policy. In this regard, his book makes a solid contribution in connecting theory to practice."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Zahariadis, Nikolaos, Markets, States, and Public Policy: Privatization in Britain and France, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1995.

Zahariadis, Nikolaos, Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy: Political Decision Making in Modern Democracies, Georgetown University Press (Washington, DC), 2003.

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, December 1, 1997, Anthony Daley, review of Markets, States, and Public Policy, p. 998.

Choice, October 1, 1995, J. Prager, review of Markets, States, and Public Policy, p. 363.

Contemporary European History, November 1, 2000, Frederic Lebaron, "The State and the Market: The Rise of the Economic Rationale," p. 463.

Journal of Economic Literature, March 1, 1996, review of Markets, States, and Public Policy, p. 248.

Journal of Politics, August 1, 1996, Chris Howell, review of Markets, States, and Public Policy, p. 920.

Mediterranean Quarterly, summer, 2006, Akis Kalaitzidis, review of Essence of Political Manipulation: Emotion, Institutions and Greek Foreign Policy, pp. 108-110.

Perspectives on Political Science, January 1, 2005, Craig Ramsay, review of Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy, p. 56.

Policy Studies Journal, June 22, 1995, review of Markets, States, and Public Policy, p. 378.

Political Science Quarterly, December 22, 2006, Symeon A. Giannakos, review of Essence of Political Manipulation, p. 740.

Public Administration, March 22, 2005, review of Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy.

Reference & Research Book News, February 1, 2004, review of Ambiguity and Choice in Public Policy, p. 76; November 1, 2005, review of Essence of Political Manipulation.

Review of Policy Research, March 1, 2005, Mitchell P. Smith, "A Commentary for Nikolaos Zahariadis's ‘Policy Networks, Elections, and State Subsidies,’" p. 133.

ONLINE

University of Alabama Birmingham Web site,http://main.uab.edu/ (April 23, 2008), faculty profile of author.