Sprout Award 2019

The winner of this year’s Harold and Margaret Sprout Award is:

Jessica Steinberg (Indiana University) for Communities, Mines and States: The Local Politics of Natural Resource Extraction. Published by Cambridge University Press, Steinberg’s path-breaking book develops a novel theory and sophisticated data to explore dynamics of public goods provision, protest and government repression surrounding mines in Africa. It marks a significant advance in our understanding of the politics of natural resource extraction that should be of enduring interest to scholars of environmental politics.

This year we also have a runner-up for the Sprout Award: Cristina Balboa (Baruch College, CUNY) for her book The Paradox of Scale: How NGOs Build, Maintain, and Lose Authority in Environmental Governance. Published by MIT Press, Balboa’s remarkable book is based on extensive fieldwork and sheds new light on the drivers of NGO effectiveness. It explains why what works at one scale can be problematic at another, and sets a promising new agenda for work in this field.