Chapters for my new book  Segregation and Mistrust (Cambridge University Press, 2012) where I argue that it is segregation, not diversity, that drives down trust.  I examine theoretical linkages on contact theory and data from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia.

See the article I was asked to write on Segregation and Mistrust for Zocalo Public Square--and that they declined to publish because they decided they didn't agree with my findings and didn't like my writing style!

And my paper for the Center for American Progress on the consequences of inequality for social cohesion: "Income Inequality in the United States Fuels Pessimism and Threatens Social Cohesion"

See my page on corruption research!

Click on the picture!

A long suffering baseball fan of:

My most widely cited book:

Click on the picture to go to the book

Visit my papers

page for work on 

trust and inequality, 

papers on 

why American Jews

remain loyal to the

Democratic party,

and my page on

corruption and quality

of governance and my  

page on diversity

segregation, and trust.

Also see my article 

with Bo Rothstein of 

Goteborg University, 

"All for All:

Equality, Corruption, 

and Social Trust," 

 published in 

World Politics, 

57 (October 2005), the most cited

article of the last decade in World 

Politics

• Eric M. Uslaner is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland--College Park, where he has taught since 1975. In 1997-1998 he was Distinguished University Research Fellow at the University of Maryland and in 1981-82 he was Fulbright Lecturer and Visiting Professor, Departments of American Studies and Political Science, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Professor Uslaner received his B.A. from Brandeis University cum laude with Honors in Politics in 1968 and his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) in Political Science from Indiana University.   In 2006 he was appointed the first Senior Research Fellow at the Center for American Law and Political Science at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China.  In the Fall, 2010, he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Political Science at the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University.  He is also Honorary Professor of Political Science and Government at Aarhus University (Denmark).

• He was named one of the top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior by Trust Across America in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014.
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• Uslaner is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Institute for Social Change at the University of Manchester (UK) and the "Politics of Social Cohesion" project at the Copenhagen Business School and the project on "Support for the Affluent Welfare State," UNI Research, Oslo, Norway.
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• His books include The Movers and the Shirkers: Representatives and Ideologues in the Senate (University of Michigan Press, 1999); The Decline of Comity in Congress (University of Michigan Press, 1993), Shale Barrel Politics: Energy and Legislative Leadership (Stanford University Press, 1989). He examines why people trust each other, primarily in the United States but also across nations. His book (click here to download) The Moral Foundations of Trust, was published by Cambridge University Press.  Click here to order from Cambridge University Press or from amazon.com.  It has been published in Korean by Today's Books. 

• Uslaner's , Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law: The Bulging Pocket Makes the Easy Life, was published in 2008 by Cambridge University Press; paperback published in 2010; Chinese translation to be published by China Social Sciences Press and in Japanese (translated by Yoji Inaba) by Nippon Hyoron Sha.  See details on the corruption web page.

• His book Segregation and Mistrust: Diversity, Isolation, and Social Cohesion (Cambridge University Press, 2012) challenges the argument that diversity drives down trust and altruistic deeds.  Rather, it is segregation and the lack of diverse ties that leads people to be less trusting.  See the book prospectus and several papers on the diversity/segregation page. Order the book from Cambridge University Press or the Kindle edition from Amazon.com.
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• Uslaner teaches courses in American politics (especially on Congress and Congressional elections), social capital, and political polarization.

• See his new paper with Bo Rothstein on the historical roots of corruption--in which they show that levels of education across 78 countries in 1870 strongly predict corruption in 2010.  Historical levels of education reflect levels of equality across countries, which demonstrate strong "path dependence" over time.  The relationship between historical levels of education and corruption remains strong even when controlling for change in the level of education, gross national product per capita, and democratic governance. Regime type is generally not significant. We then trace early education to levels of economic equality in the late 19th and early 21st centuries—and argue that societies with more equality educated more of their citizens, which then gave their citi-zens more opportunities and power, reducing corruption. We present historical evidence from Europe and Spanish, British, and French colonies that strong states provided more education to their publics—and that such states were themselves more common where economic disparities were smaller.

• Also see his new paper on how American Jews voted in the 2012 Presidential elections.  Jews remained loyal to the Democratic party despite extensive Republican attempts to woo the Jewish vote.  Arguments on Democratic weakness on Israel and spending of more than $6 million by Republicans had little effect on Jewish voters--and even seem to have backfired.  As Thomas Frank asked "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Uslaner asks, "What's the Matter with Palm Beach County?"

KEYNOTE SPEECHES: Uslaner has spoken widely about his work, giving keynote speeches in Australia, Bangladesh, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Nepal, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.   He has also been an invited speaker in Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand,  Serbia, and the Ukraine. 

He was a featured speaker at the MatchPoint 2014 seminar at

Aarhus, Denmark.

Uslaner has also given talks sponsored by the U.S. Department of State in Israel, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Laos, Mexico, the Maldives, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Saudi Arabia.

 And he is the proud husband of Debbie and even prouder father of Avery (click here to see them on their whale-watching exhibition in Australia and Avery's favorite pasttime), a Biology alumnus at Colorado College.