Russell Dalton

Biography

Biography

Russell Dalton's academic work has focused on the role of citizens in the political process. He authored or edited more than twenty books and almost 200 articles and book chapters. Dalton received the Developing Scholar Award by Florida State University, a Fulbright Research Fellowship, Scholar-in-Residence at the Barbra Streisand Center, German Marshall Fund Research Fellowship, POSCO Fellowship at the East West Center, and the UCI Emeriti Award for Faculty Mentorship. He was founding director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine and the Survey Research Center at Florida State University.

His research focuses on the changing patterns of citizenship in the United States and other affluent democracies, and how these trends are reshaping the democratic process. In recent years this has produced The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics, 3rd edition (CQ Press, 2021), The Participation Gap: Social Status and Political Inequality (Oxford 2017), and The Civic Culture Transformed (Cambridge 2014). He is also author of the highly cited Citizen Politics that compares political behavior in the US, Britain, France and Germany. A related research program focuses on comparative electoral politics. This includes Political Realignment (Oxford 2018), The Apartisan American (CQ Press 2013), Citizens, Choice and Context (Oxford 2011), and Political Parties and Democratic Linkage (Oxford 2011), which won the GESIS-Klingemann Prize and the Brian Farrell Prize.

His early work examined the German transition to democracy following the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany. Germany Transformed (Harvard UP). He also authored Politics in Germany and a series of books and journal issues on German elections. He is one of American's leading scholars on German public opinion and elections.

He has held visiting appointments at the University of Cologne, the University of Mannheim, and the East West Center in Honolulu. Dalton has also appeared in eleven Hollywood feature films and the Jimmy Kimmel Live show. He spends his leisure time studying American popular culture and traveling to Hawaii.

'My name is Dalton Russell.
I've told you my name -- that's the who...
I've set in motion plans for the perfect bank robbery -- that's the what...'

Opening line in The Inside Man (Sony Pictures 2006).

'It's official old buddy, I'm a has been'

Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood (Sony Pictures 2019).

'I want you to be nice,
until it's time not to be nice'

Dalton (Patrick Swayze) in Roadhouse (Silver Pictures 1989).

'What is the point of living in LA,
if you're not in the movie business?'

Bo Catlett in Get Shorty (MGM 1995).

August 2020