Ronald King

Ronald King joined the SDSU faculty in Fall 2003 as Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science. He previously taught at Tulane (15 years) and Cornell (9 years). A native of New York City, his undergraduate degree is from the University of Pennsylvania and his graduate degrees are from Oxford and the University of Chicago.

Professor King’s specialization is American Politics and Public Policy. He has written four books, including major studies of U.S. taxation policy (published by Yale University Press) and welfare entitlements (published by Georgetown University Press). In addition, he has recently edited a book of essays about Thomas Paine (San Diego State University Press).  His articles have appeared in journals such as: American Political Science Review, Political Science Quarterly, Polity, Politics and Society, Policy Sciences, Journal of Public Policy, European Political Science, Studies in American Political Development, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

Recently, Professor King has been working on democratization over the course of American political development, examining the effect of rules upon the results achieved. So far, he has completed studies of the removal of the property qualification for voting, the 17th Amendment (direct election of senators) and corruption in the 1876 presidential election (end of reconstruction). 

He has received two separate Fulbright awards, and grants from the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Twentieth Century Fund. He has also served as Senior Consultant for social science curriculum development to the Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences, Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania, and has received a certificate “For Nurturing Romanian Political Science” from the Romanian national political science association, which awards the Best Paper prize at its annual meeting in his name.  In Summer 2007, Professor King was awarded an honorary degree, “Profesor Onorific de Ştiinţe Politice,” by Babeş-Bolyai University.

Professor King is fanatic about baseball (go Yankees) and opera. He recently retired as a competitive fencer, and once ranked quite high nationally in the veterans division for men's foil. Although now a resident of San Diego, he has not resigned from his New Orleans Mardi Gras organization and sometimes can be seen, in costume and beads, during Carnival season.