Tessa Devereaux Evans Wins the Best Article Award 2025

Winner

Devereaux Evans, Tessa.2023. “Conflict and Coalition: Securing LGBT Rights in the Face ofHostility.” Comparative Political Studies. 

 “Conflict and Coalition: Securing LGBT Rights in the Face of Hostility” by Tessa Devereaux Evans presents a bold and original theoretical and empirical contribution to political science and human rights scholarship. Through a skillful process-tracing design, extensive elite interviews, and archival research,Evans develops a novel conflict-to-rights framework that challenges conventional assumptions about the paths to minority rights protection in adverse environments. Drawing primarily from the case of post-apartheid South Africa, the article illustrates how political insurgency and violence—conditions typically seen as unfavorable—can paradoxically enable marginalized activists to forge powerful coalitions, elevate egalitarian norms, and secure constitutional protections for LGBT rights. We commend this article for tackling a controversial and often taboo subject with scientific rigor. Whereas interventions on sexuality and gender in Africa have often been overly culturalist or legalist, this article is well-founded in political science theories of agency and bring the issues on the continent into the global conversation. In doing so, the article de-exceptionalizes the global South(South Africa and Nepal case-studies) as the pristine province of heteronomative politics. Because of its agential focus, the insights of this work extend more broadly to learning about political opportunity, coalition formation, and the politics of marginalized groups in transitional states.  The article’s tackling of an understudied phenomenon, careful use of process tracing, and generalizable potential of the theory all confer commendable originality, richness, and breadth. Deveraux Evans’ work is very deserving of the APCG Best Article award.

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Honorable Mention

Jack Paine, Xiaoyan Qiu,and Joan Ricart-Huguet. 2025. “Endogenous Colonial Borders: Precolonial States and Geography in the Partition of Africa.” American Political Science Review. 

In “Endogenous ColonialBorders: Precolonial States and Geography in the Partition of Africa,” JackPaine, Xiaoyan Qiu, and Joan Ricart Huguet deliver a marked reappraisal of the partition of Africa. Contrary to the dominant narrative of arbitrary colonial border-making, the authors marshal an impressive blend of geospatial data, treaty records, and statistical analysis to demonstrate that many African boundaries were shaped by local precolonial political structures and natural geography. As evidence, they find that over sixty percent of borders aligned with the edges of precolonial states. These and other topographical features served as focal points during border negotiations, showing that African actors and institutions played a significant role in shaping the modern map. We expect this work to become a staple in future syllabi of African political history and economy and to change the way scholars discuss the colonial partition. For its originality, analytical rigor, and historical depth, this article exemplifies top political science scholarship and we commend its pushing the frontier ofAfrican studies.

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