Kurt Weyland Wins $3,000 Book Award

Kurt Weyland, the Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Politics, won a $3,000 honorable mention in the competition for the Hamilton Book Award for the best book published in the previous year by a UT faculty member. Weyland was honored for his book, "Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America" published by Princeton University Press.

The book explores the reasons that countries adopt the policy models of other countries. The author develops a framework based on the notion of bounded rationality, arguing that decision makers employ inferential shortcuts in dealing with complex problems rather than engaging in exhaustive analysis of the costs and benefits of various alternatives. He tests his argument through intensive case studies of pension and health care reforms in Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Peru.