Department of Political Science

Aurelian Craiutu (Ph.D. Princeton, 1999) is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Adjunct Professor in the American Studies Program and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropic Studies at IUPUI, Indianapolis. He is also affiliated with the Russian and East European Institute, the Institute for West European Studies, and the Ostrom Workshop. Prior to coming to Indiana, he had taught at Duke University (1999-2000) and the University of Northern Iowa (2000-2001). He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of Paris V Descartes (2019), Central European University, Budapest (2019), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona (2018), University of Paris-II, Panthéon-Assas (2010), and the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania (2004, 2005).

Craiutu’s research interests include French political and social thought (Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Constant, Madame de Staël, Guizot, Aron), political ideologies (liberalism, conservatism), comparative political theory and democratic consolidation (mostly Central and Eastern Europe). He is the author and editor of several books on modern political thought. His first monograph, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2003), won a 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award. It was also translated into French in a revised and enlarged edition as Le centre introuvable: la pensée politique des doctrinaires sous la Restauration (Plon, 2006). His two most recent books are A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830 (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). Dr. Craiutu also published two books in political theory in Romanian, In Praise of Liberty: Essays in Political Philosophy, (1998), and Elogiul moderatiei [In Praise of Moderation] (2006), both with Polirom Publishing House. A revised and enlarged edition of Elogiul moderatiei was published by Spandugino Publishing House in Bucharest in June 2022.

He has also edited several books: François Guizot, History of the Origins of Representative Government in Europe (Liberty Fund, 2002); Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (Liberty Fund, 2008); America through European Eyes (co-edited with Jeffrey C. Isaac, Penn State University Press, 2009); Conversations with Tocqueville (co-edited with Sheldon Gellar, Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings (with Jeremy Jennings, Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Jacques Necker's On Executive Power in Great States (Liberty Fund, 2020), as well as Dialog şi libertate: Eseuri în onoarea lui Mihai Şora [Dialogue and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Mihai Şora], edited by Aurelian Craiutu & Sorin Antohi (Bucharest: Nemira Publishing House, 1997) [in Romanian].

Dr. Craiutu's articles and reviews have been published in many academic journals including American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, The Review of Politics, History of Political Thought, Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, and History of European Ideas. He served as Associate Editor of the European Journal of Political Theory (2004-14) and is currently on the editorial board of History of European Ideas.

Professor Craiutu has received awards, fellowships, and grants from several institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), The National Endowment for Democracy, the James Madison Program at Princeton University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Earhart Foundation. In 2000, he won the American Political Science Association's Leo Strauss Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of political theory. In 2004, he received a Student Choice Award and an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award at Indiana University. Since 2018, he has been Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, D.C.

Professor Craiutu’s new book, Why Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. He is currently at work also on another book manuscript on political moderation and the rise of democracy in France, 1830-1880.

A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830 (Princeton University Press, 2012).

Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires, with a foreword by Alan Ryan (Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 337 pp. CHOICE Magazine 2004 Outstanding Academic Title.

Tocqueville on America after 1840: Letters and Other Writings, edited and translated, with an interpretive essay, notes, and appendices by Aurelian Craiutu and Jeremy Jennings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 560 pp.

America Through European Eyes: English and French Reflections on the New World from the Eighteenth-Century to the Present, edited by Aurelian Craiutu and Jeffrey C. Isaac (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 288 pp.

Conversations with Tocqueville: The Global Democratic Revolution in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Aurelian Craiutu and Sheldon Gellar (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 337 pp.

Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution by Madame de Staël. Newly revised translation of the 1818 edition, with an introduction, bibliography, and notes by Aurelian Craiutu (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), 804 pp.