Lisa Martin

Lisa Martin is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She studies political institutions in international relations, including economic sanctions and cooperation between states. Martin was the first female editor of International Organization, where she also currently serves as a senior advisor to the journal's editorial board.

Education and early career Martin received a BS in biology from the California Institute of Technology in 1983. She then studied Government at Harvard University, earning a PhD in 1989. From 1989 until 1992, Martin was a member of the political science faculty at the University of California, San Diego. Kenneth A. Rodman wrote that Coercive Cooperation was "an important book that ought to be consulted by all serious students of international cooperation and economic statecraft", summarizing its central conclusions as demonstrating "that institutions matter and that leadership cannot be exercised 'on the cheap.'"

Martin's second book, Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation, was published in 2000. Contrary to the orthodoxy that international affairs are too anarchic to be meaningfully affected by the internal politics of democratic states, Martin demonstrated that the legislatures of stable democracies can increase the credibility of the commitments made by states to one another, which fosters international cooperation. Michael Tierney summarized the contribution of Democratic Commitments by writing: "when you finish reading this book, you will be convinced that legislatures have a surprisingly large and measurable impact on the probability of interstate cooperation involving established democracies". Comparing Martin's first and second books, Tierney wrote that "while Coercive Cooperation sought to identify the systemic sources of credibility, Democratic Commitments explores the domestic institutional sources of credibility." and the editor of several volumes on international affairs, such as the Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Trade. She has also published several widely cited and "Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions" in International Organization with Beth A. Simmons.

A 2019 citation analysis by the political scientists Hannah June Kim and Bernard Grofman listed Martin as one of the top 40 most cited women working as a political scientist at an American university.

Martin was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 1999. In 2021, she was elected as president of the American Political Science Association for 2022-2023.

Selected works Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (1992) Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation (2000) Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Trade (2015)

Selected awards John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow (1999)