The American Political Science Association has awarded its 1997 Gabriel Almond Award for the best doctoral dissertation in comparative politics to Mitchell A. Orenstein, lecturer in political science.
His Yale Ph.D. dissertation (1996), titled "Out of the Red: Building Capitalism and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe," compares the different political-economic strategies for transformation employed in Poland and the Czech Republic since 1989. David Cameron, professor and chair of the department of political science, advised the dissertation.