Mitchell Smith

Mitchell Smith is the director of the School of International Affairs and a professor of international affairs. An expert in comparative and international political economy, with a particular emphasis on European integration, Smith has been a Fulbright Fellow in European Union Affairs and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, Belgium. He also has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

After receiving his B.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, Smith spent two years as an economic analyst at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. He earned his Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) degree from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, where he studied international political economy, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University's Department of Politics.

Smith's work has appeared in West European Politics, Journal of Legislative Studies, Politics & Society, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, German Politics, and other journals. He is author of States of Liberalization (SUNY Press, 2005), which examines the impact of the European Union's single market on the role of the public sector in West European countries, and Environmental and Health Regulation in the United States and the European Union: Protecting Public and Planet (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), a comparative study of environmental regulation in the United States and European Union. Smith also is editor of Europe and National Economic Transformation: The EU After the Lisbon Decade (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and co-editor of Redefining European Economic Governance (Routledge, 2015) and Legitimacy and the European Union: The Contested Polity (Routledge, 1999). He is currently completing a book on the perceptual divide among publics in the U.S. and the UK and the resulting damage to democracy.

Prior to his arrival at Penn State, Smith was the associate dean for academic affairs at the David L. Boren College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma, having also previously served as interim dean of that college and director of the university's European Union Center.

Select Publications

“Has Ukraine Saved European Union Democracy?” World Literature Today, July 2022. https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2022/july/has-ukraine-saved-european-union-democracy-mitchell-p-smith

Michele Chang, Georg Menz and Mitchell P. Smith, eds, Redefining European Economic Governance (Routledge, 2015).

Environmental and Health Regulation in the U.S. and the European Union: Protecting Public and Planet (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Editor, Europe and National Economic Transformation: The EU After the Lisbon Decade (European Union Politics series, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

“Single Market, Global Competition: Regulating the European Market in a Global Economy,” Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 17, No. 7 (Oct 2010).

States of Liberalization: Redefining the Public Sector in Integrated Europe (State University of New York Press, 2005).

Editor (with Thomas Banchoff), Legitimacy and the European Union: The Contested Polity (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).

“Germany's Quest for a New EU Industrial Policy: Why it is Failing,” German Politics, Vol. 14, No. 3: 315-331 (Sep 2005).

“How Adaptable is the European Commission? The Case of State Aid Regulation,” Journal of Public Policy Vol. 21, No. 3 (Dec 2001): 219-238.

“Autonomy by the Rules: the European Commission and the Development of State Aid Policy,” Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar 1998): 55-78.

“Facing the Market: Institutions, Strategies, and the Fate of Organized Labor in Germany and Britain,” Politics & Society Vol. 26, Number 1 (Mar 1998): 35-67.

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