Mitchell P. Smith is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics in Political Science and the School of International and Area Studies. Dr. Smith is also Co-Director of OU's European Union Center. 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 then earned his M.P.A. Degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he studied international political economy. Upon completion of the M.P.A., Smith entered the doctoral program in Princeton University's Department of Politics, and he received his Ph.D. in 1993. Since that time, Smith has been assistant professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and at Middlebury College. His research focuses on the political economy of European integration. In 1996-97, Smith was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in European Union Affairs, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, Belgium. Smith's work has appeared in West European Politics, The Journal of Legislative Studies, Politics & Society, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, and German Politics. He is also the Co-editor of Legitimacy and the European Union: The Contested Polity (Routledge, 1999). During the Spring 2001 semester, Smith was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His new book, States of Liberalization (SUNY Press, forthcoming 2005), examines the impact of European integration on the role of the public sector in West European countries.