The purpose of the Karl Deutsch Award is to honour a prominent scholar engaged in the cross-disciplinary research of which Karl Deutsch was a master. The recipient presents the Karl Deutsch lecture or leads a special session at the world congress. The award is made on the recommendation of the committee on awards. It is supported by the Karl Deutsch fund.

Giovanni Sartori is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, New York. Professor Sartori has made lasting contributions to the fields of democratic theory, party systems, and constitutional engineering. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has been awarded of several prizes, including the Outstanding Book Award of the American Political Science Association. His most recent publications include La democrazia in trenta lezioni, edited by Lorenza Foschini (Mondadori 2008), Mala costituzione e altri malanni (Laterza 2006), Semantics, Concepts and Comparative Method edited by S. Sepheriades, (Papazisis, Greek edition 2005) and Mala tempora (Laterza, fifth reprint 2004).He served as Dean of the Department of Political Science of the University of Florence from 1969 to 1972, then as Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University from 1979 to 1994, and was later appointed Professor Emeritus. He also has taught at Stanford, Yale, and Harvard University.