About

Gary Marks is the Burton Craige Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Senior Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence. He was educated in England and earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Marks has been recognized for his significant contributions to political science, receiving the Humboldt Forschungspreis (Humboldt Research Prize) in 2010, the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association in 2017, and the Martha Derthick Award in 2023 for his influential book "Multi-Level Governance and European Integration". In 2024, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Maastricht University for his work on multilevel governance, and in 2025, he received the EUSA Award for Lifetime Achievement in European Studies from the European Union Studies Association. Marks co-founded the UNC Center for European Studies and the EU Center of Excellence in the 1990s, serving as director until 2006. He has held numerous fellowships and visiting professorships at prestigious institutions across Europe and North America, including the University of Amsterdam, the European University Institute, the Free University of Berlin, and the Hoover Institution. From 2021 through mid-2026, he is co-leading an advanced European Research Council grant on political polarization in Western societies, hosted at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. His research and teaching focus primarily on comparative politics, multilevel governance, and measurement. Marks is editor of the book series "Transformations in Governance" with Oxford University Press and the Cambridge Elements Series in European Politics. He has published extensively in leading political science and sociology journals and authored several influential books that develop a postfunctionalist theory of multilevel governance. His work has shaped the understanding of regional and international authority and political conflict in Europe and beyond.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Sociology
• Demography
• Social psychology
• Mathematics education
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• No substantive effects of school socioeconomic composition on student achievement in Australia: a response to Sciffer, Perry and McConney

  Large-scale Assessments in Education · 2024-03-14 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In this journal, Sciffer et al. (Large-scale Assessments in Education 10:1–22, 2022), hereafter SP&M, conclude that school socioeconomic compositional (SEC) or school socioeconomic status (school-SES) effects in Australia are substantial and substantively important for research and policy. This paper demonstrates that these claims are unwarranted. Their SEC estimates are much larger than estimates from comparable studies and a metastudy. Despite plausible theoretical reasons and empirical evidence, SP&M do not consider that school academic composition is a significant predictor of student achievement independent of SEC. SEC effects are confounded by academic composition and are typically trivial when considering academic composition. The second part of this paper compares SP&M’s estimates with analysis of the same data, from the Australian National Assessments in Performance—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). In a model corresponding to SP&M analyses comprising demographics, SES, school-SES, and student-level prior achievement, the effects of school-SES are small, with standardized effects mostly less than 0.10. With the addition of academic composition measured by school-level prior achievement, school-SES effects are effectively zero. In contrast, academic composition has significant, albeit small, impacts on student achievement. Therefore, contrary to SP&M’s (2022) conclusion, school-SES effects on student achievement in NAPLAN are negligible, whereas school-level prior achievement has small effects. That is not to say that school-SES is always irrelevant, but any assessment of its importance must consider both student- and school-level prior achievement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Highly active antiretroviral therapy and sexual risk behavior: a meta-analytic review

  2024-04-04 · 3 citations

  reviewSenior author

  <p>[para. 1]: “Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) became available in the United States and other developed countriesin1996. Although HAART regimens may not be effective for all infected persons due to drug-resistant strains of human immune deficiency virus (HIV) and unmanageable adverse effects, many HIV-positive persons receiving HAART have substantially lowered their HIV RNA levels (ie, viral load) through strict adherence to treatment regimens. Consequently, the incidence of AIDS and deaths due to AIDS have decreased considerably in countries in which HAART has been widely available.”</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Highly active antiretroviral therapy and sexual risk behavior: a meta-analytic review

  2024-04-04 · 1 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  <p>[para. 1]: “Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) became available in the United States and other developed countriesin1996. Although HAART regimens may not be effective for all infected persons due to drug-resistant strains of human immune deficiency virus (HIV) and unmanageable adverse effects, many HIV-positive persons receiving HAART have substantially lowered their HIV RNA levels (ie, viral load) through strict adherence to treatment regimens. Consequently, the incidence of AIDS and deaths due to AIDS have decreased considerably in countries in which HAART has been widely available.”</p>

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Student achievement is much more about cognitive ability and genetics than SES: A response to Debouwere

  Review of Education · 2024-07-04 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The first section of this paper sets the record straight regarding many of Debouwere's (2024, Review of Education , 12 , e3445) specific criticisms. The second section discusses the magnitude of the SES‐achievement relationship, specifically Debouwere's (2024) contention that the correlation is strong around 0.5 or 0.6 compared to observed correlations mostly between 0.2 and 0.3. The third section deals with five issues that Debouwere (2024) raises in his paper: (1) the stability of SES vis‐à‐vis cognitive ability; (2) the accuracy of children's reports of parents' socioeconomic characteristics; (3) whether teachers discriminate by students' SES; (4) the importance of cognitive ability for educational differentiation (i.e., tracking and streaming); and (5) SES effects on student achievement, controlling for prior achievement. The fourth section discusses the role of genetics in student achievement. Meta‐analyses and other studies indicate that about 50%–70% of the variance in student achievement is attributable to genetics (i.e., the heritability). The high heritability of student achievement accounts for its high stability, its strong correlations with cognitive ability and the weak effects of SES, net of prior achievement or cognitive ability.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Why are students attending fee-charging second-level schools in Ireland more likely to progress to high-demand university degree courses? Evidence from the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal survey

  Irish Educational Studies · 2023-02-11 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  A small minority of Irish students attend fee-charging second-level schools. However, media analyses of the backgrounds of those students who go on to more sought-after tertiary educational institutions or degree courses suggest that a disproportionate number of them were attendees at fee-charging schools. There are a few reasons why this might be the case. In this analysis, the longitudinal data points of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study are exploited to weigh up the evidence behind differing explanations. An estimated measure of Leaving Certificate success was generated for 3105 participants in wave 4 of the GUI. From waves 1 and 2, the ability of those participants was calculated based on their performance in several standardised tests taken prior to attending second-level school. The analysis found that while the students who attended fee-charging schools were about 9% ahead in Leaving Certificate performance, they had roughly the same lead in measured ability on entry into the second-level schools. The analysis found a significant but marginal positive effect on attending private schools. This result is in line with the general international findings. Ireland’s hybrid funding structure for fee-paying schools is discussed. Gender and household income effects were noted.

  PublisherDOI

• The importance of parental ability for cognitive ability and student achievement: Implications for social stratification theory and practice

  Research in Social Stratification and Mobility · 2023 · 28 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Demography
  PublisherDOI

• Has Cognitive Ability Become More Important for Education and the Labor Market? A Comparison of the Project Talent and 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Cohorts

  Journal of Intelligence · 2023-08-21 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Modernization and meritocratic theories contend that with modernization, socioeconomic background (SES) becomes less important for educational and socioeconomic attainments, while cognitive ability becomes more important. However, the evidence is mixed. This study investigates if the effects of SES and cognitive ability on educational and labor market outcomes have changed in the US by comparing two longitudinal cohort studies: the 1960 Project Talent and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. For all outcomes-grades-at-school, educational and occupational attainment, and income-cognitive ability clearly has stronger effects than a composite and broad measure of SES. The effects of cognitive ability for grades-at-school and income are notably stronger in the more recent cohort, whereas its effects on educational and occupational attainment are similar. SES effects, net of ability, for educational and occupational attainment are only moderate and for school grades and income are very small (β < 0.10). However, for each outcome SES effects are stronger in the more recent NLSY79 cohort. This is attributed to ability being a stronger influence on the educational and socioeconomic attainments of NLSY79 parents compared to Project Talent parents. These analyses suggest that in the US, cognitive ability has long been an important, and SES a much weaker, influence on educational and subsequent socioeconomic outcomes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cognitive ability has powerful, widespread and robust effects on social stratification: Evidence from the 1979 and 1997 US National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth

  Intelligence · 2022-09-01 · 19 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The overwhelming importance of prior achievement when assessing school effects: evidence from the Australian national assessments

  School Effectiveness and School Improvement · 2022-07-20 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Prior achievement is essential to estimating the role of schools and school factors on student outcomes because it measures students’ pre-existing knowledge and skills. However, its very strong effects and their implications for research and policy are not widely appreciated. Analyses of student achievement in five domains shows that prior achievement, measured 2 years before, has overwhelming effects, albeit with domain and year-level (grade) differences. When considering prior achievement, only a small minority of schools have effects that significantly differ from the average school effect on student performance. The variation in school effects is quite limited, and there are only trivial jurisdictional differences in school effects. The contemporaneous effects of parents’ occupational group and education – factors prominent in school funding in Australia – are negligible. These findings are likely to pertain to other educational contexts since prior achievement typically has strong, or very strong, relationships with achievement.

  PublisherDOI

• General or specific abilities? Evidence from 33 countries participating in the PISA assessments

  Intelligence · 2022-05-01 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH042023

  NIH · $1.2M · 1995

• NIH Grant R01MH057208

  NIH · $1.7M · 2003

Frequent coauthors

• Lytt I. Gardner

  Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

  65 shared

• Thomas P. Giordano

  65 shared

• Tracey E. Wilson

  State University of New York

  54 shared

• Jeanne Keruly

  50 shared

• Lisa R. Metsch

  Columbia University

  49 shared

• Mari‐Lynn Drainoni

  Boston University

  49 shared

• Jean L. Richardson

  University of Southern California

  42 shared

• Nicole Crepaz

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  40 shared

Education

• PhD, Anthropology and Sociology

  University of Queensland

Awards & honors

• Humboldt Research Prize
• Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award
• Martha Derthick Award from the APSA
• Honorary Doctorate from Maastricht University (2024)
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Union Studies A…