I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and was an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. I received my Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where my dissertation won the Lucian Pye Award for the best dissertation in political science. From 2014 to 2017, I was an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. Before that, I held postdoctoral positions at Nuffield College, Oxford and the University of Chicago. Since January 2018, I have been a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at Temple University. My family and I have lived in Center City, Philadelphia since 2014.
My research focuses on democratic politics in the developing world. I am particularly interested in understanding why political parties thrive or fail, why political competition varies from one place to another, why voters make the decisions that they do, and what kinds of factors matter to voters on election day. I examine these questions primarily in India.
My book, Why Regional Parties? Clientelism, Elites, and the Indian Party System, explains the extraordinary success of regional political parties in India, pointing to the importance of clientelism, coalition government, and elite factional alignments to explain why, when, and where regional parties are electorally successful in India. The book also offers more general lessons for thinking about regional parties around the world as well as insight into how to understand party systems in countries where clientelism, patronage, and machine politics are common. I am currently working on a second book-length project on pre-election alliances (also known as seat-sharing agreements) between political parties. We usually think of political parties as competing with one another, especially at election time. This project asks: Why do parties sometimes cooperate with one another? It aims to understand the conditions under which parties cooperate with one another and the implications of such cooperation for voters.
Other research has examined the impact of electoral rules and candidate quotas, the conditions under which dominant parties decline, among other questions related to political parties and elections. In the course of my research, I have conducted more than two years of fieldwork in India, in the states of Delhi, Kerala, Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. My research has been supported by the British Academy, Oxford's John Fell OUP Research Fund, MIT's Center for International Studies, the National Security Education Program, George Washington University (including the Sigur Center for Asian Studies), and Temple University.
My research focuses on democratic politics in the developing world. I am particularly interested in understanding why political parties thrive or fail, why political competition varies from one place to another, why voters make the decisions that they do, and what kinds of factors matter to voters on election day. I examine these questions primarily in India.
My book, Why Regional Parties? Clientelism, Elites, and the Indian Party System, explains the extraordinary success of regional political parties in India, pointing to the importance of clientelism, coalition government, and elite factional alignments to explain why, when, and where regional parties are electorally successful in India. The book also offers more general lessons for thinking about regional parties around the world as well as insight into how to understand party systems in countries where clientelism, patronage, and machine politics are common. I am currently working on a second book-length project on pre-election alliances (also known as seat-sharing agreements) between political parties. We usually think of political parties as competing with one another, especially at election time. This project asks: Why do parties sometimes cooperate with one another? It aims to understand the conditions under which parties cooperate with one another and the implications of such cooperation for voters.
Other research has examined the impact of electoral rules and candidate quotas, the conditions under which dominant parties decline, among other questions related to political parties and elections. In the course of my research, I have conducted more than two years of fieldwork in India, in the states of Delhi, Kerala, Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. My research has been supported by the British Academy, Oxford's John Fell OUP Research Fund, MIT's Center for International Studies, the National Security Education Program, George Washington University (including the Sigur Center for Asian Studies), and Temple University.
