Thad Dunning BITSS CatalystPolitical Science

Thad Dunning is Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and directs the Center on the Politics of Development. He studies comparative politics, political economy, and research methods.

His current work on ethnic and other cleavages draws on field and natural experiments and qualitative fieldwork in Latin America, India, and Africa. Dunning has written on a range of methodological topics, including causal inference, statistical analysis, and multi-method research. He is chairing the inaugural EGAP regranting initiative, which aims to achieve greater culmination of findings from experimental research on international development and political accountability. Dunning is the author of several award-winning books, including Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences: A Design-Based Approach (2012, Cambridge University Press—winner of the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Experiments Section), and Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes (2008, Cambridge University Press—winner of the Best Book Award from APSA’s Comparative Democratization Section). He also co-authored Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2013), which won the 2014 Luebbert Prize for best book in comparative politics and the Best Book Award of APSA’s Comparative Democratization Section. He received a Ph.D. in political science and an M.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley (2006). Before returning to Berkeley, he was Professor of Political Science at Yale University.