Jennifer Bussell

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. I study comparative politics with an emphasis on the political economy of development, democratic representation, and governance outcomes, principally in South Asia and Africa. My newest book, Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies (Modern South Asia Series, Oxford University Press), considers the provision of constituency service by high-level elected officials in India and elsewhere, using elite and citizen surveys, interviews, qualitative shadowing, and experiments to explore the implications of citizen-state relations for public service delivery. My first book, Corruption and Reform in India: Public Services in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press) examines the role of corrupt practices in shaping government adoption of information technology across sub-national regions and is based on fieldwork in sixteen Indian states, as well as parts of South Africa and Brazil. I also study the politics of natural disasters in developing countries and the incentives of governments to invest in preparedness. I received my Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and prior to returning to Berkeley taught in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin.