I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Associate Director of the Center for European Studies at Duke University, where my teaching and research focuses on international and comparative political economy.

My overarching research interests are the evolution and persistence of institutions, the interaction between domestic and international institutions, and the ways in which institutions enable and constrain actors.  Substantively, my work on global private politics focuses primarily on the causes and consequences of delegating governance—and especially regulatory authority—to non-state and increasingly also non-governmental actors.  As Co-Principal Investigator of the International Standards Project, I have directed multi-country, multi-industry business surveys about the global private politics of setting standards for international product and financial markets.  I am completing a book manuscript based on these surveys, tentatively entitled Global Private Governance, about the politics of standard-setting in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

My other work focuses on foreign direct investment by multinational corporations, the allocation of foreign aid by humanitarian and development NGOs, and the political-economic foundations of business confidence (as described in greater detail here).  My research on development aid, beyond its intrinsic importance, seeks to advance our understanding of how and why outcomes differ when decision-making over traditional foreign policy issues is delegated to non-governmental (private) organizations.  I am also completing a project on EU competition policy.

My work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, and Governance, as well as several edited volumes.  In 2007/08 and 2008/09, I was a Robert-Wood-Johnson Foundation Research Scholar (Scholars in Health Policy Research) at the University of California, Berkeley.

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last updated November 2008