Leonard Wantchekon APSA Candidate Statement

Career and Accomplishments

Leonard Wantchekon, is a Professor of Politics and Economics at New York University. He taught at Yale University (1995 - 2000), and was a visiting fellow at the Center of International Studies at Princeton University (2000-2001). He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University (1995) and his M.A. in Economics from Laval University and University of British Columbia (1992).

He is the author of several articles on post-civil war democratization, resource curse, electoral clientelism and experimental methods in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Constitutional Political Economy, Political Africaine and Afrique Contemporaine.  He is the editor of the Journal of African Development (JAD), formally known as Journal of African Finance and Economic Development (JAFED). He is the founding director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy, which is based in Benin (West Africa) and at New York University. 

He is currently serving on the APSA international committee as well as the APSA Africa initiative committee. He was also a division chair at the 2005 APSA Annual meetings in Washington DC.
He is committed to promoting research agendas that integrate the substance and methodology of various subfields in political science. The goal is to improve the interaction between comparativists working on developing nations with those working western democracies and the US. For instance, it would be greatly beneficial to the political science discipline if advances made in the study of US Congress and Supreme Court could be more accessible to those working on parliaments and courts in developing countries and if there were a serious dialogue between political scientists working on electoral clientelism in Africa and those working on campaign financing in the US.