Picture of Thad Dunning

Thad Dunning

Professor and Robson Chair in Political Science
Political Science
thad.dunning@berkeley.edu
http://www.thaddunning.com

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 methodology. Dunning’s work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Analysis, Studies in Comparative International Development, and other journals. His first book, Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes (2008, Cambridge University Press), contrasts the democratic and authoritarian effects of oil and other natural resources; it won the Best Book Award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association and the Gaddis Smith Prize, for the best first book on an international topic by a member of the Yale faculty. 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; his book Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences: A Design-Based Approach (2012, Cambridge University Press), develops a framework for the use, analysis, and evaluation of distinct research designs. Together with Susan Stokes, Marcelo Nazareno, and Valeria Brusco, he is the author of Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). Dunning teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in methodology and comparative politics. Dunning received a Ph.D. degree in political science and an M.A. degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley (2006). Before returning to Berkeley, he was Professor of Political Science at Yale University.