I routinely engage with policymakers, contributing to policy products such as this report from the Legatum Institute regarding the political and economic outlook in Malawi, and this report from National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine regarding how to effectively involve police forces in controlling corruption worldwide. Policy-relevant products I authored are all listed on my CV under “Products of Engaged Scholarship.”

Digital Society Project

The Digital Society Project (DSP) aims to answer some of the most important questions surrounding interactions between the internet and politics. Created using the award-winning V-Dem infrastructure, the cross-national DSP dataset is the product of a global survey of hundreds of country and area experts, covering virtually all countries in the world from 2000 to 2021. It provides a set of 35 indicators covering such topics as online censorship, polarization and politicization of social media, misinformation campaigns, coordinated information operations, and foreign influence in and monitoring of domestic politics. The DSP candidate dataset collects data on political candidates from various electoral contexts around the world. Academics can use these data to understand how people use social media as a political tool and to explore how political institutions and social media use interact. Policymakers can use these data to, among a host of applications, better understand how, and where, to intervene to curb internet-driven political violence, reduce electoral manipulation, and enhance government accountability. The most recent version of the cross-national dataset can be found here, the candidate data can be found here, and a video interview I did about this project can be found here.

Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem)

V-Dem is a novel approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy, providing a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that includes over 350 political indicators for more than 180 countries and over 100 years (1900-2021). With four Principal Investigators, fifteen Project Managers with special responsibility for issue areas, more than thirty Regional Managers, 170 Country Coordinators, and 2,800 Country Experts, the V-Dem project is one of the largest social science data collection projects worldwide. The V-Dem dataset is the recipient of the recipient of the 2016 Lijphart/Przeworski/Verba Dataset Award provided by the American Political Science Association. The most recent version of the dataset can be found here and several of my V-Dem research projects are included here in the V-Dem working paper series.

Transparency International

As a Research Expert for Transparency International’s Anti-Corruption Knowledge Hub Expert Network, I prepare summaries of academic research on corruption for a policy and practitioner audience. Find my profile on Transparency International’s site here.

AidData

AidData specializes in rigorous methods, cutting-edge tools and granular data to answer the question: who is doing what, for whom, and to what effect? I am an AidData Affiliated Researcher, and have been a PI on two AidData research projects (one with Elizabeth Carlson and one with Ryan Jablonski). The results of an AidData research project with Ryan Jablonski examining the effect of transparency interventions on aid politics in Malawi have been published in the AidData Working Paper series here. Another research project, co-authored with Elizabeth Carlson, considering the effect of monitoring on the allocation of development goods by chiefs, is published as an AidData Working Paper here.

Scholars Strategy Network

The Scholars Strategy Network (SSN) connects policymakers and media representatives to academic researchers. Their staff facilitate partnerships, publish synthesized and jargon-free research briefs, and produce podcasts on particular areas of research. I am an affiliated scholar with SSN. My profile is available here, and you can read a summary of some of my research on corruption here.