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Welcome! This website contains most of my academic and more mainstream writings, as well as databases and qualitative research tools used in the research, and a video collection of lectures, interviews and semi-random musings.
Latest Publications
Encomienda, the Colonial State, and Long-Run Development in Colombia
With Camilo Matajira and Fabio Sánchez. Forthcoming in The Economic Journal.
Video of seminar presentation, Santa Fe Institute
Decentralized Governance: Crafting Effective Democracies Around the World With Sarmistha Pal (Eds.). 2023. London: LSE Press.
Video of book launch, London
Latest Working Papers
Faguet, J.P. 2025. "Complexity in Institutional Reform." Under review.
Bednar, J., J.P. Faguet and S.E. Page. 2025. “Three Models of Institutional Incongruity: Multidimensionality, Networks and Culture.” Under review.
I am Professor of the Political Economy of Development at the London School of Economics and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. I was Chair of the Decentralization Task Force at Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue, and have held visiting positions at UC Berkeley, Stanford, UNC-Chapel Hill, the European University Institute, and the Santa Fe Institute. I work at the frontier between economics and political science, using Q2 methods to investigate development transformations. I publish in economics, political science, and development studies, including Decentralized Governance: Crafting Effective Democracies Around the World (LSE 2023), Is Decentralization Good for Development? Perspectives from Academics and Policy Makers (Oxford 2015), and Decentralization and Popular Democracy: Governance from Below in Bolivia (Michigan), which won the W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize for best political science book of 2012.
Some photos from my fieldwork & when I lived in Bolivia
How to research development?
My research focuses on the political economy of complex transformations that lift societies onto higher trajectories of development, and on pathologies of underdevelopment that hold societies back. By 'complex' I mean multi-causal and with multiple effects. Because such phenomena tend to transcend the economy, politics and society, my colleagues and I reach across the disciplines to find concepts, theories and techniques suited to the specific problems we're trying to crack. Hence our work is multidisciplinary and blends quantitative and qualitative methods. There's a bit more detail about how we do this on the Data page, and good examples of the insights that result in the Decentralization and Popular Democracy book and the encomienda in Colombia paper. My department's research page has a nice exposition of the overall approach.
But while we're talking about pathologies of underdevelopment...
The more my colleagues and I work on 'pathologies of underdevelopment', the clearer it becomes that many if not most of these afflict 'developed countries' too. Indeed, with respect to some of the darkest threats, like growing inequality and political disintegration, North America and Europe show signs of converging with Latin America and parts of Africa and Asia. Developed and developing countries are becoming more alike in not-good ways.
Our goal as researchers must not be to apply the concepts and intellectual tools of the rich West to lesser places. The deep problems that afflict human societies everywhere may sometimes wear different clothes, but they share common roots. And distinctions between 'developed' and 'developing' countries are increasingly blurred. Our goal, rather, should be to understand these pathologies wherever they occur, figure out how they can be overcome, and apply the lessons wherever they are needed.
An early attempt is a paper that analyzed the collapse of Bolivia's long-standing political party system as the product of cleavage shift. A second paper applied this analysis to political changes across Europe and North America, predicting that as their roots in civil society shrivel, the political parties of the West will disintegrate from the bottom up. Two shorter, punchier versions of this line of thought are articles for the Institute of Arts and Ideas on the end of left-right politics and the ancient roots of identity politics.
More ambitiously, part of the justification for our forthcoming Special Issue of World Development is precisely to reverse-colonize 'developed country studies' with powerful concepts forged in the fires of the developing world: instrumental mismatch and incongruous institutions. We apply these ideas to 15 developing countries, but then also to the UK and Brexit, where they fit like a glove.
All-time favorite photo of myself
My PhD students are... amazing
My PhD students are... amazing
Over the past two decades I've had the privilege of working with wonderful PhD researchers. Below are their dissertation topics and snippets of the careers they went on to.
Graduated PhDs
Allison Benson Obama Fellow, Columbia University. Ministry of Rural Development, Colombia. “Sources of political, financial and social capital in Rural Colombia”
Gustavo Bonifaz Associate Researcher, Latin American Institute, Free University of Berlin. “The gap between legality and legitimacy: The Bolivian state crisis (2000-2008) in historical and regional perspective”
Anila Channa Head of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, Integrity. “Four essays on eduction, caste and collective action in rural Pakistan”
Luciano Ciravegna Associate Professor (tenured), Henley Business School and INCAE. “Institutions, social ties and productive collaborations: Lessons from the information and communication technologies cluster in Costa Rica”
María Fernández Colombian National Program Coordinator, Earth Innovation Institute and Lecturer in Economics, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. “Instituciones y desarrollo regional en Colombia, el caso del café”
Sean Fox Professor in Global Development, University of Bristol. “The political economy of urbanisation and development in sub-Saharan Africa”
Soren Gigler Head of Data Economy, GIZ and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University. “Can information and communication technologies enhance the well-being of indigenous peoples in Bolivia?”
Paula Giovagnoli Economist, World Bank, Buenos Aires, Argentina. “From preschool provision to college performances: Empirical evidence from a developing country”
Olivia Jensen Lead Scientist and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. “Cooperation and opportunism under long-term public-private contracts: Evidence from water concessions in Asia”
Maria López-U. Secretary of Economic Development, Municipality of Bogotá, and Assistant Professor, U de los Andes. “Essays on the Political Economy of Development in Colombia”
Laura Munro Adviser, Agriculture Research Team, UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). “Risk sharing, networks and investment choices in rural India”
Chikako Oka Associate Professor (tenured), Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), IAE Gustave Eiffel Ecole de Management. “Labor standard compliance and the role of buyers: the case of the Cambodian garment sector”
María Orduz Lecturer, Universidad Externado de Colombia, and IDB consultant. “Decentralization, public spending, and other structural reforms”
Caroline Pöschl Manager, Strategy & Economics, PwC South Africa. “Local Government Taxation and Accountability in Mexico”
Nelson Ruiz-G. Senior Lecturer (tenured) and Head of Political Economy, University of Essex Government Department. Research Associate, Nuffield College, Oxford. Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. “Essays on Violence, Money in Politics, and the Electoral System in Colombia”
Mahvish Shami Associate Professor in Development Studies (tenured) & Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, London School of Economics. “The road to development: market access and varieties of clientelism in rural Punjab, Pakistan”
Victoria Soto Research Professor in Public Health, Universidad ICESI (Cali, Colombia). “Colombia fiscal decentralisation: Equity in health outcomes across municipalities”
Gonzalo Vargas Professor, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. “Explaining violence against civilians: Insurgency, counterinsurgency and crime in the Middle Magdalena Valley, Colombia (1996-2004)”
Borge Wietzke Associate Professor (tenured), Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). “Groups, location and wellbeing: Social and spatial determinants of inequality in Madagascar”
© 2025 Jean-Paul Faguet
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