Jennifer Bussell

Jennifer Bussell is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Department of Political Science and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009, an M.A. in Political Science from the same institution in 2003, and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1997. Bussell joined UC Berkeley in 2013 as Assistant Professor and Gruber Faculty Fellow, advancing to Associate Professor in 2019. Previously, she was Assistant Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin from 2010 to 2013, Visiting Assistant Professor in South Asian Studies and Political Science at Yale University from 2012 to 2013, and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville from 2009 to 2010.

Bussell's research focuses on comparative politics and the political economy of development, democratic representation, and governance outcomes, principally in South Asia, particularly India, and Africa. Her work examines the effects of formal and informal institutions such as corruption, coalition politics, and federalism on policy outcomes, including eGovernment reforms, constituency service in patronage democracies, and disaster preparedness. She is the author of two books: Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2019), which uses elite and citizen surveys, interviews, qualitative shadowing, and experiments to analyze public service delivery in India and elsewhere; and Corruption and Reform in India: Public Services in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press, 2012), based on fieldwork across sixteen Indian states and parts of South Africa and Brazil. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in journals including Political Analysis, Governance, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, and Economic and Political Weekly. Bussell has received major awards, including the Giovanni Sartori Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association's Qualitative and Mixed Methods Section in 2020 for Clients and Constituents, the Virginia M. Walsh Best Dissertation Award from APSA's Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics Section, and the Best Published Article Award from APSA's Information Technology and Politics Section in 2012.

Professional Email: jbussell@berkeley.edu