Robin Harding

I am an Associate Professor of Government in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and the Gillian Peele Fellow in Politics at Lady Margaret Hall. I am also a member of the Oxford Q-Step Centre. My research focuses primarily on the relationship between democratic institutions and the provision of public services such as education and healthcare. I also have a broad interest in questions related to electoral accountability, and in particular how it is affected by policy attribution. 

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News

• My article Who is Democracy Good For? Elections, Rural Bias, and Health and Education Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa received an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Best Article Award given by the American Political Science Association’s Democracy and Autocracy section.​

• My book Rural Democracy: Elections and Development in Africa was published by Oxford University Press in February 2020.
  • Coverage in The Economist: "Vexed in the city", Nov 8th 2018
  • Post for Democracy in Africa Book Club, April 24th 2020
  • ​Article in The Conversation, May 24th 2020
  • Review in Perspectives on Politics by Daniel de Kadt, September 2021 
  • Review in Democratization​ by Helder Ferreira do Vale, April 2022

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Most recent publications

• ​Rallying in fear? Estimating the effect of the UK COVID-19 lockdown with a natural experiment (with Andrew C. Eggers), European Journal of Political Research, 61  2022).
• Candidate Coethnicity, Rural/Urban Divides, and Partisanship in Africa (Kristin Michelitch), Party Politics​, 27:4 (2021).​
• Who is Democracy Good For? Elections, Rural Bias, and Health and Education Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa,  Journal of Politics, 82:1 (2020).​