Vineeta Yadav

Ph.D. Yale University 2007. Professor Yadav’s research focuses on the comparative study of political parties and business and religious interest-groups in developing countries, and the consequences of their interactions for governance, policy outcomes and democracy. She has a special interest in South Asian politics. Her recent book Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties (Oxford, 2021) won the 2022 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research awarded by the International Science Council, University of Bergen and the European Consortium of Political Research and an Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

She has also published The Rise of Right-Wing Populist Parties and Reversal of Economic Reforms in Developing Democracies (co-authored with Bumba Mukherjee Lexington, 2024), The IMF, Financial Crisis and Repression of Human Rights (co-authored with Bumba Mukherjee Palgrave, 2024), The Politics of Corruption in Dictatorships (co-authored with Bumba Mukherjee, Cambridge University Press 2016) and Electoral Systems and Judicial Empowerment in Developing Countries (co-authored with Bumba Mukherjee, University of Michigan Press 2014. Her first book Political Parties, Business Groups, and Corruption in Developing Countries (Oxford University Press, 2011) was awarded the 2013 Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Prize by the American Political Science Association (APSA) Political Organizations and Parties Section, the 2012 Rosenthal Prize by the APSA Legislative Studies Section and received an Honorable Mention for the 2012 best book award from the APSA Comparative Democratization Section. She has also published in Comparative Political Studies, Political Research Quarterly, Party Politics, International Interactions, Asian Survey and Journal of Public Affairs.

Her work has been supported by the US National Science Foundation, the Azim Premji Foundation (India), and the McCourtney Institute of Democracy. She is currently working on projects analyzing the rise and consequences of populist parties in developing democracies, how politicians’ personal characteristics influence political outcomes using experiments and surveys on political elites, and the impact of elite characteristics and rebel governance on development using lab-in-the-field experiments.