Associate Professor of Political Science
Michael Albertus is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His main research focus is on the political conditions under which governments implement egalitarian reforms. Other research interests include political regime transitions and stability, politics under dictatorship, clientelism and civil conflict.
His first book, Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform (2015) won the 2016 Luebbert Book Award for the best book in comparative politics published in the previous two years, as well as the 2017 LASA Bryce Wood Book Award for the best book on Latin America in the social sciences and humanities.
His second book, Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy, examines how outgoing authoritarian regimes often shape the nature of democratic transitions in ways that shield authoritarian elites from the rule of law and give them an unfair advantage over politics and the economy after democratization.
Albertus' work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Economics & Politics, World Development and Latin American Research Review.
Public Policy, Politics, & Justice