Pia Raffler

Welcome. I am an Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University, working at the intersection of political economy of development and comparative politics. I am interested in political accountability, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa. My research focuses on political oversight of bureaucrats and implications for public service provision on the one hand, and electoral behavior on the other. It has won the Best Fieldwork Award and Best Dissertation Award in Experimental Research from the American Political Science Association. I use experimental, quasi-experimental and qualitative methods to measure causal effects and disentangle the underlying mechanisms. I hold a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University and have spent a year as a fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics.