Steven Wilkinson, PhD

Steven I. Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. His book, Votes and Violence: electoral competition and ethnic riots in India (Cambridge, 2004) was co-winner of APSA’s Woodrow Wilson prize for the best book published in government, politics and international affairs in the previous year. He has also edited, with his former colleague Herbert Kitschelt, a book on clientelism entitled Patrons, Clients or Politics: Patterns of Political Accountability and Competition (Cambridge, 2007).

His current work is in three areas. First, a co-authored series of papers and book with Saumitra Jha (Stanford GSB) on war and political and social change. The first article in this project, on post-WW2 ethnic cleansing in India, is forthcoming from the American Political Science Review. Second, he is near completion on a book on Army, Nation and Democracy in India and Pakistan, which explores the issue of how each state has dealt with the legacy of its colonial army since independence, and why the army has been much politically much less interventionist in India than in Pakistan. Third, he continues to work on a large comparative book study on colonial legacies for democracy, governance and conflict.

He received his undergraduate degree in History from the University of Edinburgh and an A.M. in History from Duke before getting his Ph.D. in Political Science from M.I.T. He taught previously at Duke and at the University of Chicago.