Jessica Gottlieb is Associate Professor in the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston and co-director of the Democratic Erosion Consortium. She taught the Democratic Erosion course as a “capstone” for second-year master’s students in which the original version of the dataset was developed. She earned her Ph.D. in political science and Master’s degree in economics from Stanford University.
Her research focuses on the political economy of development and, in particular, constraints to government accountability and state capacity in new democracies. Much of her work has been in sub-Saharan Africa, where she has conducted field experiments, behavioral games, and surveys. Some newer work, inspired by involvement in the DE consortium, is on political polarization in the US. Gottlieb’s work is published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Science Advances, and World Development among others.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Gottlieb worked at the Center for Global Development on a project encouraging donors, country governments, and multilateral organizations to better learn what works in development through improved impact evaluation.