About me

I am Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Fellow at St. Hilda’s College at the University of Oxford.

I research the origins of effective and democratic states with a regional focus on South Asia. I am the author of two books, The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan (2013) and Varieties of Nationalism (with Harris Mylonas, 2023).  I am the author of over twenty peer-reviewed articles in Comparative Politics, Party Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Annual Review of Political Science, and Indian Politics and Policy. My writing has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Hindu, New Statesman, Washington Post, Indian Express and Journal of Democracy.  I am a regular commentator on elections and the state of democracy in media outlets, including the BBC and The Guardian.