I am a Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. I am also the Gillian Peele Fellow in Politics at Lady Margaret Hall.
My research interests are broadly centred on the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes, in areas such as education, healthcare, and the environment. Within this, my current work focuses primarily on three broad themes:
- the provision of public goods and services,
- electoral accountability, and in particular how it is affected by policy attribution
- political violence and state capacity.
My research has been published in journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and World Politics. My book Rural Democracy: Elections and Development in Africa was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
Publications
Journal Articles
2015
Harding, R. (2015) “Attribution and accountability: voting for roads in Ghana”, World Politics, 67(04), pp. 656–689.
Available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887115000209
2014
HARDING, R. and Stasavage, D. (2014) “What Democracy Does (and Doesn’t Do) for Basic Services: School Fees, School Inputs, and African Elections”, Journal of Politics, 76(1), pp. 229–245.
Available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381613001254
HARDING, R. (no date) “Who is Democracy Good For? Elections, Rural Bias, and Health and Education Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa”, The journal of politics [Preprint].
HARDING, R. and Michelitch, K. (no date) “Candidate Coethnicity, Rural/Urban Divides, and Partisanship in Africa”, Party Politics [Preprint].
HARDING, R., Acharya, A. and Harris, J. (no date) “Security in the Absence of a State: Traditional Authority, Livestock Trading, and Maritime Piracy in Somalia”, Journal of Theoretical Politics [Preprint].
HARDING, R. and EGGERS, A. (no date) “Rallying in fear? Estimating the effect
of the UK COVID-19 lockdown with a
natural experiment”, European Journal of Political Research [Preprint].
HARDING, R. and Nwokolo, A. (no date) “Terrorism, Trust, and Identity: Evidence from a
Natural Experiment in Nigeria”, American Journal of Political Science [Preprint].
HARDING, R. (no date) “Buying a Blind Eye: Campaign Donations, Regulatory
Enforcement, and Deforestation”, American Political Science Review [Preprint].
Books
2020
HARDING, R. (2020) Rural Democracy: Elections and Development in Africa. Oxford University Press.
preprint
Harding, R. (no date) “Buying a Blind Eye: Campaign Donations, Regulatory Enforcement, and Deforestation in Colombia”, SocArXiv.
Available at https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/f3b2v
