Advisory Group

Our Advisory Group of Swedish and international researchers enables ICLD to keep up to date with and disseminate the latest research and knowledge within the fields of local democracy and decentralisation.

Back from the left: Quinton Mayne – Associate Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA. Jesse C. Ribot – Professor, School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC, US. Anders Lidström – Professor, Department of Political Science, Umeå University. Front from the left: Valeria Guarneros-Meza, Reader in Public Policy and Politics, at De Montfort University, Amalinda Savirani – Professor of Political Science at Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. Missing on the photo are: Tomila Lankina – Professor of International Relations, at London School of Economics, Sten Hagberg – Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the Forum for African Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden and Winnie V. Mitullah, Director & Associate Research Professor of Development Studies, IDS and Director of Gender Affairs, University of Nairobi.

Jesse C. Ribot

Professor, School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC, USA 

Before starting at AU August 2018, Jesse spent a decade as a professor of Geography, Anthropology and Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and Director of the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy Initiative at the University of Illinois. He has also worked for numerous development agencies, such as World Bank and United Nations. His research focuses on decentralization and democratic local government, natural resource tenure and access, distribution along natural resource commodity chains and household vulnerability in the face of climate and environmental change.

Ribot, Jesse. 2013. “Choice, Recognition and the Democracy Effects of Decentralization” Ch. 4, Pp. 93-120 in Joakim Öjendal and Anki Dellnäs (eds.) The imperative of good local governance: Challenges for the next decade of decentralization. Tokyo: UNU Press.

Anders Lidström

Professor, Department of Political Science, Umeå University

His research focuses on local politics and government, comparative politics and education policy. This includes studies of local democracy and self-government, and political participation in city-regions, both within Sweden and in a comparative perspective. He has also carried out research on education policy, with a particular focus on how this is shaped at the local level.

Lidström, Anders. (2013). Local government associations worldwide: Promoting democratic local governance. In Democratic Local Governance: Reforms & Innovations in Asia (pp. 73–88). Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

Quinton Mayne

Director of Research, Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA.

Quinton’s research interests include comparative political behavior, democratic representation, subnational and urban politics, and social policy. He earned his Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University.

Quinton Mayne, Jorrit de Jong, Fernando Fernandez-Monge, State Capabilities for Problem-Oriented Governance, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 33–44, https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvz023

Amalinda Savirani

Professor of Political Science at Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia.

Amalinda is a Professor of Political Science and Head of Department Politics and Government at Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. Her PhD research focused on the political behaviour of business actors responding to political shifts and neoliberalism in Pekalongan, Central Java, in Sociology and Anthropology. Her research interests include studies of social movements in the urban sector and labour with political economy.

Savirani, Amalinda, and Edward Aspinall (2017), Adversarial Linkages: The Urban Poor and Electoral Politics in Jakarta, in: Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 36, 3, 3–34

Tomila Lankina

Professor of International Relations, at London School of Economics, UK

Tomila’s research focuses on comparative democracy and authoritarianism, mass protests and historical patterns of human capital and democratic reproduction in Russia and other states. She is currently working on a book on the long-term patterns of reproduction of social structures in Russia and why this matter for democracy, development, and social inequalities.

Lankina, Tomila & Gordon, Claire & Slava, Svitlana. (2017). Regional Development in Ukraine: Priority Actions in Terms of Decentralization.

Sten Hagberg

Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the Forum for African Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden

Sten is a Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the Forum for African Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. His PhD research focused on dispute settlement between farmers and herders in Burkina. He has conducted anthropological research in Burkina Faso since 1988 and in Mali since 2008 covering themes including dispute settlement, local politics, environment, development, democracy and social movements. His research nowadays focuses on political culture, municipal democracy, local development, the mass media, security and popular struggle.

Hagberg, Sten. (2019). The Rise and Fall of a Political Party: Handling Political Failure in Municipal Elections in Burkina Faso. Kritisk Etnografi, 2(1–2), 141–156

Dr. Valeria Guarneros-Meza

Reader in Public Policy and Politics | Deputy Director, Centre for Urban Research on Austerity Department of Politics, People and Place De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Valeria is a Reader in Public Policy and Politics, at De Montfort University, UK. S. Her research focus has been on local politics, citizen participation, governance, collaboration, partnership and Latin America. She has been able to study these topics within the English and Welsh contexts and in Mexico and Latin America. She has done studies on the impact that structural economic changes and institutional socio-political reforms have on local governance. Also, democratic principles such as inclusion and accountability have also an area of interest, particularly how these concepts and meanings affect the organisational structures of local government as well as the practices and behaviour of local government bureaucrats.

Andrews, Rhys & Entwistle, Tom & Guarneros-Meza, Valeria. (2018). Local Government Size and Political Efficacy: Do Citizen Panels Make a Difference? International Journal of Public Administration. 42.

Winnie V. Mitullah

Director and Associate Research Professor of Development Studies at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), and the Director of Gender Affairs, University of Nairobi

Winnie is the current Director and Associate Research Professor of Development Studies at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), and the Director of Gender Affairs, University of Nairobi, with which ICLD has an MoU. She holds a PhD in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of York, UK. Her PhD thesis was on Urban Housing, with a major focus on policies relating to low-income housing.

Winnie is also a well-cited scholar with a long list of relevant publications related to local governance, democracy and urban marginalised groups. She is also the chair of the University of Nairobi UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks.

The Powers of Agenda-Setting: The Role of Politicians and Experts