Jennifer Gandhi, a political scientist whose work in comparative politics focuses on authoritarian regimes and transitions to democracy, was recently appointed the Howard Wang ’95 Professor of Global Affairs and Political Science, effective immediately.
She is a faculty member at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and in the Department of Political Science in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She also serves as the deputy dean of the Jackson School.
Gandhi, who joined the Yale faculty in 2022, was recruited from Emory University where she was a professor and chair of the Department of Political Science.

Jennifer Gandhi
The Howard Wang ’95 Professor of Global Affairs and Political Science
In her research, Gandhi examines how autocracies use institutions, such as legislatures, parties, and elections, to consolidate their power. She also investigates the conditions under which opposition parties may coordinate to challenge autocratic incumbents in elections. Her most recent projects also examine post-authoritarian politics in the form of transitional justice — attempts to bring to justice those who perpetrated state violence under authoritarianism. In her work, Gandhi uses both cross-national data and more fine-grained data from countries as varied as Argentina, Malaysia, and Russia, to test her arguments.
Gandhi is the author of award-winning books and numerous chapters and journal articles. Her book “Political Institutions under Dictatorship,” (Cambridge, 2008) which examined the role of nominally democratic institutions in autocracies, was a major contribution to the field. It won several awards including the 2009 award for Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Politics from the International Political Science Association. She is also the co-editor of the “Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions” (Routledge 2015), which is widely considered to be an indispensable and comprehensive guide for scholars of comparative politics and political institutions. Her work has appeared in prominent political science journals such as the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics.
She has also taken on leadership roles and served on numerous committees with the prestigious American Political Science Association. She is currently an associate editor at Political Science Research and Methods and serves on the editorial board of the British Journal of Political Science and Comparative Political Studies.
Gandhi received her B.A. at Columbia University and her Ph.D. at New York University.