Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Ph.D.

Ethan Bueno de Mesquita is an associate professor in the Harris School.

Ethan Bueno de Mesquita is an associate professor in the Harris School. His research applies game theoretic models to a variety of political phenomena including terrorism, elections and representation, and law and politics.

Bueno de Mesquita's current research focuses on how the factionalized nature of terrorist organizations affects the strategic use of violence, optimal counterterrorism policy, and the possibility for negotiated settlement. He has also studied terrorist recruitment and the sources of internal division and internecine violence within terrorist organizations.

In the areas of elections and representation, Bueno de Mesquita's ongoing work examines how changes in institutional and electoral environments affect electoral and legislative outcomes including local public goods provision, the incumbency advantage, corruption, and party strength. He is also concerned with more foundational questions regarding the nature of representation and accountability in democratic systems.

Bueno de Mesquita has written on several topics in law and politics, including the emergence of judicial norms such as deference to precedent, the effect of formal legal institutions on informal economic and social networks, and judicial oversight of the bureaucracy.

Before coming to the Harris School, Bueno de Mesquita was an assistant professor in the department of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and spent a year as a Lady Davis Fellow in political science and visiting fellow in the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also served as a consultant to United States Institute of Peace on terrorism related issues. Bueno de Mesquita received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard.