Political Science

Peter Swenson

C.M. Saden Professor of Political Science

Peter A. Swenson is Yale’s C.M. Saden Professor of Political Science. He specializes in the comparative political economy of labor markets and social welfare in Europe and the United States. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the economic, political and social foundations of social policy and market regulation in developed capitalist democracies.

Ian Turner

Assistant Professor of Political Science

Ian Turner is Assistant Professor of Political Science, a Resident Fellow in the Institution of Social and Policy Studies and the Center for the Study of American Politics, and a Faculty Affiliate of the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. Prior to joining the Yale faculty, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Co-director of the Political Institutions/Political Behavior Research Program at Texas A&M University. He received his PhD in political science from Washington University in St.

Arjun Warrior

ISPS Director's Fellow 2024

Arjun Warrior is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight college, studying America’s ongoing democratic crisis. He’s interested in institutions and movements that foster social justice and democracy, especially in the face of state oppression. In practice, this means he’s passionate about constitutional design, electoral reform, workplace democracy, unionization, social welfare, and mutual aid. He’s worked on organizing, policy, and speechwriting for progressive campaigns and elected officials in his hometown of Irvine, California.

Klaudia Wegschaider

Postdoctoral Associate

Klaudia Wegschaider joins the Institution for Social and Policy Studies as a Democratic Innovations postdoctoral associate. Her work focuses on the causes and consequences of electoral reforms, especially enfranchisement. Methodologically, she is primarily a qualitative researcher and combines case studies with quantitative and experimental methods.

Steven Wilkinson

Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs

Steven Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies, professor of political science and international affairs, Henry R.

Kevin Xiao

Dahl Scholar, 2021 - 2022

As a Dahl Scholar, Kevin Xiao works with Assistant Professor of Political Science Christina Kinane on a project developing a theory of political appointments during presidential transitions. Kevin is studying Political Science and is in the Yale class of 2023. He is also president of the Yale Undergraduate Moot Court team. He is interested in executive branch politics, especially its effects upon bureaucratic organization and state capacity.

Itamar Yakir

Postdoctoral Associate

Itamar Yakir is a postdoctoral sssociate with the Democratic Innovations program at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies and with Yale’s Identity and Conflict Lab. He received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2023.