ANSELL, Ben

 

MW Visiting Fellow, 2008-2009

 Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Minnesota

Email ansell@umn.edu  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Ansell received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2006 and a Masters in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001. Since Fall 2006 he has been as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He has been a Visiting Fellow of the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and a member of the Leitch Review of Skills and Her Majesty’s Treasury from 2004 to 2006.

His Ph.D. dissertation examined the determinants of education policy, focusing on the roles of globalization, democracy, and partisan politics. He argues that education policy can best be examined by analyzing the redistributive motivations of different actors, and he develops and tests a formal model of education provision in his dissertation. He is currently working on developing a manuscript based on this work and has also published on education policy in International Organization and World Politics.

His current research splits into two branches. First, he is examining the impact of the housing boom and bust on individuals’ and politicians’ preferences over social policy, taxation, and macroeconomic policy. In 2007 he conducted interviews with senior policymakers at the Bank of England and European Central Bank. Second, together with David Samuels of the University of Minnesota, he is working on a project that re-examines the effect of income inequality on the likelihood of democratization.

Ansell Personal website