Dr. Scott Gehlbach

Biography

Scott Gehlbach is the Elise Jack Lipsey Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and serves as the Director of the Joint PhD Program in Political Economy. His research centers on comparative politics and political theory, with a particular focus on political economy and the dynamics of authoritarian regimes. Gehlbach has made significant contributions to the understanding of post-communist transitions in Eastern Europe and the relationship between reform and rebellion in autocratic contexts, particularly drawing from empirical studies in late Imperial Russia and Ukraine. He is recognized as an early practitioner of using game theory to model institutions within authoritarian settings, co-authoring a well-regarded textbook, Formal Models of Domestic Politics. Before his tenure at the University of Chicago, Gehlbach was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for sixteen years and has held affiliations with the New Economic School and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Actively engaged in his academic community, he is currently the vice president of the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics and serves as an associate editor for the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Gehlbach has been instrumental in developing the new Ph.D. Program in Political Economy at the University of Chicago, which is a joint offering between the Department of Political Science and the Harris School of Public Policy.

Research Interests