About

I am a postdoctoral fellow in Public Policy and Administration at the Department of Government at the London School of Economics (LSE). My research interests include the politics of policy making, social policy, state-citizen relations, state capacity and policy feedback in low and middle income states in the Global South.

I study comparative political economy with a particular interest in when states adopt redistributive social policies and how they effect marginalized citizens political participation and engagement with the state in settings with weak democratic institutions, uneven state capacity and high levels of clientelism. My book project examines the political origins and consequences of programmatic social policy expansion in new democracies by studying the impacts of Pakistan’s largest cash transfer program targeted exclusively at low-income women: The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). A related strand of my research focuses on policy diffusion and the politics effects of social policy expansion in new democracies in the Global South in comparative perspective. My review article on the politics of social policy expansion in Latin America's new democracies has been published in Comparative Politics.

I am a fellow at the Mahbub Ul Haq Research Center at LUMS. I was previously a recipient of the USIP Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship (2020-21) and a fellow in the Graduate Program in Development (GPD) at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. My research has been supported by the Bristish Academy/Leverhulme Trust,Brown Global Mobility Fellowship, the Pembroke Center, the Center for Contemporary South Asia and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS).

I completed my PhD in Political Science at Brown University and a Masters degree in International Affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. I maintain a strong interest in policy research and have previous policy consulting experience with the World Bank's Social Protection and Labor Practice, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and USAID.

Please feel free to contact me at: r.r.jamil@lse.ac.uk

Department of Government
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, London
WC2A 2AE