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 and policy feedback in low and middle income states. I have a methodological interest in mixed methods research, field surveys and qualitative research methods.

I study comparative political economy, with a particular interest in the conditions under which states adopt programmatic social policies and how they effect excluded citizens political participation in settings with weak democratic institutions, uneven state capacity and high levels of clientelism. My book project, Being Seen By the State: Social Policy and the Politics of Poverty Relief in Pakistan, examines the political origins and consequences of social policy expansion in developing democracies, by studying 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 that have enabled the spread of social safety net programs in the Global South. 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, and previously at the Collective for Social Science Research. 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 British 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 an interest in international development policy research and have previous policy consulting experience with the World Bank's Social Protection and Labor Practice, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), amongst others. I have written or contributed to numerous policy reports on social safety nets, governance and social inclusion in South Asia.

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