Dr. Jean-Paul Faguet is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at the London School of Economics, and Chair of the Decentralization Task Force at Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue. He works at the frontier between economics and political science, using quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the institutions and organizational forms that underpin development transformations. He has published in the economics, political science, and development literatures, including Is Decentralization Good for Development? Perspectives from Academics and Policymakers (Oxford, 2015), and Decentralization and Popular Democracy: Governance from Below in Bolivia (Michigan), which won the W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize for best political science book of 2012. Professor Faguet’s current work focuses on historical institutions, inequality, and long-term, divergent development outcomes in Latin America. Before coming to the LSE he worked for the World Bank in La Paz, Bolivia on health, education, early childhood development and the environment. He trained in both politics and economics at Princeton, Harvard and the LSE, where his dissertation won the William Robson Memorial Prize. Research website: http://governancefrombelow.net/