Introduction
Associate Professor of Government at American University's School of Public Affairs. My main research interests are taxation, democratic institutions, and the rule of law in sub-Saharan Africa. I use experiments, survey research, and qualitative research to understand how citizens interact with the state and organize to achieve better governance. I'm particularly interested in learning about policy interventions around improving security and services delivery in urban environments.
Expert
LeBas has over twenty years of field experience in sub-Saharan Africa. She has conducted research on political parties and trade unions, voting behavior, taxation, and electoral violence. She has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and other organizations. She has extensive experience conducting field research and managing research teams in difficult environments, including Nigeria, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. She has expertise in qualitative methods, survey design and implementation (including data validation), and experimental methods (including randomized control trials).
he is the author of the award-winning From Protest to Parties: Party-Building and Democratization in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) and articles in the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Democracy, Comparative Politics, and elsewhere. Her research has also been supported by grants from the EGAP Metaketa program, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Department for International Development (UK), the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and elsewhere. She is currently working on her second book, which investigates the reasons for persistent election violence in some democratizing countries, and she also continues her research on attitudes toward taxation in urban Nigeria.
Fields of expertise: Evidence for policy / knowledge valorization, Monitoring and evaluation, Participation, Policy design and delivery, Urban development