Jeremy Bowles

Jeremy Bowles is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the King Center. He studies the political economy of development, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa and a substantive focus on questions of state capacity and electoral accountability. He received a PhD in political science from Harvard University in 2021 and, in September 2023, will join the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy at University College London as an assistant professor.

King Center Supported Research

2022 - 2023 Academic Year | Global Development Research Funding

Enhancing Zambia's Constituency Development Fund

Constituency Development Funds (CDFs) aim to improve the supply of local public goods---but can be undermined by electoral concerns, poor targeting, and capture. In the context of Zambia's much-expanded CDF, Bowles seeks funding for a ward-level survey to understand (1) the capacity of local-level institutions responsible for soliciting and aggregating citizens' demands for CDF investments; (2) experiences interacting with higher-level CDF decision-makers; (3) knowledge of government policy; (4) citizens' assessments of local development priorities. The survey will be used to inform the design of interventions to be subsequently evaluated in a larger-scale field experiment.