Since completing my PhD at the LSE on civil service reform in post-communist Hungary in 2004, my research has centred on the study of how governments manage people and institutions — focusing on civil service reform and management, party patronage, and anti-corruption. I have also worked on the Europeanisation of national political systems and the role of time in politics and public policy.
Geographically, my research has focused on Europe, in particular Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. Since the mid 2010s, I have expanded this work to developing countries in Latin America, Africa and South Asia, and, more recently, to the Middle East through collaboration with OECD/SIGMA and Jordan’s Service and Public Administration Commission (SPAC).
Since 2007, I have led and participated in numerous multi-country research projects in collaboration with colleagues and governments worldwide. These include large-scale surveys of public servants in Europe and the developing world, such as the Global Survey of Public Servants (GSPS), which I co-founded with partners from the World Bank, UCL and Stanford University.I also lead Working Group 2 on Careers of the COST Action CoREx on Comparative Research on the Executive Triangle, which builds a comparative dataset on the careers of ministers, advisors and senior bureaucrats across more than 30 countries worldwide.