Joel D. Barkan

Joel Barkan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iowa and senior associate with the CSIS Africa Program. A specialist on issues of democratization and governance across Anglophone Africa, he served as the first regional democracy and governance adviser for eastern and southern Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1992 to 1994. Since then, he has straddled the worlds of academe and policy by consulting extensively for USAID, the UK Department for International Development, the UN Development Program, the National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the World Bank. Dr. Barkan has been a visiting fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace (1997–1998), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2001–2002), and the University of Cape Town (2004–present). He has written extensively on African politics and economic development, and on democracy and governance, including articles in Foreign Affairs, the American Political Science Review, Current History, Journal of Democracy, and World Politics. He has also appeared on multiple occasions on Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, France 24, NPR, and PBS. Barkan received his A.B. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in political science and African studies from the University of California at Los Angeles. His latest book is Legislative Power in Emerging African Democracies (Lynne Rienner, 2009).