Joseph Wright

Joseph Wright is a political scientist at Pennsylvania State University; he has held research positions at the University of Notre Dame, Princeton University, and Economic Research Southern Africa in Cape Town.
He studies comparative political economy with a particular interest in understanding how international factors – such as economic sanctions, foreign aid, human rights prosecutions, and migration – influence domestic politics in countries ruled by autocratic governments.
He has co-authored three books, Foreign Pressure and Politics of Authoritarian Survival (Oxford University Press, 2015), How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization, and Collapse (2018, Cambridge University Press), and Migration and Democracy: How Remittances Undermine Dictatorship (2021, Princeton University Press).
His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Minerva Research Initiative; and he is the recipient of the 2017 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research. His current book project examines how political parties contribute to democratic backsliding.