About

Andrew Roberts studies the quality of democracy, political institutions, and political behavior. Most of his research focuses on postcommunist Europe where he once taught English. His main research program has been understanding how democratic politics works in the region, particularly issues of representation and accountability. He is currently working on projects related to the influence of biography on politics, the effect of nationalism on citizenship, and the role of billionaires in politics. Outside of political science, he writes about popular culture in postcommunist Europe and how to get a better college education. He blogs at: https://andrewroberts.substack.com/. Roberts has authored several publications, including 'The Thinking Student's Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education,' 'The Quality of Democracy in Eastern Europe: Public Preferences and Policy Reforms,' and 'From Good King Wenceslas to the Good Soldier Svejk: A Dictionary of Czech Popular Culture.' His teaching includes courses such as Introduction to Comparative Politics, Democratic Transitions, Politics and Markets, Fixing the US Constitution, and Political Institutions.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Political economy
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Trust in Political Science Research: Methods More Than Ideology

  2025-12-16

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Political science tends to be among the least trusted scientific disciplines. Evidence on the sources of and remedies for this trust deficit is scarce and rarely tailored to political science. Using a representative survey of the Czech public (N = 1,530) and a parallel survey of Czech political scientists (N = 113), we examine the levels and sources of trust in the discipline from the perspectives of both the public and experts. Overall, trust is moderate and distrust is strongest among older, lower-income, and anti-Western respondents. Trust, however, is only weakly associated with ideology and perceptions of bias. In an embedded experiment, we show that open-science practices and methodological rigor significantly increase the perceived trustworthiness of political science research. Our findings underscore the need to build perceptions of competence, rigor, and transparency, and suggest that ideological bias may be a less central driver of distrust.

  PublisherDOI

• Evaluating the transition: once more with feeling

  East European Politics · 2025-07-10

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Gender gaps in policy responsiveness in a new democracy

  Representation · 2025-09-29

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Police Use of Intrusive Technology: Freedom, Privacy, and Political Legitimacy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Police Use of Intrusive Technology: Freedom, Privacy, and Political Legitimacy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Billionaire Politicians: A Global Perspective

  Perspectives on Politics · 2023 · 13 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political economy

  We introduce an original dataset of formal political participation for over 2,000 individuals included in the Forbes Billionaires List. We find that billionaire politicians are a surprisingly common phenomenon: Over 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office. Even compared to other elite groups known for producing politicians from their ranks, this is a high rate of political participation. Moreover, billionaires focus their political ambitions on influential positions, have a strong track record of winning elections, and lean to the right ideologically. We also document substantial cross-national variation: a country’s number of billionaire politicians is not simply a product of its total number of billionaires, but is instead related to regime type. Specifically, billionaires formally enter the political sphere at a much higher rate in autocracies than in democracies. We conclude by discussing the normative implications of our findings and outlining a new research agenda on billionaire politicians.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ben Ansell: Why Politics Fails

  Politologický časopis - Czech Journal of Political Science · 2023-10-30 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  CEEOL: https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1197962

  PublisherDOI

• Privatizing the Chinese Tiehua Industry: A Qualitative Economic Case Study

  ASIANetwork Exchange A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts · 2023-07-14

  articleOpen access

  Tiehua (wrought iron painting) is a folk art originating in Anhui Province, China. The tiehua industry has changed drastically over the last 25 years as China's economy has liberalized: Wuhu Tiehua Factory, a heretofore state monopoly, underwent bankruptcy restructuring in 1992, 2002, and 2013, while several new, smaller and more competitive firms have entered the market. The marketization of tiehua has become a meaningful local and regional issue centering on the ownership structure of the tiehua firms, and has proven to be an excellent case study in basic economic theory.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• National Attachments and Good Citizenship: A Double-Edged Sword

  Political Studies · 2023 · 8 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  The recent popularity of nationalist movements bears witness to the continued power of national feeling in politics. This article considers the potential relationship between different kinds of national attachments and what we call active and allegiant citizenship—support for democracy, community participation, and prosocial behavior. We analyze these relationships using data from two waves of the European Values Study. We find that a set of attachments often called civic nationalism—including patriotism, national identity, and respect for one’s country’s institutions—are connected with better citizenship on virtually all of our outcomes, whereas ethnic nationalism is frequently connected with worse citizenship. These associations, however, tend to be weaker in the postcommunist states which have a different experience with both nationalism and democracy. The results suggest that national feeling can be a double-edged sword for citizenship.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Biases in elections with well‐informed voters: Evidence from public voting for football awards

  Social Science Quarterly · 2022-10-24 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Objectives How much does group membership influence voting behavior? This article adds to existing work by considering a novel context where voting is public and voters are well‐informed. Methods The article analyzes public votes in a prominent award for the best football player in the world. It uses ordered probit regressions to assess the extent to which votes by players, coaches, and journalists are related to national, regional, cultural, racial, and religious affinities between voters and candidates controlling for measures of player performance and celebrity. Results The estimates indicate that while player performance does matter, a number of group‐based characteristics continue to influence voting. Some of these effects appear to be rooted in incentives—a tendency to vote for co‐nationals and teammates—but others—such as a tendency to vote based on geographical, racial, and religious similarities—are rooted more in group affinities. Conclusions The analysis provides relatively strong support for the group‐based theory of democracy championed by Achen and Bartels as opposed to a theory of democracy founded on individual rational choice. The specific case considered suggests that more attention should be given to the composition of juries that choose the winners of prizes.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Robin Law

  307 shared

• Philip D. Curtin

  270 shared

• J. Miller

  Boston University

  244 shared

• MICHAEL TWADDLE

  239 shared

• David Henige

  237 shared

• J. D. Fage

  179 shared

• P. E. H. Hair

  128 shared

• Albert Van Dantzig

  127 shared

Education

• PhD, Politics

  Princeton University

  2003

• BA

  Williams College

  1992