Robert H. Bates is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University. His research focuses on the political economy of development, particularly in Africa, and on violence and state failure. Bates has conducted field work in Zambia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Columbia and Brazil. Before coming to Harvard, he held faculty appointments at the California Institute of Technology and Duke University and been a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Nairobi, the Institute for Social Research of the University of Zambia, and Fedesarrollo in Bogota, Columbia. Bates currently serves as a researcher and resource person with the Africa Economic Research Consortium, Nairobi and as a member of the Political Instability Task Force of the United States Government.  From 2000-2007, he served as a Professeur associe, School of Economics, University of Toulouse.  For the past several years, he has been conducting research in Ghana.  Among his most recent books are Analytic Narratives with Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry Weingast. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999; Prosperity and Violence, W.W. Norton, 2001; and When Things Fell Apart Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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