Adam Auerbach

Adam Auerbach is an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University. Auerbach’s research focuses on local governance, urban politics, and the political economy of development, with a regional focus on South Asia and India in particular. His first book, Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India’s Urban Slums (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics Series, 2020), accounts for the uneven success of India's slum residents in demanding and securing essential public services from the state. The project draws on more than two years of fieldwork and survey research in the north Indian cities of Jaipur, Rajasthan, and Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Demanding Development won the 2021 Dennis Judd Best Book Award from the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.  Auerbach’s research also appears in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Contemporary South Asia, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, World Development, and World Politics. His latest book (co-authored with Tariq Thachil), Migrants and Machine Politics: How India’s Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness, was published by Princeton University Press in January 2023, in the Princeton Studies in Political Behavior Series. For the 2022-23 academic year, Auerbach was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, and spent his fellowship year in the Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice at the World Bank.