Mark Schneider

Mark Schneider, Ph.D. is a Political Science Researcher at Facebook. He was previously a Visiting Professor of Political Science at Tulane University and a Visiting Professor of Political Studies at Pitzer College. He studies the micro-foundations of clientelism and distributive politics at the local level with a regional focus on India. His research interests include decentralization and local governance, patronage politics, party-voter linkages, and survey methods. Drawing on unique behavioral and experimental measures from cross-referenced elite and voter surveys, his completed research measures the extent to which local politicians know voters’ political preferences, local politicians’ preferences over the beneficiaries of targeted benefits, and the effect of co-partisanship on the allocation of private anti-poverty benefits and local public goods. Each of these articles develops a novel survey design for capturing local dynamics observed in fieldwork. His ongoing work includes a collaborative project on the quality of local elections across India. His research has been supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, Pitzer College, and the American Political Science Association.