Strom Thacker
Faculty Associate
Associate Dean of the Faculty, Social Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences
Professor, International Relations and Political Science, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies
sthacker@bu.edu
617-353-7160
Education
BA, Pomona College; MA, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Expertise
International and comparative political economy, governance, development, Latin American studies, Mexican political economy and politics
Biography
Strom Thacker’s research and teaching focus broadly on questions of political economy, governance and development, with a regional focus on Mexico and Latin America. His books include Big Business, the State, and Free Trade: Constructing Coalitions in Mexico (2000), A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance (with John Gerring, 2008), and Democracy and Development: A Historical Perspective (with John Gerring, in process). He is also working on a project on the politics of human development. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, Business and Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Global Public Health, International Organization, the Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, theJournal of Politics, Social Science & Medicine, and World Politics. He has an ongoing interest in the politics of foreign aid and lending, and the International Monetary Fund.
Thacker is a Faculty Affiliate of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and a Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University. He has been a Visiting Scholar in Political Science at MIT, Visiting Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University, a Susan Louise Dyer Peace Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a Fulbright Scholar. He has also received research grants funded by the World Bank, BU’s SPRInG program, BU’s Pardee Center, the Mellon Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and the University of North Carolina. He taught at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) before his appointment to Boston University.