Robert Bates (political scientist)
| Robert H. Bates | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1942 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Political science |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
| Doctoral advisor | Myron Weiner |
Robert Hinrichs Bates (born 1942) is an American political scientist. He is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government in the Departments of Government and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. From 2000-2012, he served as Professeur associe, School of Economics, University of Toulouse.
After graduating from Haverford College in 1964, Bates took his Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also studied anthropology (at Manchester University and the School of Oriental and African Studies) and economics (at Stanford University) at the graduate level. He joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 1969. From 1985 until 1993 he was Luce Professor of Political Economy at Duke University. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.
Bates’s research focuses on the political economy of development, particularly in Africa. Starting with field work in the mining townships of the Copperbelt (Unions, Parties, and Political Development: A Study of Mineworkers in Zambia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971) he subsequently conducted field work in the Luapula Valley of Zambia (Rural Responses to Industrialization: A Study of Village Zambia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); the relationship between town and country continues to mark his work. Expanding the scope of his research to include countries in Eastern and Western Africa as well, he addressed the politics of agricultural development and food supply just at the time that dearth and famine increasingly arose on the continent (Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press, Series on Social Choice and Political Economy, 1981). Embraced by academics on the left and supporters of the gathering “Washington Consensus” on the right, the book exerted major influence in the policy world as well.
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