Prof Kenneth Benoit
Head of the Department of Methodology, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Kenneth Benoit received his PhD in 1998 from Harvard University, Department of Government. He has previously held positions at Trinity College Dublin, where he held a chair in Quantitative Social Sciences, and at the Central European University (Budapest). He regularly teaches social science methodology at summer schools, including the ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques (Ljubljana) and in 2011, the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis.
Research interests:
His substantive research interests include comparative party competition, the European Parliament, electoral systems, and transitions to democracy. Much of his recent work involves estimating the electoral effects of campaign spending. He is also a leading specialist on Hungarian elections and the Hungarian electoral system. His methodological interests include statistical methodologies for the social sciences, especially those relating to measurement and quantitative text analysis. Recent data large-scale measurement projects in which he has been involved include estimating policy positions of political parties through expert surveys, manifesto coding, and text analysis.
Recent projects
- Quantitative Analysis of Textual Data for Social Sciences
- World Database of Parties, Elections, and Governments
- Globalisation and Party Competition
- Domestic Structures of European Integration
Books
- 2008. Giannetti, Daniela and Kenneth Benoit, eds. Intra-Party Politics and Coalition Governments. London: Routledge.
- 2006. Benoit, Kenneth and Michael Laver. Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge.