About

Jonathan Rodden is a professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. His work focuses on the comparative political economy of institutions, with particular emphasis on federalism and fiscal decentralization. He has authored several articles and three books on these topics, including 'Hamilton’s Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism,' which received the Gregory Luebbert Prize for the best book in comparative politics in 2007. Rodden collaborates with institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, USAID, and the European Parliament on issues related to fiscal decentralization and federalism. His research also explores the geographic distribution of political preferences within countries, legislative bargaining, the distribution of budgetary transfers across regions, and the historical origins of political institutions. Additionally, he has applied mathematical and computer science tools to questions about redistricting, culminating in his 2019 book 'Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide.' Rodden is involved in an interdisciplinary project focused on handgun acquisition. He earned his PhD from Yale University and his BA from the University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright student at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Before joining Stanford in 2007, he was the Ford Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Data Mining
• Mathematics
• Criminology
• Econometrics
• Economics
• Business
• Physics
• Market economy
• Environmental health
• Social psychology
• Internal medicine
• Demography
• Economic system
• Geography
• Medical emergency
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• United States of America

  2026-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i>Fiscal Federalism in Canada,</i> edited by Andre Lecours, Daniel Béland, Trevor Tombe, and Eric Champagne

  Publius The Journal of Federalism · 2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Great Global Divider? A Comparison of Urban-Rural Partisan Polarization in Western Democracies

  Comparative Political Studies · 2024-03-07 · 46 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This study is the first to measure urban-rural electoral divides in a way that facilitates comparisons beyond majoritarian democracies of the UK and North America. Based on national election results at the lowest available geographic level in fifteen countries covering roughly five decades, we present a measure for each election and political party, enabling comparisons over time and between countries with different electoral and party systems. We show that long-term increases in urban-rural divides have been most pronounced in the US, the UK, and Canada, but these divides have also emerged in several European multiparty systems in recent decades, largely because of growing smaller parties with predominantly urban or rural support. Overall urban-rural electoral divides remain lower in these systems due to continued presence of mainstream parties with geographically diverse support. Our contribution paves the way for a comparative research agenda on causes and consequences of urban-rural electoral polarization.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Urban-Rural Divide in Historical Political Economy

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023-02-23 · 4 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter returns to some classic questions posed by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan in the 1960s. When and where is an urban-rural divide in political behavior most likely to emerge? Once established, why does it deepen in some countries at some times, while dissipating in others? After discussing efforts to conceptualize and measure the urban-rural divide since the rise of mass franchise democracy and presenting some time series data from the last 140 years in Germany and the United States, the chapter examines explanations for variation across time and space that are rooted in (1) economic geography, (2) social and cultural divisions, and (3) political institutions and the nationalization of politics. The chapter explores the idea that the urban-rural divide is driven by efforts of party elites to assemble packages of platforms on policy dimensions for which voters’ preferences are correlated with population density. In addition to establishing some stylized facts and reviewing existing contributions, this chapter attempts to provide a road map for theoretical and empirical studies that lie ahead.

  PublisherDOI

• The great recession and the public sector in rural America

  Journal of Economic Geography · 2023-07-12 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Why did rural areas recover from the great recession much more slowly than metropolitan areas? Due to declining tax revenues and intergovernmental aid, employment in the American local government sector fell substantially after the great recession. Cuts to local public employment were especially large, long-lasting and consequential in rural areas, which have become relatively dependent on public-sector employment and intergovernmental transfers. The public sector is relatively inconsequential in urban America, but in many rural places, a decade after the great recession, the public sector was the slowest category of employment to recover and the leading source of long-term job losses.

  PublisherDOI

• How Social Context Affects Immigration Attitudes

  The Journal of Politics · 2022 · 8 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Selection bias represents a persistent challenge to understanding the effects of social context on political attitudes. We attempt to overcome this challenge by focusing on a unique sample of individuals who were assigned to a new social context for an extended period, without control over the location they were sent: missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We interviewed a sample of 1,804 young people before and after their mission service in a diverse set of locations around the world and find strong evidence that the policy views of respondents became more tolerant toward undocumented immigrants when respondents were assigned to places where contact with immigrants was more likely. Within the United States, missionaries who served in communities with larger Hispanic populations, and those assigned to speak a language other than English, experienced the largest increases in pro-immigrant attitudes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Polarization and Accountability in Covid Times

  Frontiers in Political Science · 2022-01-19 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We analyze the relationship between accountability and polarization in the context of the COVID crisis. We make three points. First, when voters perceive the out-party to be ideologically extreme, they are less likely to hold incumbents accountable for poor outcomes via competence-based evaluations. Knowing this, even in the context of major crises, incumbents face weaker incentives to take politically costly measures that would minimize deaths. Second, there is a partisan asymmetry whereby the additional government intrusion associated with effective COVID response can be more politically costly for the right than for the left, because it undercuts the ideological distinctiveness that drives the base-mobilization strategy of the right. Third, this asymmetry generates incentives for politicization of COVID mitigation policies that ultimately lead to partisan differences in mitigation behavior and outcomes. To illustrate this logic, we provide preliminary evidence that COVID death rates are higher in more polarized democracies, and that in one of the most polarized democracies—the United States—COVID deaths have become increasingly correlated with partisanship.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Homicide Deaths Among Adult Cohabitants of Handgun Owners in California, 2004 to 2016

  Annals of Internal Medicine · 2022 · 36 citations

  • Medicine
  • Demography
  • Environmental health

  BACKGROUND: Although personal protection is a major motivation for purchasing firearms, existing studies suggest that people living in homes with firearms have higher risks for dying by homicide. Distribution of those risks among household members is poorly understood. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the association between living with a lawful handgun owner and risk for homicide victimization. DESIGN: This retrospective cohort study followed 17.6 million adult residents of California for up to 12 years 2 months (18 October 2004 through 31 December 2016). Cohort members did not own handguns, but some started residing with lawful handgun owners during follow-up. SETTING: California. PARTICIPANTS: 17 569 096 voter registrants aged 21 years or older. MEASUREMENTS: Homicide (overall, by firearm, and by other methods) and homicide occurring in the victim's home. RESULTS: Of 595 448 cohort members who commenced residing with handgun owners, two thirds were women. A total of 737 012 cohort members died; 2293 died by homicide. Overall rates of homicide were more than twice as high among cohabitants of handgun owners than among cohabitants of nonowners (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.33 [95% CI, 1.78 to 3.05]). These elevated rates were driven largely by higher rates of homicide by firearm (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.83 [CI, 2.05 to 3.91]). Among homicides occurring at home, cohabitants of owners had sevenfold higher rates of being fatally shot by a spouse or intimate partner (adjusted hazard ratio, 7.16 [CI, 4.04 to 12.69]); 84% of these victims were female. LIMITATIONS: Some cohort members classified as unexposed may have lived in homes with handguns. Residents of homes with and without handguns may have differed on unobserved traits associated with homicide risk. CONCLUSION: Living with a handgun owner is associated with substantially elevated risk for dying by homicide. Women are disproportionately affected. PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE: The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, the Fund for a Safer Future, the Joyce Foundation, Stanford Law School, and the Stanford University School of Medicine.

  PublisherDOI

• Political geography and representation: A case study of districting in Pennsylvania

  2022-01-01 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Policies to influence perceptions about COVID-19 risk: The case of maps

  Science Advances · 2022-03-18 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Choropleth disease maps are often used to inform the public about the risks posed by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In a survey conducted in the U.S. state of Georgia in June 2020, we randomly assigned respondents to view either of two maps. The first map reported county-level COVID case counts; the second displayed case rates per 100,000 people. Respondents who saw case rate maps were less likely to perceive COVID as mostly an urban problem and reported higher levels of concerns about the virus. Case rate maps also increased support for policies aimed at mitigating the spread of the virus, although, for this outcome, the effect was quantitatively small and the maps did not change individuals' self-reported behavior. For several outcomes, the impact of the case rate map was strongest for rural residents and self-identified Republicans, both of whom were less worried about the virus and more skeptical about public health measures to mitigate its spread.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen Ansolabehere

  Harvard University

  360 shared

• Nolan McCarty

  52 shared

• Boris Shor

  51 shared

• Chris Tausanovitch

  50 shared

• Christopher Warshaw

  George Washington University

  50 shared

• Guy Grossman

  24 shared

• Melina Platas

  New York University Abu Dhabi

  20 shared

• Romain Ferrali

  Aix-Marseille Université

  17 shared

Awards & honors

• Gregory Luebbert Prize for the best book in comparative poli…