Didi Kuo

Didi Kuo

  • Center Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

Biography

Didi Kuo is the Associate Director for Research at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics, with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. Her recent work examines changes to party organization, and the impact these changes have on the ability of governments to address challenges posed by global capitalism. She is the author of Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which examines the role of business against clientelism and the development of modern political parties in the nineteenth century. 

She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, which examines problems such as polarization, inequality, and responsiveness, and recommends possibilities for reform. She also teaches in the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She is a non-resident fellow in political reform at New America, where she was a 2018 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.
 

publications

Journal Articles
September 2023

Why Big Reform Is Possible

Author(s)
Why Big Reform Is Possible
Journal Articles
June 2020

Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge of Racial Exclusion

Author(s)
Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge of Racial Exclusion
Journal Articles
March 2020

Political Reform and American Democracy

Author(s)
Political Reform and American Democracy

In The News

Didi Kuo and Andrew S. Kelly with APSA logo
News

Didi Kuo and Co-author Andrew S. Kelly Awarded 2023 Leonard S. Robins Award for Best Paper on Health Politics and Policy

The award recognizes Kuo and Kelly's paper, “State Capacity and Public Health: California and COVID-19,” as the best paper on health politics and policy presented at the 2022 American Political Science Association (APSA) conference.
Didi Kuo and Co-author Andrew S. Kelly Awarded 2023 Leonard S. Robins Award for Best Paper on Health Politics and Policy
Didi Kuo, FSI Center Fellow
News

Didi Kuo, Expert on Comparative and American Politics, Announced as FSI’s Newest Center Fellow

As a Center Fellow, Kuo will continue to advance her research agenda at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, exploring both the challenges facing American democracy today and their roots.
Didi Kuo, Expert on Comparative and American Politics, Announced as FSI’s Newest Center Fellow
CDDRL directors
News

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law Celebrates 20 Years of Global Impact

The center’s achievements include both informing public discourse about democracy, development, and rule of law, and also educating and training a generation of scholars and leaders who will change the world.
The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law Celebrates 20 Years of Global Impact
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