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Home > About Us > Faculty & Staff Directory > Merilee Grindle
Merilee S. Grindle is Edward S. Mason Professor of
International Development and Director of the David Rockefeller
Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. She is a
specialist on the comparative analysis of policymaking,
implementation, and public management in developing countries, with
particular reference to Latin America. Her most recent book is
Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative
Perspective (Harvard University Press 2012). She is also the
author of: Going Local: Decentralization, Democratization, and
the Promise of Good Governance; Despite the Odds: The Contentious
Politics of Education Reform; Audacious Reforms; Challenging the
State; State and Countryside; Searching for Rural Development;
and Bureaucrats, Politicians, and Peasants in Mexico. She
has written numerous articles about policy management and the
politics of policy reform. She also is the editor of Politics
and Policy Implementation in the Third World; Getting Good
Government; and Proclaiming Revolution. She is
co-author, with John Thomas, of Public Choices and Policy
Change, which won an award as the best book in public policy in
1991. A political scientist with a PhD from MIT, Grindle is engaged
in research early travels to Latin America.