Welcome Dr. Ben Broman!
The Department of Political Science is delighted to welcome Assistant Professor Benjamin Broman to the faculty! Dr. Broman is a political economist whose interests lie in the emergence and evolution of political institutions. Theoretically, he uses game theory to explore how institutional choices and changes can be driven by social pressures. Empirically, he leverages historical political economy data to study the political and economic development of the British Isles, especially during the early modern and industrial periods.
He is developing new formal models of delegation that take into account the effects of being in front of an audience, a situation where principal-agent dynamics are heavily influenced by how the choice of an agent affects third parties. An example of this is the choice of a conquering nation to install a local puppet government or not.
Dr. Broman is also excited to be working on a project that tracks the evolution of electoral clientelism and patronage in the British Parliament, trying to understand what drove the emergence of programmatic competition.
His work has appeared in The Journal of Theoretical Politics, The Journal of Historical Political Economy, Public Choice, and Constitutional Political Economy. In his most recent article, “Indirect rule and mass threat: Two paths to direct rule,” in The Journal of Theoretical Politics, he develops a formal theory to reconcile contrasting views about direct rule and centralization of power. His work addresses a major question in political economy: whether the risk of rebellion induces regimes to centralize their power or, instead, to adopt decentralizing reforms. Dr. Broman shows these two paths rest on different mechanisms and are driven by different dilemmas that rulers face when considering whether to centralize their control.
Dr. Broman received his PhD in Political Science from Duke University in 2024, and an M.A. in Analytical Political Economy from Duke in 2019. He joins our growing interdisciplinary faculty in the field of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Purdue.