Patrick Heller

Patrick Heller is professor of sociology and international studies at Brown and the director of the Graduate Program in Development at the Watson Institute. His main area of research is the comparative study of social inequality and democratic deepening. He is the author of The Labor of Development: Workers in the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India (Cornell 1999) and co-author ofSocial Democracy and the Global Periphery (Cambridge 2006). He has published articles on urbanization, comparative democracy, social movements, development policy, civil society and state transformation. His most recent book – Bootstrapping Democracy(Stanford 2011) with Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Marcelo Silva – explores politics and institutional reform in Brazilian municipalities. Heller has also done research on urban transformation in South Africa and built a database on spatial transformation of the post-apartheid city.