O R I T K E D A R
Orit Kedar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at MIT. Her principal research interest lies in comparative politics. In particular, she is interested in electoral politics, the intersection of behavior and institutions, multi-level explanations in comparative politics, electoral systems, party systems, as well as questions of representation, federalism, identity, and European integration. A secondary research interest of hers is political methodology.
Her current research analyzes various aspects of the way institutions mediate between voters and government. These include a study of strategic voter choice under multi-party coalition governments, analysis of voter motivation in semi-presidential regimes, and analysis of citizens’ changing identity in light of European integration. She teaches courses in comparative politics, and particularly in comparative electoral politics, electoral institutions, parliamentary democracy, elections in Europe, and European integration.
Her work appeared in such venues as the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Electoral Studies, Political Analysis, and Public Opinion Quarterly. Her book, Voting for Policy, Not Parties: How Voters Compensate for Power Sharing (2009, Cambridge University Press), proposes an institutionally embedded framework for analyzing voter choice. The project extends her dissertation, winner of the Noxon Toppan Award of Best Dissertation in Political Science, Harvard University. She also serves on the editorial boards of Electoral Studies and Political Analysis.
An Israeli citizen, Kedar is a graduate of Tel Aviv University (political science and economics.) She received her MA in political science from Brown University, and her Ph.D from Harvard’s Government Department. Prior to joining MIT, she was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In between the two, she spent a year as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Tel Aviv University.