Hello! I am a Ph.D. student in the Political Science Department at Duke University, specializing in Political Economy and Political Institutions. I am a comparative political scientist who uses game theory and historical analysis to study how rulers emerge, gain legitimacy, and are challenged. The core question that drives my research is how political leaders build legitimacy and elicit popular compliance with their policies, which has led me to study the intersection of religion and politics, the emergence of judiciaries, and the uses and implications of indirect rule, among other topics. My research has been published in Journal of Theoretical Politics, Public Choice, and Constitutional Political Economy. Please view my research projects, my most recent CV, or contact me at benjamin.broman@duke.edu.
Before coming to Duke’s Political Science Department full-time, I received my M.A. in Analytical Political Economy jointly from Duke’s Economics and Political Science Departments and my B.A. in Economics summa cum laude from Pennsylvania State University. I previously worked for the City of Durham’s Innovation Team as a Data Science Fellow and in the Duke University Rare Books and Manuscripts Archive. Outside of academia, I am a distance runner, coffee lover, amateur photographer, and long-suffering fan of D.C.-area sports teams.
