Jeffrey Paller

Researcher at Department of Government; Faculty

E-mail:: jeffrey.paller@statsvet.uu.se
Visiting address:: Östra Ågatan 19
753 22 Uppsala
Postal address:: Box 514
751 20 UPPSALA

Download contact information for Jeffrey Paller at Department of Government; Faculty

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ORCID:: 0000-0001-6983-065X

Short presentation

I use ethnography, focus groups, and surveys to examine the political conditions under which democratic activity and accountability develop in urban communities, specifically in Africa.

Keywords

sustainability
cities
accountability
democracy
african politics

Biography

I am a Researcher in the Department of Government at Uppsala University, Associate Professor of Politics at University of San Francisco, and a research associate with the Governance and Local Development Institute (GLD) at the University of Gothenburg. In 2022-23, I was a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.

I am the PI for the “Building Sustainable Neighborhoods in African Cities” project (Formas 2024-26), as well as co-leader for “Emerging Cities”, a Swedish Research Council-funded research environment that examines political change and local governance in secondary cities (2023-27). I am a Co-I on the “Political Transformation in African Cities (PACE)” project supported by the Research Council of Norway (2021-24).

My research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, University of Wisconsin, and USF. I was a Research Associate at the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana in 2012. I received my PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the department of political science in 2014. During the academic year 2014-15, I was a Visiting Lecturer of Politics at Bates College. In 2016, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, working with the Center for Sustainable Urban Development. I curate the weekly news bulletin This Week in Africa.

Publications

Recent publications

All publications

Articles in journal

Articles, review/survey

Building the City from Below: Toward a Citizen-Centered City-Making

Paller, Jeffrey W.

Part of African Studies Review, p. 370-378, 2025
- DOI for Building the City from Below: Toward a Citizen-Centered City-Making
- Download full text (pdf) of Building the City from Below: Toward a Citizen-Centered City-Making

Books

Democracy in Ghana: Everyday Politics in Urban Africa

Paller, Jeffrey W.

Cambridge University Press, 2019
- DOI for Democracy in Ghana: Everyday Politics in Urban Africa

Chapters in book

Housing Policies, Claim-Making, and Resistance in African Cities

Paller, Jeffrey W.

Part of Global Urban Policy, p. 243-263, University of Michigan Press, 2026