David K. Leonard

David K. Leonard is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) and Professorial Fellow in Governance at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex University, UK.

Formerly Dean of International and Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Leonard has spent his career, dating back to 1963, working on governance issues in sub-Saharan Africa. He has lived for over a dozen years in four African countries and done short-term work in another 17.

His graduate teaching and supervision of doctoral candidates (of which he has had over 60) have covered governance issues in the whole of the developing world. The theme underlying most of his work has been methods of improving the delivery of public services in the rural areas of Africa, both directly through managerial and policy reform and indirectly through partnerships with private actors. He has contributed to organisation theory, the New Institutional Economics, and comparative politics and administration.