Research areas

Ole Therkildsen does research on taxation, democratization, corruption, and public service delivery in poor countries – especially East and Southern Africa. He is specifically interested in how their political economies shape relations of the state, bureaucracy, civil society, and the private sector.

Current research

Corruption

Mapping of the political economy of corruption in Tanzania’s international trade in rice and sugar. This will form the basis for proposal to reduce this corruption, which especially hurts smallholder growers of sugar and rice.

Corruption affecting Tanzania’s industrialisation policies – specifically the Economic Processing Zones programme – is also analysed as a basis for proposals to reduce corruption and generate more jobs.

This work is part of the research project on Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) at SOAS, University of London.

The financing of the election campaigns of political parties

Comparative analyses of the political parties’ demand for and supply of money to run their parliamentary and presidential elections and the impacts on democratization that these money flows have.

This work is part of the research project Political Settlement and Revenue Bargaining (PSRB) at the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus.