He has previously worked with the World Bank, the OECD, and the United Nations. His main focus of research is comparative politics, with a special emphasis upon quality of government, comparative social indicators, political sociology, and historical institutionalism. His academic articles on populism, democracy and quality of government have been published in journals such as Governance, the Journal of Democracy, and the European Journal of Political Research, and his newspaper editorials have appeared in publications including the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and the Financial Times. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2016.