Anne Pitcher studies the comparative politics of developing countries, especially those in Africa. Her research has explored the political economy of colonialism in Lusophone Africa; the creation of credible commitments to economic reform and the politics of private sector development across Sub-Saharan Africa. Her book, Party Politics and Economic Reform in Africa’s Democracies, (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won Honorable Mention for best book award from the African Politics Conference Group, an organized section of the American Political Science Association and the African Studies Association.
Her current projects analyze the role of technocratic agencies in African countries and the distribution of goods under authoritarian conditions. A recent article with Manny Teodoro in the Journal of Public Policy employs time series analysis to examine the effectiveness of privatization agencies in authoritarian versus democratic contexts. Building on that work, she is creating an original dataset that measures the independence of regulatory agencies across Africa.
A second line of research explores the provision of goods such as housing, electricity, water, and health care in Luanda, Angola. She relies on a public opinion survey of low and middle income households in the urban and peri-urban areas of Luanda, Angola to assess degrees of satisfaction with the receipt of multiple goods and the political benefits of goods provision in an authoritarian context. The survey was jointly undertaken with Sylvia Croese, University of Cape Town and Allan Cain, Development Workshop, Luanda, Angola.