Charles R. Hankla is Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is also Director of Governance Programs and Senior Research Associate at the university’s International Center for Public Policy (ICePP) and an affiliate of the Asian Studies Center. Dr. Hankla earned his Ph.D. in 2005 from Emory University, and he also holds degrees from Georgetown University and the London School of Economics. In the spring and summer of 2013, he was a visiting scholar at Sciences Po Lille in France.

Dr. Hankla’s research is in the fields of comparative and international political economy, and he has a particular interest in political institutions as they relate to fiscal decentralization, budgeting, trade policy, and industrial policy. His research has included cross-national, quantitative studies and also field-work based analyses of India, France, and Mozambique.

Dr. Hankla’s work has appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, and Publius. He has published a book from Edward Elgar, co-authored with Jorge Martinez-Vazquez and Raul Ponce-Rodriguez, and entitled Local Accountability and National Coordination in Fiscal Federalism: A Fine Balance. And he is currently Co-PI on a grant from the International Growth Centre in London, funding survey experiments on voting behavior in the Indian state of Bihar.

Dr. Hankla currently serves as director of the department’s M.A. program, and he is a past departmental graduate director. Dr. Hankla serves or has served on dozens of dissertation and thesis committees in political science, economics, and public policy, and he received the college Graduate Mentoring Award in 2019. He also directs an exchange program with Sciences Po Lille in France and has led students on a study abroad program to Presidency University, Kolkata in India.

In addition, Dr. Hankla is an active consultant, particularly on topics related to fiscal decentralization and public budgeting. In his role as Governance Program Director at ICePP, Dr. Hankla is responsible for growing the center’s consulting and training activities related to fiscal governance in the developing world. In addition, his co-authored policy brief on decentralization has been accepted for publication by the T20, the official think tank of the G20 process. His past consulting work has been funded by the United Nations Development Program, the US Department of State, and the US Agency for International Development. Dr. Hankla speaks fluent French and has a reading knowledge of Hindi, German, and Russian.

Finally, Dr. Hankla is a regular public commentator on the politics of economic affairs. His online articles for the Conversation have attracted over 550,000 reads and have appeared on the websites of Newsweek, Time, Salon, The Huffington Post, The East Asia Forum, The World Economic Forum, Fortune, The New Republic, and The Business Standard of India, among many others. Dr. Hankla also gives regular media interviews and has appeared on or been quoted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the China Global Television Network, CBS News, BBC News, Julie Rose’s Top of Mind, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and many others.

Local Accountability and National Coordination in Fiscal Federalism: A Fine Balance. With Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, and Raul Ponce Rodriguez. Edward Elgar Publishers. Series: Studies in Fiscal Federalism and State-Local Finance.

Ponce Rodriguez, Raul, Charles R. Hankla, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Eunice Heredia-Ortiz. 2018. Rethinking the Political Economy of Decentralization: How Parties and Elections Shape the Provision of Local Public Goods. Publius 48 (4): 523-558.

Awarded the Deil Wright Award for best paper presented as part of the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section at the American Political    Science Association Annual Convention, Seattle, 2011.

* Ponce Rodriguez, Raul, Charles R. Hankla, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Eunice Heredia-Ortiz.  2020.  Political Institutions and Federalism:  A “Strong” Decentralization Theorem. Forthcoming at Journal of Theoretical Politics.

* Banerjee, Sayan and Charles Hankla.  2020.  Party Systems and Public Goods: The Dynamics of Good Governance in the Indian States. Forthcoming at India Review.

* Abuzeid, Faris and Charles Hankla.  2020. ‘Smart Decentralization:’ Accountability and Community Development through Urban Self-Governance. Accepted and forthcoming in the Proceedings of the G20 after extensive peer review process.

* Policy Brief commissioned by the T20 Committee in Saudi Arabia as part of the G20 Summit Process.

Hankla, Charles R. and Carrie Lynn Manning. 2017. How Local Elections Can Transform National Politics: Evidence from Mozambique. Publius 47 (1): 49-76.

Hankla, Charles R. and Daniel Kuthy. 2013. Economic Liberalism in Illiberal Regimes: Authoritarian Variation and the Political Economy of Trade. International Studies Quarterly 57 (3): 492-504.

Hankla, Charles R. 2013. Fragmented Legislatures and the Budget: Analyzing Presidential Democracies. Economics & Politics 25 (2): 200-228.

Carrubba, Clifford J., Matthew Gabel, and Charles R. Hankla. 2012. Understanding the Role of the European Court of Justice in European Integration. American Political Science Review 106 (1): 214-223.

Duffield, John and Charles R. Hankla. 2011. The Efficiency of Institutions: Political Determinants of Energy Consumption in Advanced Industrialized Countries. Comparative Politics 43(2).

Hankla, Charles R. and William M. Downs. 2010. Decentralization, Governance, and the Structure of Local Political Institutions: Assessing the Evidence. Local Government Studies 36 (6): 759-783.

Hankla. Charles R. 2009. When is Fiscal Decentralization Good for Governance? Publius: The Journal of Federalism 39 (4): 632-650.A Chinese translation of this article was published in the Journal of Comparative Economic and Social Systems (No. 4, July 2012, pp. 101-110).

Carrubba, Clifford J., Matthew Gabel, and Charles R. Hankla. 2008. Judicial Behavior under Political Constraints: Evidence from the European Court of Justice. American Political Science Review 102 (4): 435-452.

Hankla, Charles R. 2008. Parties and Patronage: An Analysis of Trade and Industrial Policy in India. Comparative Politics 41 (1): 41-60.

Hankla, Charles R. 2006. Party Strength and International Trade: A Cross National Analysis. Comparative Political Studies 39 (9): 1133-1156.

Hankla, Charles R. 2006. Party Linkages and Economic Policy: An Examination of Indira Gandhi’s India. Business and Politics 8 (3), Article 4, pp. 1-29.

Current Grant

“Electing Women in Ethnically Divided Societies: The Case of Bihar.” With Sayan Banerjee and Arindam Banerjee. Funded by the International Growth Centre.

Other Projects

“Political Institutions and Federalism: A “Strong” Decentralization Theorem.” With Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Raul Ponce Rodriguez, and Eunice Heredia.

“Party Systems and Public Goods: The Dynamics of Good Governance in the Indian States.” With Sayan Banerjee.

“In Pursuit of Prosperity: The Politics of Economic Modernization in Post-War France and Beyond”. Book project.

“Electoral Accountability in a Decentralized Context,” With Janet Porras Mendoza and Jorge Martinez Vazquez.

“Transformative Relationships: State and Society in Economic Modernization.”