Transformational Scholar, Institute Director, Nobel Laureate

On October 14, 2024, James Robinson woke to the news that he had won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences, a recognition indicative of genuine devotion to his field. A scholar of political science and economics, Robinson has been a true leader in his research, mentorship of students, and university collaboration. His academic work explores the underlying relationship between poverty and the institutions of a society, and considers how institutions emerge out of political conflict.

Robinson, the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson, Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, is also the Institute Director of The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts.

“Human beings are sort of the same everywhere, but different human societies do enormously different jobs in terms of providing for people, keeping them secure, and giving them opportunities to flourish and develop,” he said.

In 2012, he co-authored Why Nations Fail with Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor of Economics at MIT, arguing that economic prosperity in a country largely depends on institutions, which are themselves an outcome of their political processes. A worldwide bestseller translated into 49 languages to date, the book examines what factors put nations on different economic and developmental trajectories and how inequality becomes so persistent around the world.

What led some countries to flourish while others fall to the bottom of world income and inequality indexes? In 2012, Robinson and Acemoglu concluded that it was about institutions. It wasn’t geography, disease, or culture, but man-made institutions that separated the world's wealthiest countries from the poorest. In its 2021 follow-up, The Narrow Corridor, they delved deeper into the relationship between economic prosperity and political freedom and how institutions can determine a nation’s fate.

“Why Nations Fail resonated because the concepts are very simple,” he said. “We make this dichotomy between prosperity and poverty. Prosperity is caused by inclusive economic and political institutions, and poverty is caused by extractive institutions.”

Robinson currently conducts research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Haiti, and Colombia, where he has taught for many years during the summer at the University of the Andes in Bogotá. His latest project stemmed from work he started twelve years ago while on sabbatical in Colombia, trying to understand how different paramilitary groups organized and filled the void left by its then-weak central government.

“In half of the country, there is a vacuum of authority. The central state exercises very little control and provides few services, so local people organize and provide public goods and services. They provide order, but they also engage in violence and illegality,” he said. “What's fascinating is that if you look at these different organizations that proliferated in Colombia starting in the 1970s and 1980s, you see a huge amount of variation.”

His fieldwork brought him to interview former paramilitary commanders and citizens in the territories they controlled. As Colombia began its transitional justice process nearly a decade ago, a vast amount of information about these groups converged and eventually became available in court documents. Now, they can test hypotheses about why some groups were more violent than others, why some built roads and houses and schools and health clinics, while others chose not to get involved in delivering public services.

“One thing you see is that the social background of the commander of these groups has a huge impact on how they behave. So, if you distinguish between leaders of these groups, who are farmers or peasants, they behave systematically differently from non-peasants,” he said. “They’re much more likely to provide public goods and services and invest in the community, and they're much less likely to commit large massacres of civilians as a way of controlling territory.”

Robinson is working on his third book, tentatively entitled Wealth and People, and he is trying to summarize the research and scholarship that has shaped how he thinks about institutions and developmental challenges in African countries. Part of what motivated the manuscript was his desire to dismantle the deficit framing that conflict and development practitioners often bring to the continent.

“Many social scientists get involved in Africa because they think, ‘Oh, Africa is poor,’ or ‘Africa is underdeveloped, undemocratic, or unstable,’ so you’re focusing on all these negatives. You’re endlessly looking for the fact that explains these negatives,” he said. “But there are huge positives in Africa. You start seeing all these strengths and capabilities—what I call latent assets. Why don't we focus on all these positive things and try to conceptualize them, because that’s where the future will be in Africa?”

In October 2024, Robinson was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024 for his groundbreaking research on the root causes of global inequality, including what affects’ countries economic prosperity. He is also a University of Chicago professor, teaching graduate classes on political economy and economic development. In addition to directing activities at the Pearson Institute, he previously was an academic adviser to the World Bank and served on the boards of the Global Development Network and the Swedish Development Policy Council. He has also received honorary doctorates from numerous leading institutions, including the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, the National University of Mongolia, and the University of Warwick. He is also a Fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka.

While leading The Pearson Institute, Robinson has played a critical role in directing its research agenda, engaging the academic community, and shaping the curriculum taught at the Harris School of Public Policy and the University of Chicago. In a place where scholars come from different disciplines and focus areas, what has united them is the same approach to data-driven analysis on the roots of conflict.

“James Robinson's work has transformed our understanding of the political and institutional sources of peace and prosperity,” says said Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Dean and Sydney Stein Professor at Harris. “Using an exceptionally broad range of tools--from formal mathematical models to statistical analysis to historical inquiry to qualitative field work in places as disparate as Latin America and sub-Sharan Africa--James has set the agenda for how to think both rigorously and deeply about the most fundamental questions of human and societal flourishing.”

“It’s the methodology that distinguishes the Harris School and the Pearson Institute and a commitment to use scientific methods of causal inference and data,” he said. “We’ve been fantastic at attracting talent—incredibly exciting young people and senior scholars whose work I admire immensely. We’re getting these people in place with the right values and who are asking the right questions.”