Paul D. Kenny

Paul David Kenny is an Irish political scientist and author who specialises in comparative politics and political economics.

Education Kenny attended Belvedere College, a private voluntary secondary school in Dublin. He proceeded to Trinity College Dublin in 2000, where he studied economics, graduating with first-class honours in 2004, and then attended the London School of Economics from 2005 to 2006, where he received an MSc in international relations and affairs. From 2006 to 2012, he attended Yale University, gaining an MA, MPhil, and PhD in political science. His PhD thesis was titled The Patronage Network: Broker Power, Populism, and Democracy.

Career Kenny joined the Australian National University in 2013: from July 2013 to December 2017, he was a research fellow in Indian Political and Social Change, then from August 2019 to July 2020, he was an associate professor.

Kenny's research on populism, corruption, and political institutions has been published in many international peer-reviewed journals, including the International Studies Review, the Journal of Refugee Studies, British Journal of Political Science, Government and Opposition, The Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and the Journal of East Asian Studies.

In 2017, Kenny explored the micro-foundations of populism in his book Populism and Patronage: Why Populists Win Elections in India, Asia, and Beyond with Oxford University Press, which won the 2018 Robert A. Dahl Award. He wrote two books with Cambridge University Press (Populism in Southeast Asia in 2018 and Why Populism? Political Strategy from Ancient Greece to the Present in 2023), exploring his belief that populism is best understood "less as a political ideology than as a cost-effective political strategy."

Since July 2020, Kenny has held the post of Professor of Political Science at the Australian Catholic University. He is head of the Department of Political & Social Change.

In May 2023, Kenny moderated Mapping Global Populism — Panel 2: Populism, Macho-Fascism and Varieties of Illiberalism in The Philippines, a European Center for Populism Studies panel, with speakers Adele Webb, Mark R. Thompson, Jean S. Encinas-Franco, Jefferson Lyndon D. Ragragio.

Selected works Books

Journal articles

11 June 2023