Barbara Geddes (born October 15, 1944) is an American political scientist.
One of the main important theorists of authoritarianism and empirical catalogers of authoritarian regimes,[1] she is currently a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.
[3] "Geddes' (1999) categorization of personalist, party, and military regimes and her use of this classification to examine theories regarding the survival of dictatorships and the likelihood of democratic transitions have been path breaking.
Her earlier work, "investigated bureaucratic reform and corruption in Brazil, the politics of economic policy making in Latin America, and political bargaining over institutional choice.
[8] "The Autocratic Regimes Data Set" that Geddes created with Joseph G. Wright and Erica Frantz, political scientists at Penn State University and Michigan State University, respectively, garnered the Lijphart/ Przeworski/ Verba Data Set Award in 2015, also awarded by the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.