Anne Meng

Anne Meng is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Her research centers on authoritarian politics, institutions, and elite power sharing. Meng takes a political economy approach to comparative authoritarianism and has a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Meng's book, Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes (Cambridge University Press, 2020), examines how executive constraints become established in dictatorships, particularly within constitutions and presidential cabinets. The book won the 2021 American Political Science Association William H. Riker Prize for the best book on political economy published in the past three years and was also included on the 2021 Best Book List by Foreign Affairs.

Meng has also written articles on authoritarian ruling parties, rebel regimes, opposition cooptation, term limit evasion, and leadership succession. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Theoretical Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Columbia Law Review, and Studies in Comparative International Development. Meng’s research was awarded the Best Article Award by the African Politics Conference Group Section of the American Political Science Association in 2021 and the Best Paper Award by the Democracy and Autocracy Section of the American Political Science Association in 2016.

Much of Meng's new and ongoing research examines autocratic backsliding and executive aggrandizement in non-democracies. Meng earned a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, where she also earned an MA in economics.