Li-Hong Weng
About Me
I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. I study comparative politics, with a focus on comparative political economy, electoral politics, political institutions, and regime change.
My research examines why and how political accountability deteriorates even when formal democratic institutions remain in place. In my dissertation, Political Accountability in an Era of Democratic Backsliding, I examine the political conditions that threaten different forms of accountability, the factors that shape citizens’ willingness to trade accountability for other desired outcomes, and how political polarization creates incentives for politicians to strategically circumvent electoral accountability through distributive politics. I study these questions across global, individual, and subnational levels of analysis, combining computational text analysis, cross-national survey data, survey experiments, and electoral and historical data. My work has received the Department of Political Science’s Best Graduate Student Paper Award in 2025 and the Asian Studies Center’s Shao-Chang Lee Best Paper Competition Award in 2026.
I am also deeply committed to teaching. I have taught research methods at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, with an emphasis on creating a classroom environment in which students learn through experimentation, discussion, and productive trial and error. My teaching was recognized with the Department of Political Science’s Best Graduate Student Teaching Award in 2026.
Research and Teaching Interests
Comparative Political Economy, East Asian Politics, Electoral Politics, Political Institutions, Regime Change
Causal Inference, Machine Learning, Computational Text Analysis
Contact
226 South Kedzie Hall
368 Farm Lane
East Lansing, MI 48824
Personal website: https://lihongweng.github.io
Email address: wengliho@msu.edu
