L.V. Cingolani | People Pages: Find employees & contact details

I am a political scientist specialized in the study of institutional development, state capacity, and how emerging technologies impact the quality of democracy. I am currently Assistant Professor of Institutions and Digital Governance at the Public Administration section of the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences at Twente University. Previously, I was Assistant Professor at the Hertie School in Berlin. I co-lead the ‘Assert’ project on democratic backsliding in cooperation with the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Brazil, and collaborate with the Centre for Digital Governance at Hertie. I have also supported the work of the French Development Agency, the Horizon2020 project ‘Digiwhist’ on public procurement transparency, the OECD, the United Nations Development Programme, and the G20 ‘States of the Future’ network. In the public sector, I have worked for the Buenos Aires City government in the area of Participatory Strategic Planning. I first obtained a PhD from Maastricht University / UNU-Merit, a Master of Public Policy at San Andrés University funded by the Argentine Research Council (CONICET), and a Bachelor in Political Science at Buenos Aires University.

Organisations

I study how state capacity and bureaucratic development shape public policy design and implementation in the contemporary era. I investigate the quality and performance of public institutions, including the role of digital tools and e-services in enhancing governance, transparency, and inclusion, and examine the conditions under which digital infrastructure -such as contact tracing apps during the COVID-19 pandemic- is adopted and performs effectively across countries. My research also engages empirically with open government initiatives, public procurement transparency, and representative bureaucracies, often linked to broader debates on state capacity building.

My work appears in leading academic journals, including JPART, Governance, Public Management Review, Government Information Quarterly, World Development, PPMG and Public Administration Review, among others. I also currently co-edit the Edward Elgar Handbook of State Capacity together with Rainer Kattel (UCL) and Bruno Queiroz-Cunha (IPEA).

For an updated list of publications, please visit my Google Scholar profile.

I teach / have taught bachelors and master courses on the following topics: public management, digital governance, introductory political science, policy design, policy implementation, comparative politics, behavioral public administration, societal challenges and introductory econometrics.

Courses academic year 2025/2026

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2024/2025

I currently co-lead the ‘Assert’ project on the role of civil servants’ attitudes and behaviors in contexts of democratic backsliding. This research is funded by the Instituto República in Brazil and the Hertie School, and carried out in partnership with the Getúlio Vargas Foundation and the Brazilian School of Public Administration (ENAP). As a postdoctoral researcher I have taken part in the Horizon2020 ‘Digital Whistleblower’ project on procurement transparency, in partnership with the University of Cambridge and six other institutions. As a Phd researcher, I took part in the ‘Institutions and Long-Term Growth’ project, funded by the French Development Agency and in partnership with the United Nations’ University. My masters’ research on policy volatility in Argentina and Brazil was funded by the Argentine Research Council (CONICET) and supervised by Ernesto Calvo and Miguel de Luca.