Malte Lierl

Malte Lierl has over 15 years of experience at the intersection of research and international development cooperation. He specializes in governance, political economy and state-society relations. He has worked on problems of decentralization and local public service delivery, local government performance, citizen engagement, corruption, transparency and accountability, as well as informal and hybrid governance. 

He passionately advocates for more realistic assumptions and better use of evidence in development policy. Much of his research is done in partnership with policy makers. For example, as part of a ten-year research collaboration with the Government of Burkina Faso and the World Bank, he designed and tested innovations to improve the performance and accountability of municipalities. His work includes large-scale field experiments, field-based behavioral studies, as well as extensive surveys and mixed-methods data collection. 

Malte holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University (2015), as well as master’s degrees in Economics, Statistics and International Relations. Prior to joining Clingendael, he has held research positions at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Yale University, and the World Bank.