Welcome to my website,

I am the Director of the Program on Networked Governance (PNG) at Harvard, and Associate Professor of Public Policy. PNG is an NSF-supported program whose objective is to serve as a focal point for events, training, and research at the intersection of governance, information, technology, and networks (social and hard-wired).

Most of my work is based on the idea that how people and organizations are connected together is critical to understanding the functioning, success and failure of actors and systems. My teaching, research, and institution building have all centered on that theme. I’ve taken that essential idea and, with a variety of collaborators, examined a wide array of domains.

My research covers everything from very micro (social influence processes within groups), to the very macro (the development of global-wide regulatory regimes). Thus, for example, I have looked at how a network of trade treaties abruptly emerged in the Europe of the 1860s, how attitudes and social structures “co-evolve,” and, in more recent work how the pattern of relationships affects how hard people work on teams, and how small world networks can result in system-wide “group think.”

The objective of this website is to provide entrée into my body of research. If you want just to see my papers, you can just click on publications at right and you will see a chronologically arranged list, with pdf’s where possible. If you want a brief guided tour, then go to research overview, and you can choose from among the various domains that I have worked in. There will be a short summary of my work in each of these areas, with relevant papers and links.

Yours,

David Lazer
Associate Professor for Public Policy