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Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He studies how countries allocate opportunity and well-being among their citizens and the consequences this has for society, why some countries are democratic and others aren't, and why some societies fall into civil conflict.
His newest book in press, Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies (Basic Books, 2025), examines how land became power, how it shapes power, and how who holds that power determines the fundamental social problems that societies grapple with. He is also the author of Property without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap, Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy, Coercive Distribution, and Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform. Autocracy and Redistribution and Property Without Rights both won several book awards.
